WORLD COMES CLOSER TO VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM BECAUSE OF RAM MANDIR

Ina world where conflict and hatred often prevail over reason and mutual respect, Ram Mandir will serve to remind human beings across the world of the universality of their humanity.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

In a triumph of the central principle of secularism that all faiths have to be shown equal respect, the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya reopens on 22 January, centuries after the structure standing on the birthplace of Lord Ram was destroyed by Emperor Aurangzeb in 1660. The Partition of India in 1947 was the consequence of inter-faith hatreds that were fanned by the colonial power. Apart from M.A. Jinnah and others belonging to the Muslim elite who had been co-opted by the British into the colonial Pakistan project, only a limited number of ordinary Muslims got entangled in the manufactured myth that Hindus and Muslims comprised two separate nations. Apart from the reassuring deeds and words of Mahatma Gandhi, this was why the vast majority of Muslims in what was left of India preferred to remain in our country rather than migrate to Pakistan.

Mistaking artificially created misperceptions of communal incompatibility as reality, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was opposed even to the restoration of the Somnath temple, but finally acquiesced to the wishes of Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad in this regard. Surprisingly, even Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya, the three sacred sites of the Hindu community, remained in the condition they were in after Emperor Aurangzeb demolished the temples that had been built on the birthplaces of Lord Ram and Lord Krishna in Ayodhya and Mathura respectively. Aurangzeb also went ahead with demolishing the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the third sacred site of the Hindus.