The Last Days of Ayodhya

In the first half of January, I spent a few days in Ayodhya. I wanted to experience the city for myself, and to think about what it meant to be an Indian and a Hindu (or, as seems to be the changing paradigm in our times, a Hindu and an Indian) in the weeks leading up to an event, which over the last four decades has become central to our political discourse. I also wanted to spend a few days immersed in the Ramasphere-that religious culture, mainly in north India, steeped in the language and lore and preeminence of Ram-to understand how it was changing in the light of the new Ram Mandir; whether it was becoming deeper or more superficial, whether Hinduism itself is morphing into something new and more centralised under the influence of a Ram whom we are told was returning to his people for a second time in history.

- Chandrahas Choudhury

“Jai Shri Ram!”

“Jai Jai Shri Ram!” 

ALL day in Ayodhya, the cry surfaces in a city abuzz with electric drills and bulldozers as much as katha and kirtans. Ayodhya is freighted with the fervour, the tension, the anticipation, the ecstasy, of the return of Ram, now but the blink of an eye away. The coalescing belief among millions of Hindus from Delhi to Denver is that a new era in the history of Indian civilisation is to spring forth here on 22 January. If so, then these hazy sunless days of early January 2024 must be the last breaths of a godless age, clouded by ideas and values soon to be discarded because not authentically Indian.

Therefore, Jai Shri Ram! To spur our nation towards a second Independence day, towards Ram rajya, to its destiny as Vishwaguru, Jai Shri Ram! It is the rallying call of the public along the 2-kilometre-long Ram Janmabhoomi Path leading from the main road, Ram Path, to the Ram Janmabhoomi temple complex. It erupts with particular intensity among devotees as they jostle and sway on the narrow steps leading up to the Hanuman Garhi temple a few hundred metres away. It is chanted more gently after the moving morning aarti, offered to idols of Ram and Sita swaying gently on a swing, in the courtyard of the hundred-year-old Amava Ram Temple, where people gather in long rows at lunchtime, a generous lunch of rice, dal, pooris, sabji and kheer provided for free by the temple’s Ram Rasoi. The temple has a striking crest of a giant bow, and inside, its own glass-walled shrine to Ram lalla, installed in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court judgement of 2019.