The Return to Ayodhya and the Dharmic Nation

Since 5,000 years plus Bharat has been moving towards Ayodhya. In the imagination of
Hindus  Rama is the ideal monarch embodying in himself the Vedic virtues of justice, compassion and truth. The great epic the Ramayana of Valmiki describes him as having born in Ayodhya, the son of King  Dasharatha of Ayodhya. After his exile in the forest Rama returns to Ayodhya and his reign was extolled as righteous and just.

Today, Bharat has come a long way from those ancient times. After occupying a leading position in the world as a prosperous ,wealthy and civilized nation that observed law and order and a unifying bond ,that of Dharmic Hinduism, it came under the depredation of invasions and conquests which led to the two long Occupations, the Mughal one lasting from 1526 to 1725  and the colonial British Occupation from 1857 on till 1947.

Today, the nation is independent, has been so since 1947. The polity is striving towards
achieving the Vedic ideals of justice and the equality of all living beings. The caste system which originated approximately  three to four hundred years before the Christian era, is breaking down and both the Indian state and private individuals and organizations are working towards righting historic injustices towards the lower/lowest castes. Ideas of economic development have become entrenched in the consciousness of all Indians,regardless of religion, gender, caste, ethnicity.Modernity which has been in the air for a long time since independence has gathered momentum

And it is here that Lord Rama of Ayodhya has once more a role to play. Secular modernists  do not see it that way.Their mindset is such that they see the Indian Constitution as something novel, brand new that the  Indian polity  has never known and therefore is to be defended against  Dharmic Hindu constitutionalism. This is why the lawyer Rajeev Dhawan made the superficial statement that the Allahabad High Court judgment concerning the Ramjanma Bhoomi is not a legal verdict but a Panchayati style verdict. It is even doubtful whether he had read the entire verdict when he made that statement. On points of law, many writers have already written affirming the legal validity of the High Court judgment. In the days to come this process will continue.

Compromise and co operation have been part of Panchayati functioning since time immemorial and in the twentieth century was popularized by Mahatma Gandhi as being the  essence of the ideal village republic. Disputes were settled by consensus. Dhawan on the other hand is invoking an abstraction. It is not clear from his public pronouncements what legalities he is talking about and in what sense the High Court’s judgment is illegal.

His second ridiculous assertion is comparing the destruction of the Babri in 1992 to the
destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban. The more appropriate comparison would be that the destruction of the temple in 1528 is like the Taliban’s actions (The Islamic conquest of India was the bloodiest chapter in human history, historian Will Durant, in The Case for India). The secularists shy away from such historical facts. The Muslim invaders were precisely invaders and conquerors. Their destructive trail cannot be wished away.

The second proposition that the secular fundamentalists(phrase coined by senior journalist Swapan Das Gupta) advance is that faith has triumphed over law. Again, none of these individuals have read the 10,000 page Document of the court verdict to understand why the judges treated the existence of the deity Rama as a juridical entity. Once  again, the secular position is that the High Court judgment is illegal, even though many of the loudest critics probably do not quite understand the relevance of ‘juridical entity’ in legal proceedings. Again, this aspect of law has been explained in the last few days by scholars and writers .

Thirdly, there are the arguments coming from those who say that the verdict ignores History. Here again, the general god of history is invoked, but the protagonists do not explain which history they are talking about. The historical process that unfolded in Bharat or their own  phantasmagoria.

These are the broad outlines of the position taken by those who are hostile to the verdict.
What is the actual source of their discomfort ? In most cases, though not all, an attempt to negate Bharat’s civilisational history. In many cases, a failure to understand why Lord Rama’s return to Ayodhya  fulfills a long standing hope and desire of millions of Hindus both in Bharat and the world over to have not only a Westminster style parliamentary democracy or the famed Indian Constitution, but a Dharmic substantial  foundation to both which will enrich Bharat’s civilisational advance into the future.

The Dharmic elements are already there but they need to be brought to self consciousness, especially among Hindus, who bear that responsibility. Ayodhya will be an historic turning point.

Jai Shri Ram !

(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university)

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