Omkar Dattatray
This important and baffling question haunts the people of this country called Bharat is as to whose Ram is by the way? .Maryada Purshottam Bhagwan Ram belongs to whole humanity and the whole universe .Lord Ram is not the possession of any political party and more so of the BJP and no political party should politicize Ram .None of the political parties has the inborn and inherent right to trade on Lord Ram and no political party is the broker of Ram and should not highjack the consecration and inauguration of grand Ram temple at Ayodhya .The fact is that Lord Ram belongs to whole of India and is of all Indians.Ram is our cultural ,national and spiritual icon and besides being the incarnation of Lord Vishnu,Ram was the ideal king to be emulated and followed .Even our constitution talks of the Ram Rajya and so our political parties including the treasury benches and opposition parties should sincerely make conscious efforts for establishing Ram Rajya in the country as it is the ideal governance which aims at the welfare of all sections of society including the minorities .Muslim community should have no reservation about Ram Rajya because it is not against any religious community. The father of nation Mahatama Gandhi was the great advocate of Ram Rajya and therefore to this big secularist Ram Rajya is needed in India as there is no discrimination with any faith in this as it is the ideal rule which is in the interest of the country and it is based on the principle of tolerance which is the foundation of the Indian culture ,tradition and legacy and therefore all of us should work towards the establishment of Ram Rajya in the country .Ram is not the personal property of any party including the BJP and no political party has the right and license to trade on the name of Ram and therefore all the political parties should desist from politicizing Ram and Ram temple and it has to be seen whether the inauguration of Ram temple and consecration of Lord Ram will solve the Ram temple issue for all times to come .It is a welcome development that Khalid Ansari one of the main litigants in the Ramjanamboomi/Babri Masjid case will take part in the inauguration of the Ram temple .Since the apex court of the country has decided the important case and has given its verdict in favor of the Hindu community as it has observed that there was a Hindu temple below the disputed structure and all the people irrespective of religious affiliation should welcome the historical verdict and thus the controversy should now naturally die and pave way for a grand Ram temple so that Idol of Ram Lalla will be installed in the sanctum sanctorum of the grand temple .Ram is in the blood and DNA of this land and he is the very essence and breath of this land called Bharat .Besides Ram is our cultural ,national and spiritual icon and the god to be emulated and followed .Ram is of the whole humanity and no political party has any right to politicize Ram for vote bank purpose .But unfortunately political parties without any exception are politicizing and politicking on Ram for their selfish interests and for getting votes in the largest democracy of the world .Ram is the breath and soul of this nation and our nation has no meaning without Ram and therefore Ram is revered and worshipped by the Indians irrespective of any faith and religion .The great Urdu poet Iqbal has termed Ram as Immam-ie-Hind and this clearly shows that Ram is of all of us transcending the religious barriers. Thus the political parties should not decline and refuse the invitations for participation in the grand inauguration ceremony and consecration of Ram Lalla .But to our dismay congress ,SP, RJD ,Shiv sena Uddhav ,left parties ,JDU and some other so called secular parties have refused to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Ram temple and all these parties of opposition bloc are doing petty politics over the inauguration and consecration of Lord Ram at Ajodhya on January 22.For the historical event of inauguration and consecration of Ram Lalla ,there is unprecedented surge in the tourist footfall before the 22rd January 2024.Ayodhya presents the blend of tradition ,spirituality and modernity and she has the distinction of being a religious ,spiritual and modern city which is rightly the proud of all Indians .Millions ,who may not agree with Ram’s ideals ,engage with his story ,which calls upon them to confront their own behavior .The million dollar question is who is Ram and whose Ram? The question is simple but the answers to it are complex ,more so because there are multiple answers ,rather than an answer .Over the centuries ,these many answers have come to us in texts ,in songs ,in paintings ,dance .in folk lour’s ,in every form of expression ,both religious and secular .Ram has captured our imaginations so much so that we tell his story in whatever forms are available to us .Ram appears variously in all these art forms ,indicating that there are many Rams .Or rather .Ram means different things to different people .For millions of people in India and across the world ,Ram ,the hero of the Ramayana ,is God ,an incarnation of Vishnu who took human form at the cusp of the Treta and Dwapar Yug to stabilize dharma in the world of humans .As the prince of Ayodhya ,Ram undergoes many hardships but stands firm in righteousness at all times .For believing Hindus ,this makes him as the moral exemplar ,the ideal man ,willing to sacrifice his own happiness for what he knows to be good and true .He willingly forgoes his birth right as heir to the throne ,destroys those who have strayed from the path of Dharma ,gives up his beloved wife because his citizens doubt her integrity and establishes righteousness in Kosala .Ram stories have been told by Hindus ,Buddhists ,Jains ,Muslims ,by women ,Dalits ,Dravida and Adivasis .They have been told in cultures that lie far away from where the story was born ,and are told with every new technology available ,in languages spoken by a few hundred people as well as those spoken by entire nations .In each of these Ram reflects the time and place of the telling ,and the ideology of the teller .In Buddhist versions ,Ram is bodhisattva ,who delays his own enlightenment in order to help other creatures .In Jain Ramayanas ,Ram is an illustrious being who adheres to Jain principles of non-violence .Within Hinduism too ,Rama’s story has been modified countless times-Bhavabhuti’s Uttararamachaitra changes the tragic separation at the end of Valmiki’s story and reunites Ram and Sita on earth .Tulsidas amplifies Rama’s divinity and effects his reunion with an equally divine Sita in heaven ,and Kamban ends his story of Ram with a triumphal coronation in Ayodhya ,after Ravana is killed in the battle .In short Ram is of all the humanity and he belongs to all of us transcending the barriers of religion ,race ,caste ,language ,creed and sex .Ram is worshipped in different ways by different people and he belongs to whole humanity and thus cannot be belittled as he is omnipresent ,omniscient and omnipotent and therefore cannot be confined to any religious sect because he belongs to all.
(The author is columnist,
social and KP activist).
