A Hindu comes home

None of us are home until all of us are home

I recently read a report in Nikkei Asia (a news weekly) which pointed to India as a bright spot in the real estate market. The causes, to my simple mind stuck out like sore thumbs: a humongous population, difficult to fit in, since land obviously refuses to grow apace with it. The second and more ominous was illegal occupation, what we call squatting.

 Living in a metro makes you inured to such stuff: The stairwell of your apartment block suddenly fills up with a cupboard, bed and bicycle thanks to a neighbor who cannot ‘keep to the limits,’ a car-next-door escapes its boundaries without a care to fill up half of your parking spot, a thriving market springs up on what used to be your jogging track till the day before yesterday, thanks to some mean political muscle on the vendor’s part, shanties mushroom during the monsoons and are decked out with a ‘pucca’ roof and all appliances by the time Diwali rolls in. By and large, we tend to give in to the innate Indian trait and ‘adjust’ until we are in neck- deep, with the hot water still rising.

But just how much the land we call Bharat is coveted by aliens is clear when we check our historical records for the umpteen squatters who have turned up unbidden at our borders, largely with overt or covert nefarious designs, and then proceeded to make themselves so much at home, that we, indigenous Indians, rendered homeless, begin to doubt our right to our homeland. While the parable of the kind hearted Arab being driven out into the chill of the desert night merely because he allowed the head of his shivering camel to shelter in his tent may hold true in Arabia, we Indians have our home-grown version of it when WE were driven from our lands by the Arabs, Turks and their camels and donkeys, beginning around a thousand odd years ago. And not just the common population. To our eternal misfortune, the greatest emperor this land has seen, one whose name is revered in almost all of Asia ranging from Cambodia to Korea and Thailand to Indonesia was forced into unspeakable make-shift accommodation in his own city, thanks to being disowned by His people. Shri Ram of Ayodhya.

Luckily, he is on his way home now. In the original Ramayana of the Treta Yug, His exile lasted for fourteen years. Perhaps because depravity was not as all pervasive as it is now. The advent of Kali though, made things so much worse. And thus, His second and unnecessary exile lasted for the better part of five centuries when it should not have happened at all, thanks to power vested in the hands of brutes who could sell their souls for much less than thirty shekels of silver, to say nothing of their God.

While the historical aspects of the Ram-Janma-Bhoomi temple have been recorded since the time of Brihadbala (a descendent of Ram himself, who in Dwapar Yug sided with the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra war), the last time He was displaced was due to the notorious Mir Baqi, a general of the Mughal, Babur, who destroyed His temple and raised what was called the Babri Mosque in its place. There have been several first- person accounts from neutral third parties like European travelers as early as the seventeenth century that Hindus always worshipped at the courtyard of the Babri mosque. Several convoluted centuries and cases later, well- watered by the blood of devout Hindus, the land has finally been restored to whom it belonged all along: Ram Lalla Virajman, or the infant Shri Ram.

A matter of great satisfaction and pride for most of us is that after years of listening to lofty rhetoric from politicians and lowly jokes from standup comedians involving the Lord buying a 2BHK apartment on the Ayodhya-Faizabad highway, a temple is again coming up where a temple once stood. There is little else being discussed other than the grand consecration ceremony. A religious fervour has gripped the nation. Most people are celebrating the idea of a historical wrong being corrected. Better late than never. It is the best example of putting paid to encroachment once and for all.

 But, what all squatters fear is eviction and are always looking out for ways and means to prevent it. Our squatters were the original cancel-culturists who thought that denying a Hindu deity his space was an easy way of cancelling centuries of heritage and history. And as it has already been pointed out before, years of pandering to the whims of a special minority has led them to automatically believe in their infallible supremacy. With the rug suddenly pulled from under their feet, they find themselves literally without a leg to stand on. And who in this era of the land-grabber would give up such a prime piece of real estate without a fight? And thus, we see calls from (dis)respected members of Parliament, no less, giving an open call to the youth of the minority to destroy the temple at the first available chance.

Yet others appear miffed and refuse the invitation to the consecration ceremony touting the jaded excuse of ‘secularism’ which forms the basis of the Indian state. Never mind that they will attend all religious ceremonies of ANY other religion with unholy glee. Some members of the public, sporting beards and a towel thrown over the shoulders, have given themselves the right to compose dubious ‘shayari’ advising people to understand Ram in the modern sense leaving the ‘ek tha raja, ek thi rani’ story behind, before they house Him in his temple and ‘divide’ him up! Apparently wearing a white Kurta, a la son of the soil, and sporting a dark gothic background is enough for anyone to call himself ‘Psychoshayar’ and morph into a modern- day philosopher with all the right to tell common devotees how foolish their chant of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ is because it apparently contains everything except the essence of ‘Ram’! Yet others opine that the temple is an unnecessary attempt at chest-thumping and jingoism and how a hospital would have served the people better instead.

When I think of all the hue and cry which several Hindus themselves are raising over the temple, I am strongly reminded of the protagonist, Professor Henry Higgins from the classic ‘My Fair Lady,’ with his perpetual lament about the English not teaching their children the proper nuances of their own mother tongue. Stretching his point, we can see that several modern Hindus are no different, rather worse, because they shy away from teaching their children their own culture, garbed under the hazily vague cloak of modernity. It is unfortunate that such short-sighted people fail to see the fervour and pride which the temple has raised. It is further unfortunate that this misplaced modernity has blindfolded the gullible who fail to see the importance of a claiming of their history by the Hindus in India. What makes it saddest is the happiness with which the conversion of the Hagia Sophia, a historical church and later museum, to a mosque in recent times was greeted with gusto by these very same people. Is it by duplicity or design, one tends to wonder, especially when venerable seers of the Hindu religion jump into the political cauldron and proceed to create controversies where none were needed.

 But then, one tends to take heart when you see the Suryavanshi Rajputs of Ayodhya put on leather footwear and tie ceremonial Safas because they have succeeded in redeeming the pledge they made to their ‘Raja Ram’: that they would shame themselves by going barefoot because they were unable to withstand the onslaught of barbarians and protect their king. I like to think that all these nay-sayers are just a minor dark lining to the large silver cloud that is the common Hindu, who is rejoicing unabashedly. The very air is crackling with excitement as households all over the country await the holy invitation, a gesture of weaving them into the tapestry of a common happiness which unites us all. And it perhaps holds true for the Hindu diaspora the world over, as they watch with hopeful eyes a homecoming which has been centuries in the making.

Home, they say, is where the heart is. With the un-mangled version of ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’ with its lyrics of ‘Sundar Vigraha Megha Shyam, Ganga Tulsi Shaligram’ finally seeing the light of day and with Ayodhya being restored as the beating heart Hindu heritage and pride, the Hindu after being an eternal exile is finally home!