The Last Days of Ayodhya

OutlookIndia

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00:00 Outlook brings to you excerpts from its latest issue titled "Omni-Present, Omniscent".

00:06 The issue looks at Modi's personality, his cult and his brand in the light of the recent consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya,

00:14 which also kick-starts the election campaign.

00:17 Modi is an avatar, a statesman, a saint.

00:21 Beyond Hindutva, there is now the Moditva project.

00:25 From this substrata, Outlook's back-of-the-book section that goes beyond the usual.

00:30 The Last Days of Ayodhya by Chandrahas Chaudhary.

00:34 Chaudhary is a writer and journalist based in Bhubaneswar.

00:38 In the first half of January, I spent a few days in Ayodhya.

00:42 I wanted to experience the city for myself and to think about what it meant to be an Indian and a Hindu,

00:50 or as seems to be the changing paradigm in our times, a Hindu and an Indian.

00:55 In the weeks leading up to the event, which over the last four decades has become central to our political discourse,

01:02 I also wanted to spend a few days immersed in the Ramasphere,

01:07 that religious culture, mainly in North India, steeped in the language and lore and pre-eminence of Ram,

01:14 to understand how it was changing in the light of the new Ram Mandir,

01:19 whether it was becoming deeper or more superficial,

01:23 whether Hinduism itself is morphing into something new and more centralized under the influence of a Ram,

01:30 whom we are told was returning to his people for a second time in history.

01:35 Jai Shri Ram, Jai Jai Shri Ram.

01:38 All day in Ayodhya, the cry surfaces in a city abuzz with electric drills and bulldozers as much as Katha and Kirtans.

01:48 Ayodhya is freighted with the fervor, the tension, the anticipation, the ecstasy of the return of Ram,

01:56 now but the blink of an eye away.

01:59 The coalescing belief among millions of Hindus from Delhi to Denver is that

02:05 a new era in the history of Indian civilization is to spring forth here on 22nd January.

02:12 If so, then these hazy sunless days of early January 2024 must be the last breaths of a godless age,

02:20 clouded by ideas and values soon to be discarded because not authentically Indian.

02:28 Therefore, Jai Shri Ram to spur our nation towards a second Independence Day,

02:33 towards Ram Rajya, to its destiny as Vishwa Guru. Jai Shri Ram.

02:39 It is the rallying call of the public along the 2 km long Ram Janmabhoomi path

02:45 leading from the main road, Rampath, to the Ram Janmabhoomi temple complex.

02:50 It erupts with particular intensity among devotees as they jostle and sway on the narrow steps

02:57 leading up to the Hanuman Garhi temple a few hundred meters away.

03:02 It is chanted more gently after the moving morning aarti offered to idols of Ram and Sita

03:09 swaying gently on a swing in the courtyard of 100-year-old Amavaram temple

03:15 where people gather in long rows at lunchtime.

03:19 A generous lunch of rice, dal, puris, sabzi and kheer provided for free by the temple's Ram Rasoi.

03:27 The temple has a striking crest of a giant bow and inside its own glass-walled shrine to Ram Lalla

03:35 installed in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court judgment of 2019.

03:40 And even closer to the new Ram Mandir where helmeted workers and Larson and Toubro's cranes work overtime,

03:47 it sounds thrice a day inside the small temporary shrine set up in 2020 for the 6-inch idol of Ram Lalla

03:56 set to have materialized overnight on the site of Babri Marshid in 1949,

04:01 setting off a chain of events whose reverberations lead us to this moment.

04:07 Getting to this Ram is not easy.

04:09 The enclosure approached through a winding barred corridor after multiple security checks.

04:16 The aartis take place in the morning, afternoon and evening.

04:20 Only 30 people are admitted to each one by a very democratic first-come-first-served system

04:27 run out of a small office at the intersection of Ram Path and Ram Janmabhoomi Path.

04:33 When after several attempts I managed to land an aarti pass,

04:37 several family members send me messages of congratulations.

04:42 For this and more, read the latest issue of Outlook.

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