Ram Mandir Consecration Guest List
The Ram Mandir inauguration in Ayodhya scheduled for January 22 has sparked a frenzy of interest among Hindus in the diaspora. This temple consecration promises to be the grandest one India has seen in years. The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has invited 7,000 people, including 3,000 VIPs, to attend the celebrations in the city of Ayodhya in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The event is expected to be star-studded. Attendees include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, and industrialist Mukesh Ambani. According to Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, none of the four Shankaracharyas (the holy leaders of Jyotish Peet, Puri, Dwarka, and Sringeri) will attend the Prana Pratishtha ceremony.
Construction of the Ram temple began in August 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The temple is expected to consist of three floors, with the second and third floors to be completed by December 2024. The idol of the temple was created by Arun Yogiraj, a Karnataka-based sculptor who has over 50,000 followers on Twitter. Over a hundred priests are already in place performing anushthan rituals inside the mandir until the consecration ceremony on January 22.
The temple is also grabbing eyeballs with its grandeur. It’s expected to have 46 gold-plated doors. The city of Ayodhya will also see a cleanliness drive to clean up the city.
Controversy
The Ram temple stands on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid a 16th century mosque built during the reign of Mughal king Babar. It was demolished by members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other Hindu nationalist organizations on December 6, 1992, following a ‘Ram Rath Yatra’ rally led by the then-president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), L.K Advani.
While public opinion was deeply divided at the time, in 2019, the Supreme Court gave the government control over the disputed site to build a temple while allotting 5 acres of land at an alternative site to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf board.
“This dispute had been going on for 400-500 years and it has ended because of the Supreme Court judgment. I would like to thank the Supreme Court for resolving this and allotting the land to the Hindus. I want this dispute to end and people of all religions to live happily with each other,” said Sandeep Singh Deswal, president of the NRI Cell of BJP Haryana and founder of NYSO, an event management company based in the Bay Area.
The chairman of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board believes otherwise. Hazrat Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani has questioned if lamps should be lit and ‘slogans of Jai Shree Ram raised across the country’ on January 22. “The special interest of the government and ministers in it, and the inauguration of it (Ram Mandir) by the Prime Minister, is an assassination of justice and secularism,” Rahmani told India Today.
Celebrations
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged Indians to celebrate ‘Diwali’, the festival of lights, on January 22, when the consecration of the Ram idol takes place in the temple. In fact, residents across India are receiving packets of ceremonial rice (akshat) to join in the consecration rites of the temple on January 22. Housing societies are also encouraging citizens to light diyas to celebrate the occasion.
In the Bay Area, a car rally has been planned from Sunnyvale to the Golden Gate Bridge, along with a live screening of the temple inauguration at the Fremont Hindu temple.
Politics
The temple inauguration is being seen by some as a political gimmick to secure the BJP’s future in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Deswal disagrees with this view. “The Opposition parties will obviously claim that this inauguration is political. Our (BJP)’s political ideology is loving the nation. We got rid of triple talaq (instant divorce) for Muslim women and that made them happy. The current government also played a big role in abrogating Article 370 and making Kashmir a part of the country. Now this temple inauguration will make not just the Sanatan (religious) people happy but everyone happy. People should know we are doing well. Ram is everyone’s. This inauguration will make the country progress, reduce conflict, and bring balance to the country and it’s great for everyone,” he told India Currents.
Karan Thapar of The Wire interviewed the Shankaracharya of Jyotish Peeth, Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, who said he had not been invited to the Pran Pratishtha ceremony. If invited, he added, he would go to Ayodhya but would not participate in the Prana Pratishtha (consecration) ceremony. He stated that the Shankaracharyas could not accept the planned rituals (the Shrutis and Smritis) which did not conform to the holy scriptures in a manner he described as ‘anti-Dharmashastra,’ because the temple is still incomplete. The shikar is not yet built. While it’s unclear if the other Shankaracharyas (of Puri, Dwarka, Sringeri) have been invited, Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati stated that none of the four Shankaracharyas will attend the Prana Pratishtha ceremony. “The entire discussion around the temple is political. It has ceased to be religious,” said the Shankaracharya.
Sidelined
The celebrations, however, are a grim reminder to some that India is heading towards a future where minorities have to live on the sidelines. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India’s opposition party, Congress, recently embarked on a Manipur-Mumbai Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Manipur to Mumbai United India justice trip) to advance ideas of social, economic, and political justice. Gandhi also said that the journey aims to pull the country out of the grip of “violence, hate, and economic monopoly.” Gandhi’s yatra follows on the heels of the Congress’s rejection of an invite to the temple inauguration.
“Lord Ram is worshiped by millions in our country. Religion is a personal matter. But the RSS/BJP have long made a political project of the temple in Ayodhya. The inauguration of the incomplete temple by the leaders of the BJP and the RSS has been obviously brought forward for electoral gain,” read a statement from the party.
General elections are expected to be held in India between April and May 2024.
What will unite India is that a Muslim named Mumtaz Ali Khan attained atma sakshatkara, and has been invited to the opening of the new Rama temple.
Atma sakshatkara is the state of ananda 24×7. Ananda is a kind of happiness that does not come in when you get your wishes, nor does it go away when you fail to get your wishes—sukha or inbam is that kind of happiness, but ananda is different.
Further ananda is accompanied by a state when you are able to remember painful incidents of the past but without reliving the pain of those painful incidents—there are no injured memories.
The Indian culture is founded on atma sakshatkara. It is not founded on law, secularism, human rights, freedom of religion and other Abrahamic or quasi-Abrahamic topics, but on atma sakshatkara.
There are others who have attained atma-sakshatkara. Women too. People of all jatis. But I picked Mumtaz Ali Khan as an example, to show that Indian Islam does not have to stick to the view that Shaitan, the Devil, helped to invent the Indian traditions.
Maybe the social sciences will learn to notice Muslims such as Mumtaz Ali Khan, will learn to notice the concept of atma sakshatkara, will learn that all is not about intolerant forms of the Abrahamic religions.
Can you please stop copying the ultra-leftist congress-biased media in India and writing rubbish? This myth has been debunked at length by the Acharyas themselves. In fact, Shankaracharya of Shringeri went so far as to have the denial of these rumors and His statement posted on the mutt website. Please stop publishing these wild claims which do more to divide the country than the actual event (which is perhaps the actual intention of such posts!)
You’re right! This article is debunked as it relies on fake news.
https://sringeri.net/announcement/important-announcement-to-all-astikas
I disagree with the controversy (about Shankarachya and Congress). Not worth having the headline. It’s elitist to show the dissent. There is no substance in the argument.
We shouldn’t lose our cultural heritage because of opinion of handful.
Absolutely rubbish article. Typical woke leftist feminist agenda coming from a bong woman. Why am I not surprised
Look around yourself, smell the air…if you can’t just visit any temple in your area…you’ll see how hugely mistaken you are
Biased article that cannot see the celebratory atmosphere of millions of people, but instead chooses to highlighted the one most insignificant news which is not even a “controversary”. This writer seems to think she is smarter than all the lawyers and supreme court judges that eveluated every aspect of this issue. Look at the language – “The Ram temple stands on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid a 16th century mosque….” Truth – “The Ram temple stands on the site of historical 12th century large structure believed to be ram temple, evidence of which was found by Archeological survey of India. A mosque was buit on this site during Mughal king Babur’s reign, in an effort to destroy Hindu civilization, just as thousands of temples were destroyed in the Mughal era.” In modern India, the Hindu community decided to forgive thousands of incidents and only chose to contest 3 temple sites due to its important significance to the Hindu faith, Ayodhya being one of them. Biased writers like Ms. Mukhopadhyay bring disgrace to the Indian community that is trying to restore its lost dignity.
The title of this article itself seeks to divide and spark a controversy! How does Hindus’ celebrating the restoration of their Holiest deity’s birthplace become devisive? If Muslims celebrate something, does that divide India? Both can celebrate and co-exist. It is writers like Ms. Mukhopadhyay that find their life’s worth in creating controversy and beating up Hindus in a narrative funded and built by anti-India parties. Every business in the world tries to keep customers happy. Only the media tries to keep its funding parties happy and doesn’t give a damn about its readers (customers). Just see the comments of all India Currents readers below….
The confusion arises because people think that the media’s customers are their readers. But these days the real customers of the (mainstream) media are their sponsors and the advertisers.
Readers usually read for free so they are not the real customers. They just have the illusion that they are the customers.
That said, India Currents is not like the mainstream media. They do listen to their readers.
Yes, I agree. These are not the views of India Currents, but rather, of the writer.
Why does the author feel minorities would be sidelined? Most Indians condemned the demolition of the Babri masjid at the time. It was constructed by Babur who was from present day Ubekistan, invaded India in the 15th century, bragged about razing Hindu temples in his biography and enslaved thousands of Indians as the spoils of war. I don’t believe most Hindus conflate present-day Indian muslims with the actions of Babur. Indians can believe in resurrecting an ancient indigenous sacred site without harboring ill-will to Muslims. Indeed, Muslims have been invited to the consecration ceremony. Land in Ayodhya has been set aside to build the largest mosque in India and construction will start in May. Haji Arfat Shaikh from the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation that is overseeing the mosque project is a BJP leader. Modi met with Muslim leaders last week at Chishti’s dargah and made offerings there. The largest survey of religious freedom conducted by Pew research in 2021 demonstrated Muslims in India feel overwhelmingly free to practice their religion. Many look at this as an Indic civilizational moment- not something that pits religions against each other.
In the 1600s European travelers remarked that Hindu pilgrims worshiped outside of the babri masjid because a revered temple had once existed on the premises. In the 1980’s my mother-in-law went to Ayodhya to offer prayers at the tent outside of the mosque. The masjid hadn’t had prayers offered in decades but was colloquially known as the “mosque of the birthplace”. After the demolition of the masjid, the oral history was found to be true- there was indeed found to be a structure underneath built in the indigenous style. The efforts for temple reconstruction have been ongoing for decades!
Has Ankita done any research on when the temple was built, why it had to be rebuilt and why people lost lives fighting for what was rightfully theirs to begin with? This article reeks of nonsense and has a tainted view. It is clear that zero research has been done and nothing this so called journalist has written is correct. Sringeri Math has already clarified that what is floating around is the work of Clueless people like Ankita. India currents can do better than employ leftist bong authors like Ankita who is clearly uninformed.
The diversity of opinions acknowledge the myriad perspectives on every issue we face – thanks for taking the time to express them.
We understand the sentiments behind these remarks come from disagreement with the viewpoints expressed – however the author has verifiable quotes and sources as evidence.
We have closed comments due to the use of ethnic slurs by commentors which is a violation of the Civil Rights act and constitute harassment.