While the people of Kerala remember King Mahabali fondly once every year, the entire country is forced to remember Lord Ram painfully every five years. Ressurection of his name during elections has been a key aspect of our political system for more than two decades now. Oh, wait, this time Lord Ayyappa is being thrown into the fray as well. The question though that we have all been asking is, after more than two decades, why has the temple not been built yet? The NDA had served a full 5-year term under Vajpayee from 1999-2004. Now the present NDA government is about to complete five years. Both the times they won with the building of Ram temple as their major electoral agenda. Now they are going to make it their central issue for elections in 2019 as well. So where is this temple? Or rather, in the thousands or even a million years that has supposedly passed after the time of Ram, why was a temple never built in his name at Ayodhya when so many kings have built thousands of temples all over India and many of them in his name? Why now?
The answer to this question lies in how the concept of leadership works in the system. Let us consider the corporate sector as an example. What is the underlying concept of management? Solving problems. When we say people management, it essentially means making it easier for people to work which in turn means resolving problems that could hinder their work. So, management is about solving problems at the organisational level, and leadership is about solving problems at the business level. If all managers and leaders were constantly solving problems, every employee would be happy, and there would be zero attrition and zero employee turnover in every company. But why is such a world only in Utopia? Because not just the corporate but this world itself moves ahead on problems and not on solutions.
I have heard of excess crops and dairy products being destroyed in developed western countries. But there is also so much hunger and poverty in the other parts of the world. How difficult would it be to ensure that every human being on the planet has a place to stay and gets 3 square meals a day? It’s human psychology – that we tend to always talk about and highlight problems. Some use problems to gain sympathy, and some use it to get power in their hands. Solutions are ends to problems. Once problems are solved, we cannot keep talking about them again and again. So, right from the top leadership to managers to bottom level employees, every one of them keeps talking about problems. This means we are all naturally inclined towards creating, sustaining and talking on about problems than getting rid of them.
This is exactly the disease that afflicts the Ayodhya issue as well. Ayodhya as Ramjanmabhoomi was first brought into prominence by Rajiv Gandhi with the intent of regaining popularity among the then receding Hindu vote bank of the Congress party. Then, after the Babri Masjid was opened for Hindus to pray, the entire nation stood and watched silently as the saffron-robed Hindu mobs brought down the mosque by defying the Supreme Court order to preserve its sanctity. Since then, the Court has been dragged into this issue, and the issue itself has waxed and waned with the onset and completion of every election.
We need to understand what would happen once the temple is built. Are the people vying, making so much noise and inciting violence in its name going to pray there every day? Once a year maybe? This is nothing more than just a political gimmick to polarise votes during elections. We need to understand and rise above petty politics at least now. The protesters at Sabarimala were all initially claimed as pilgrims, but that didn’t hold up once Amit Shah came to Kerala and extended support to the protestors.
What is worse and ridiculous is, we have the Ramayana handed down through generations for such a long period and there is no proof on the exact timeline the events of Ramayana unfolded. Tectonic plates keep shifting inside the earth’s crust, and earth’s land mass keeps changing, so we don’t know if the same land mass existed during the time of Ram. I cannot accept the fact that just because there is a place called Ayodhya now, Ram used to dwell there because we have not found any concrete proof of this. His palace and metropolis were supposedly the biggest to exist at that time. So where is it now?
So many ancient places have been dug out across the world so why not Ram’s palaces and city? A house near mine has been named Ayodhya so does that mean they should keep an idol of Lord Ram inside and make it a temple? He has been described as “ajanabahu” or someone whose hands extend beyond his knees. That is not a human (Homo Sapien) and not a monkey either – because monkeys and monkey Gods have been described in Ramayana. Depicting Hindu Gods in human form has confused and convoluted the concepts of Hinduism and the minds of successive generations of Hindus. I am not questioning the authenticity of his existence and the events described in Ramayana. So much may have been added into and removed from the storyline with time but the thread started from somewhere and for a reason. We should not allow our traditions and beliefs to blind us and let some amongst us to hold sway over our minds and emotions for their personal gains.
Ramayana essentially shows us how virtuosity can be upheld through every upheaval in life. Out of the nine avatars of Vishnu, Ram and Krishna are on top of the list, and there is a reason. We know about their entire lives because there are many lessons for us to learn, which is why entire books have been written about them. They were both mighty warriors, but they never considered themselves Godly and would loathe the fact that they are being worshipped in temples now. When I see people fully engrossed in their professional lives and say they are doing everything for their kids, I wonder if this is what the kids want. In the same vein, would Ram and Krishna want themselves to be worshipped in temples? How would Ram feel if he were to see what we are doing in his name? As our intelligence evolved and we became technologically advanced, we are supposed to understand them better. Are we evolving into progressive beings or regressive ones?