One cannot avoid the relentless coverage of inauguration of Ram mandir at Ayodhya, nowadays. Controversial statements from political parties and innumerable debates on primetime news have followed, which has led me to the question I have posed as the title of this blog. What does this event mean for me and for that matter what part does Ramayana and Ram play in my life and the citizens of India? What they mean to us and to me individually?

My earliest memories of the Ramayana are from the Ramcharitmanas recitations which were a staple of the rich ritual life in the ancestral house in my native town of Gorakhpur. We hardly ever talked about religion as we consider religion today, we did not need to. We lived it effortlessly, we were soaked in it all the time, and it is only now after reflection that I grasp how this sense of ritual and religion filled our inner lives and structured our common sense understanding of everything around us, from history to sociology to ethics.

Shri Ram was at the very center of this vivid and richly imagined world — a solemn divine presence in Tulsi’s Ramcharitmanas, the family’s beloved deity in Ramanand Sagar’s TV adaptation, even, the glorious epic hero of the animated, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama. I want to share in this blog, that my experience, while local and personal, is a reflection of something larger — the presence of Shri Ram as a monumental spiritual principle in Indian consciousness throughout our history. Ancient but never remote, harmoniously complete but also endlessly fresh. The original Valmiki Ramayana has been told and retold by every generation in the most popular medium available to them and it has never lost its appeal and freshness. We still fine ‘Prasang’ which can be interpreted and debated afresh. So, Shri Ram is the deity I feel we must choose to express the highest aspirations of this age for our country.

This note could be jarring to many ears but, in his famous “Grammar of Anarchy” speech to the Constituent Assembly, Dr B R Ambedkar tersely observed, “the sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the world, the better for us.”

One of the foremost grounds on which modern Indian identity is recognized and continuously transformed, is the idea of a nation. 1947 serves as a pivotal moment as it gave Indians our sovereign state and then we fashioned ourselves into a republic in 1950. But it is not a political apparatus or a constitution that truly creates a nation, I believe the nation to be the most fundamental principle of identity and aspiration, rather than being reducible to a political arrangement (state), a structure of governance (federal unit), or a source of law (common constitution). For me it is impossible to escape the conclusion that we are still in the process of ‘becoming’ a nation

We have aspired for and achieved much as a geopolitical entity with aspirations to emerge as a great power sitting with the top nations at the table. We have grown as a unified economic entity and are in the process of opening a common market where goods, services, capital, labour and even ideas flow relatively freely within its borders. We have even grown digitally having a worldwide diaspora sharing and growing a larger ground for solidarity, common identity, and shared anxieties unbounded and restricted to our borders.

But culturally it is the epics Mahabharat and Ramayana which give us our identity and common ground to grow and develop. Having lived in all four corners of India I have found Shri Ram to be omnipresent and all encompassing. There is not a village or town in India where Shri Ram is not present or represented, be it Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Bengal, Karnataka, Goa or Maharashtra. Weighed down by a plethora of diversity and difference, we intuitively longed for a principle of unity within us and we inevitably give our minds to Shri Ram. He brings concentration, clarity, condensation. Here It will be easy but not enough to say that Shri Ram is a symbol of India’s cultural unity. I would argue instead that the idea of Shri Ram is a natural resource for this new aspiration and engineering of nationhood. Shri Ram could be the building block on whose foundation we could continue to become a nation. I will give a few examples for this.

We as a nation found and reached its geographical limit when Shri Ram made a triumphant entry back to Ayodhya after victory in Sri Lanka. He was the first that brought the whole land from the Himalayas to the Ocean under one sovereign sway. Shri Ram is a unique prince who expanded his kingdom even in exile. His relentless journey through the Indian landmass first in exile and then in search of Sita is interrupted only at the narrow strip of sea which divides it from Lanka. Shri Ram’s journey is a straight line in Indian culture, in the density of his deeds lies the volume of our nation.

Unlike The Mahabharat which is also a Kshatriya epic, filled with raw martial vigor, it is only in the Ramayana that we are free from all ambiguity around war. Shri Ram here marshals’ strength and purpose on the side of the good and emerges triumphant as a heroic ideal. There is ethical joy and inspiration in this idea. It channels the aspiration for military might, and a strong nation which is peace-loving but never pacifist. We as a nation have always identified to this idea at a national level and longed to be recognized as such at international level.

Ram Rajya has always stood for a utopian ideal of good governance and today Shri Ram represents the aspiration for a benign order that balances a longing for authority with the fear of autocracy. Order over entropy, stability over chaos, law over anarchy, but always bound by the sovereignty of people’s will. This is depicted most dramatically in Shri Ram sending Sita into second exile. Tragic, but full of certainty. A Rajya where even our leaders and their personal lives, too are at the mercy of popular mandate and common citizens opinion.

Shri Ram has political significance too, he is the only deity imagined and worshipped as part of a royal assembly — the Ram darbar. At a time when all of our deep contestations of identity, society, history, culture, knowledge, law, and even art, now seek ultimate resolution in politics, which grows into an epic proportion of an Aristotelian ‘master science’, it is natural that a potent political symbol like Shri Ram should be especially appealing to us.

He lived with the ethos of Family before self; nation before family and the greater good before everything else. Our highest aspirations — nationhood, fraternity, urbanity, new civic imagination, a moral transformation, all of them can be expressed through this principle and prism that is Shri Ram. In my humble opinion Shri Ram is truly our Rashtradevata.

Now to the second part of the question. what does Ayodhya’s Ram mandir mean to me individually.

My formative years were spent in Faizabad which is just a stone throw away from Ayodhya. For me Ayodhya was a weekend fixture, frequently visited with lot of street food and revelry of an outing. Now when I look back, I see Ayodhya from my grandparents’ eyes.

Their entire persona would be transformed on entering Ayodhya. Our visits would always start with visit to Hanuman Garhi. As per my Baba Hanuman ji of Hanuman Garhi Mandir is believed to be the ‘kotwal‘ of Ayodhya. I remember Hanuman Garhi for its many stairs surrounded by monkeys, and the delicious pedas which were given as prasad. For him, Hanuman ji’s ‘permission’ to visit the Ram Janmabhoomi is prasad itself. The pedas were just momentary evidence of that prasad.

We would go to Ram Janmabhoomi from Hanuman Garhi and visit shri Ram under the tent in an open field. Next, we would walk to Dashrath Mahal and keep sitting there for hours. I would grow restless never understanding but sensing the somber mood they were in. I now realize that they sat there chanting or just listening to bhajans, to find some succor, after witnessing Shri Ram was living under a tent, in pitiful condition. Their bare feet walk to Dashrath Mahal, was a penance hoping for Ram’s homecoming. They would take shelter in its brooding but comforting and warming Awadhi countenance. Now that I Mull over this thought: I am left wondering why? Raja Dashrath is not known to be a tutelary deity of health, prosperity, Knowledge or money , yet my grandparents would consider a temple dedicated to him as the foremost for “darshan”. For them it was the abode of Dashrath where Shri Ram was born. His own home, what would be bigger for a Ram devotee?

Kanak Bhawan would be next where they would again spend hours just sitting amid the yellow adorned edifices. My Dadi would tell me, with emotions and devotions in her voice that Shri Ram and Sita lived here, and this palace was a gift to Sita by Kakei. I never understood then, how they could be moved to tears just sitting in the temple listening to bhajans, but I now believe that Kanak Bhawan offered her the emotional refuge in order to lessen the pain of seeing Shri Ram in the tent. I remember Kanak Bhawan for its large aagan and adorned pillars where I would be allowed to run around while they sat and looked on indulgently.

Ultimately, they reveled in the interaction with the beautiful, the aesthetic, the sweet, the tranquil and the gentle aspects found in every nook and corner of Ayodhya, from Tulsi Bhawan to the Dashrath Mahal and Kanak Bhawan, to Hanuman Garhi and the Guptar ghat.

I now marvel at the emotions and reflection, which was experienced by them at the ponds and kunds of Ayodhya, and in the gentleness of their demeanor at Kanak Bhawan. But above all, in the eternal edifice of spiritual discipline and complete surrender to the city — Ayodhya itself.

Ayodhya is a reminder that civilizations might be an embodiment of distinct art and architecture, shared common past and lofty socio-cultural values but all that greatness by itself cannot ensure their preservation. It needs standing up firmly for the civilizational values and making sacrifices if required. If some of these civilizational battles prolong for decades or even centuries, the pushback has to be equally dogged. Only during the Spanish Reconquista, churches in Cordoba, Toledo and Gibraltar had seen restitution from the clutches of Islamic imperialism. Apart from that a few churches in Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece which were built after demolishing mosques built over them, were restored after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. But outside Europe, Ayodhya is the only major success against Islamic iconoclasm.

Today my Baba Dadi are not around to witness the reclaiming of Ram temple, which, has been an act of grit, determination and resilience perhaps imagined and dreamt by them but never believed by them, to be fulfilled.

Looking back I remember observing, during a visit at Hanuman Garhi Mandir’s pillared space inside the temple, a sadhu sat grinding saffron and sandal to a paste on a slab of stone. He poured some drops of water into it, at intervalsFor each addition of water the saffron would leave its hue brighter than before.

My grandparent’s journey to Ayodhya was just the same.

Each darshan left its hue in the circular journey and each drop of water molded the consistency of spiritual discipline. For every passing year, over each darshan across the multitude of temples in Ayodhya their faith and fervor got firmer and stronger— even in the restive absence of Ram Mandir.

The same hue of saffron, adorned by the devotees when they enter the Ram Mandir, will be a residue of their unending devotions and for millions like them. I did not realize it then but, My visits to Ayodhya with them were a trans-generational event, and I suspect it was the same for many of us. I intend to visit Ayodhya and the Ram mandir to continue the journey which was theirs and it is up to me and my kids to continue it. I owe it to them as well as the generations to come.