Ayodhya: Unprecedented official activity is on in this ancient temple town that has witnessed a complete makeover for the biggest ever show tomorrow, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive here for the much-hyped consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple.
The entirety of Ayodhya is already under a heavy security blanket and all entry points to this city have been sealed. Only vehicles bearing special security passes are allowed and those too after ensuring that every occupant of the vehicle has a personal security pass along with his or her Aadhaar card.
Thousands of khakhi-clad policemen are sprawled all over the place, while masons, artisans and both skilled and unskilled labour can be seen giving final touches to every nook and corner of the temple premises, which will be thrown open to people after the long high-profile consecration ceremony.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was slated to carry out the entire ritual as a ‘jajman (master of ceremonies)’ himself, the controversies that followed apparently led him to make room for a new jajman.
The questions raised by top religious functionaries including the Shankaracharyas (the tallest priests under the Hindu order) were that the jajman had to necessarily be a Hindu with his wife, who were required to live the life of a saint for 11 days before performing the ‘pran pratishtha (consecration)’ ceremony. Evidently, this criticism left Modi with no option but to opt out. His officials declared that since it would not be possible for the prime minister to set aside all his official obligations for 11 days, hence a a local person, Anil Misra, and his wife Usha were nominated as the new jajman .
A practicing homeopathic doctor, Misra was handpicked by Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust secretary Champat Rai, who has been handling the temple construction work ever since the trust was formed by the Union government following orders of the Supreme Court in November 2019. Rai’s criticism on the issue is believed to have once again led the Trust top brass to get 14 more jajmans to jointly perform the pran pratishtha, where Modi will remain the “symbolic jajman”. Significantly, the Trust is headed by the prime minister’s former principal secretary Nripendra Misra, a 1966-batch UP cadre IAS officer.
As such, the ceremony will eventually be carried out by a total of 16 jajmans.
The Ram mandir on Sunday. Photo: Shruti Sonkar
According to Trust sources, the 14 jajmans finally added represent different states including Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam and Haryana besides UP, and each one of them belongs to a different caste .
The ‘garbh grah’ of the temple was washed with water kept in 81 kalsas (metal containers). This water is stated to have been drawn from different rivers across the country.
The prime minister will be part of the main puja for 50 minutes, after which he will address the guests and people of the country connected live through various TV networks and the digital media. Subsequently, he will also meet the labourers and artisans engaged in the construction of the temple.
In all Modi will spend four hours and 45 minutes in Ayodhya tomorrow. He will land at the newly built Ayodhya international airport at 10:20 am. From there he will take a short helicopter ride to the grounds of Saket Post Graduate College, close to the new Ram Temple.
While issues relating to the jajman have thus been resolved, controversy continues over the idol that will occupy the main garbh grah inside the temple. While the Trust and the ruling dispensation have made it loud and clear that the new idol of Lord Ram will be up for pran pratishtha at the main garbh grah, prominent local priests and even the highly revered Hindu Shankaracharyas strongly feel the the original idol of ‘Ram Lalla’ merits a place in the garbh grah.
“The original idol that had appeared inside the structure of the then Babri Masjid on the night of December 22-23, 1949, ought to be placed in the main garbh grah. And that idol does not require any pran patishtha because that is the idol which was also worshiped all along inside the makeshift temple, raised after the demolition of the mosque structure,” pointed out Mahant Dharam Das, who is the chief priest of Ayodhya’s oldest temple, Hanuman Garhi, and also the head of Nirvani Akhara.
He is also very critical of the temple Trust, which according to him has been “distorting and violating” various Hindu prescriptions laid out in the scriptures to suit the powers that be.
According to the Trust, the list of official invitees for the key pran pratishtha includes 4,000 sadhus from different parts of the country, 106 leaders of the RSS and VHP, 800 industrialists, 400 labourers, 158 members of the judiciary, 159 artists including filmmakers and actors, 92 sports persons and 164 representatives from social media.
Ayodhya on Sunday. Photo: Shruti Sonkar
The list also has 92 NRIs and about 30-50 invitees from each of the fields of education, finance, defence, science and literature. The number of politicians to be present for the ceremony is just about 100 and only 30 senior bureaucrats will find place at the ceremony. About 8,100 chairs have been laid out for the special guests at the venue, while only a select few will remain present inside the temple where the ceremony is to be performed. Giant-size screens have been installed not only in and around the temple area but also all over Ayodhya to enable everyone to witness the spectacle.
Huge screens have also been installed in a specially created media centre as well as along Ram ki Pairi on the banks of the Sarayu river, where spaces have been allotted to different TV and digital media channels. Only Doordarshan and ANI have been allowed inside the main venue at the temple.
Meanwhile, the entire town is lit up with glowing colours, while Ram Bhajans are reverberating from loud speakers installed at intermittent lamp posts. The 50-minute pran pratishtha will commence at 12:05 pm tomorrow.
