Hardly anyone in the country is unaware of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ram Mandir politics, but very few people know that after coming to power in Uttar Pradesh in March 2017, the BJP and particularly the Yogi Adityanath-led state government launched an ambitious project for the installation of statues. However, due to several contradictions, the politics around it now seems to be its undoing in many ways.
This politics reached its peak in 2017-18 when, shortly after coming to power, Adityanath announced that a huge statue of Lord Ram will be erected on the banks of the Sarayu in Ayodhya as part of the ‘Navya Ayodhya’ scheme for tourism development. Media reports were soon flooded with various claims on this.
Later, on November 24, 2018, the design of this statue was reportedly finalised and its model was displayed on the lines of the Ram Temple. It was claimed that this 251-metre-high statue including pillars and an umbrella will be the tallest statue in the world – even taller than the ‘Statue of Unity’ of Sardar Vallabhai Patel erected near the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat and the statue of Gautam Buddha in China. In addition, it was announced that a grand museum will be built in the basement of the statue and the complex will be connected to various tourist spots for ease of access for devotees, visitors and tourists. It was also claimed that Rs 250 crore would be spent on the project from the government treasury.
This was the period before the settlement of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute in court and it was widely speculated that the Adityanath government’s move was an attempt to divert the attention of BJP supporters who were anxious for the construction of the Ram temple. Sensing this, many sadhus and mahants began claiming that they would not settle for anything less than the BJP keeping its promise of building a Ram temple, and the installation of this idol was not enough. However, the Adityanath government left no stone unturned in displaying how serious it was about the installation of the statue. It maintained this ‘seriousness’ even after the Supreme Court settled the said dispute on November 9, 2019. Echoing him, his supporter media kept claiming that the world’s tallest statue will be completely swadeshi and famous Padamshree and Padam Bhushan awardee sculptor Ram Sutar would build it as per Adityanath’s wishes.
The media also claimed that the Adityanath government had earlier selected land in Mirpur Manjha village for the installation of this statue. After protests by the residents of the said village and objections lodged by the technical audit team, the government opted for land in Majha Barehata village. However, this decision also met with protests, objections and allegations. With the acquisition of 85.977 hectare land in the village for the installation of the statue, it was feared that several hundred Dalit and backward caste families would be uprooted. An appeal was filed in the high court on their behalf. A three-decade-old matter of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s trust seizing land from these families by keeping them in the dark also surfaced at the time.
But now, amidst the fanfare of the grand Ram temple’s construction and consecration, the installation of the idol has been put on the back burner and there is no discussion about it anywhere. The current status of the land acquisition process in Manjha Barehata and the petition filed by the affected people in the high court is also unknown.
Adityanath does not discuss this even during his visits to Ayodhya any more, whereas at one time his government used to regularly review the progress of the statue installation project. If someone asks whether it has now been accepted that after the construction of the grand temple, there is no need for the installation of the world’s tallest statue of Ram, no concerned official utters a word.
Though a small statue of Ram was unveiled by Adityanath at the Ayodhya Research Institute in June 2019, the media continues humming that the world’s tallest statue of Lord Ram will be placed at the designated spot after the construction of the Ram temple. But the reports do not offer a basis or source for this information.
This politics of statues gained momentum again last year when in the ceremony held at Ramkatha Park after the inauguration of Lata Mangeshkar Chowk at Naya Ghat on September 28, 2022, Adityanath announced that statues of ‘saints, great men and heroes’ associated with the Ram Mandir movement will be installed at all the intersections of Ayodhya along with their memorials, and intersections will be dedicated to them. He described Lata Mangeshkar Chowk as just the beginning of this process.
According to experts, this announcement was an attempt to appease the sages and saints of the Ramanandi sect, who wanted the intersection of Nayaghat to be named after Jagadguru Ramanandacharya of the Ramanandi sect instead of Mangeshkar. Members of this sect argued that in the past, the Ramanandi sect had a wide influence on Ayodhya and they had warned that if their demand was not met, they would not allow the Lata Chowk signboard to be put up. When they wrote a letter to the prime minister and chief minister, Adityanath assured them that another gate or road would be named after Ramanandacharya, the top promoter of the Vaishnav worship tradition and the original acharya of the Ramanandi sect.
While this promise is yet to be fulfilled, people also complain that Adityanath’s definition of saints, great men and heroes is very narrow and prejudiced. That is why there is no mention of ‘foreign’ personalities in his list of great men such as a figure like Swami Pagaldas of Ayodhya. When the statue of former prime minister, Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee, could become a victim of the government’s step-motherly attitude in Ayodhya, what can one expect about any other personality?
A statue of Vajpayee was to be installed last year in the Ayodhya District Panchayat complex, right in front of its main building, reportedly on the initiative of the newly elected BJP president of the panchayat, Roli Singh. The objective was to etch the memory in stone permanently by celebrating the BJP’s first win in the elections. But this enthusiasm soon cooled down and the BJP-dominated panchayat forgot to install the idol. For a long time, the statue continued to endure the sun and rain under the open sky. The panchayat finally took pity on it one day and got it wrapped in a yellow plastic sheet.
In Ayodhya, where projects worth Rs 32,000 crore are being implemented by the BJP state and Union governments, the district panchayat, which is also controlled by the BJP, did not flinch in treating the statue of the former prime minister in this manner.
Experts also claim that the Panchayat Board has no record of the proposal passed two years ago for the installation of this statue, even though there is a rule to keep all the passed proposals listed.
A local senior journalist, Indu Bhushan Pandey, said that it pained him to witness such a treatment of the former prime minister’s statue and he was reminded of a poem by Atal Bihari Vajpayee:
Faces are exposed,
Deep scars too,
As the spell breaks today,
The truth gives me a fright
I sing a song no more.
It was the evil eye perhaps
The city shattered like glass,
A crowd around but no friend to find,
I sing a song no more.
The moon hit like a dagger in the back,
Rahu has crossed the line too
In moments of liberation, I am trapped yet again
I sing a song no more.
Meanwhile, the district panchayat has woken up, perhaps owing to its guilt, and said that it will construct an umbrella over Vajpayee’s statue and stairs by December 25, his birth anniversary. But will this adequately answer the questions that have arisen from the disrespect already shown to the former Bharat Ratna prime minister and point to the internal politics of the BJP?
Krishna Pratap Singh is a senior journalist.
Translated from the Hindi original by Naushin Rehman.
