“There was a time when Lord Ram was living under a tent, now he will get a permanent home,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said nearly three weeks before he presided over the inauguration of the grand Ram temple in Ayodhya on December 30. 22 January.
The journey toward a grand temple at the birthplace of Ram has been decades long. As a journalist, I have had the opportunity to be at the Ayodhya site three times – during a terrorist attack in 2005, in 2019 just days after the Supreme Court decision paved the way for the temple to be built, and last year when the new temple was inaugurated. Created. The temple was taking shape. Each visit left an indelible mark on my memory and reinforced why this 67-acre piece of land is so important to a faith.
It was a summer morning in 2005 when a sensational news flash sent a photographer and I running from The Indian Express office in Lucknow to Ayodhya, a two-hour drive. The terrorists attacked the temple site carrying grenades, rocket launchers and bombs strapped to their bodies. When we reached the site, we saw the body of one of the killed terrorists, which had been blown up – our photographer captured this too.
The sight we saw was sensational. Five armed Lashkar-e-Taiba men drove their vehicle to breach the security grill of the temple and came within 100 meters of the makeshift temple to blow it up with grenades or bombs strapped to their bodies . They had reached ‘Sita Rasoi’. Had the CRPF jawans not been there to kill them in an hour-long encounter, it could have been a bigger national crisis than the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
Ayodhya at that time was a sleeping town with very little development, the only big hotel was the nearby ‘Shane-e-Awadh’ in Faizabad where we stayed for the next 10 days to follow the developments as the bodies of the terrorists were quietly dumped at a local place. Was buried at. The next morning the cemetery. The temporary temple was under a small tent and tightly guarded, but security lapses in the Uttar Pradesh Police perimeter under the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led government had come to light.
Everyone knew it was a close shave. Pilgrims in the temple told me: “Lord Ram is in the tent, but they could not kill him.”
hope in 2019
After a long litigation, finally in 2019 the Supreme Court paved the way for handing over 67 acres of land to the Hindu side to build the Ram temple. The decision was announced the night before, due to which the media reached Ayodhya overnight. Then I reached there from The Economic Times and saw a changed Ayodhya, where colors of development were emerging after the Yogi Adityanath-led government came to power in 2017. ‘Deepotsav’ was celebrated only a month ago on Diwali.
However, the 67-acre temple site was exactly the same as I had last seen it in 2005 – as if it had been frozen in time. Only security was tight, the vegetation inside had grown wild, the buildings had fallen into disrepair, and the white tent of Lord Rama had become dirty. Many pilgrims became upset after seeing this for the first time.
He said, “It is a shame to see our Lord like this… We hope that work on a grand new temple will start soon.”
Some people even mistook the temple tent for another security check post (there were several check posts on the way where you were searched) until the CRPF personnel told the pilgrims that it was a temple and not from a distance of 10 meters. Can pray. A board asked visitors to the temple to “look right”. A priest sitting there was giving prasad and you had to move within a few seconds. But the priest said: “Soon, a big temple will be built there.”
Now, new grand Ayodhya
When I visited the site last year, a glimpse of the upcoming grand temple was seen. A Rs 32,000 crore development plan is in progress to make Ayodhya a global spiritual destination for tourists and pilgrims. Once opened, the temple is likely to see more than one lakh people visit daily and by 2047, more than 10 crore people could visit Ayodhya on an annual basis. The construction of the temple will cost Rs 1,800 crore, which will come entirely from donations. The ground floor of the temple has been completed and the idols of Ram Lalla will be installed here and will be opened for public viewing from January 23, a day after the inauguration.
The first and second floors of the temple will take another year to be completed by December 30, 2024, and the entire complex of over 71 acres will be completed in 2025. A large network of highways, roads, infrastructure, townships, grand gateways and multi-level parking facilities are coming up in Ayodhya as part of the city’s development, with a new airport and upgraded railway station already operational. The view of Saryu beach with new and clean ghats is worth seeing. The city of Ayodhya is unrecognizable from what I saw in 2005.
The narrow streets of Ayodhya, famous for the Hanumangarhi temple and the variety of pedas sold at the shops here, will now be known as its biggest identity – the birthplace of Ram and a grand temple in line with the faith and belief of millions of people.
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