Ram temple inauguration: How the grand old party is reaping what it sowed

Ever since its top leadership received the invitation to attend the grand Prana-Pratishta ceremony of Sri Rama at Ayodhya on January 22 this year, the Congress party has been squirming in a highly public fashion. The sacred occasion is also the mother of all spectacles of the aforementioned Congress squirming. And it has only itself to blame for scripting its current pathetic fate. For a moment, forget the Rama Janmabhoomi Movement. Forget the decadal efforts of our historians, scholars, and archeologists. Forget the skulduggery of the “eminent” historians. Forget the dogged efforts of the Left-All India Babri Masjid Action Committee combine. Forget even the rivers of the avoidable Hindu blood that flowed in service of Sri Ramachandra. For a moment, consider the role of just the Congress party. This is the picture we get: How exactly did the Congress think that it could militate against Sri Rama for more than half a century and get away with it unscathed? To borrow an old Puranic maxim, by trying to sully the Maryada — dignity, integrity, majesty — of Sri Rama, the Congress today stands fully unclothed as a party and an ideological abyss bereft of Maryada. On the parallel track, the status of the Congress party’s clones and its fairweather bedmates — the Communists — remains unchanged even today. They are as incoherent and as irrelevant as they were even when they had dominated the public discourse thanks to their monopoly over information flow. It is the Congress that truly stands isolated in every which way – politically, ideologically, societally. The party now resembles an unwieldy sandwich cut into three slices — the pro-Mandir slice, the desperate slice, and the anti-Mandir slice. The anti-Mandir slice is obviously populated by its topmost leadership: Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh, et al. The pro-Mandir slice is conspicuous by its silence. The desperate slice, led by the likes of Shashi Tharoor, is desperately trying to do damage control by digging out archives of random speeches by… Sonia Gandhi glorifying Swami Vivekananda. This is akin to Pakistan replacing its national anthem with Vande Mataram.

25 years ago today, then Congress President Sonia Gandhiji delivered this thoughtful address at the #NationalYouthDay function at the Ramakrishna Mission, New Delhi on 12th January 1999. It is hard to imagine a more effective message about Swami Vivekananda’s teachings today. And… pic.twitter.com/pGuvmMD69O

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) January 12, 2024

It is notable that in spite of his desperation, Tharoor is cautious enough not to mention Sri Ramachandra or his Mandir. The roots of this desperation are buried deep in the soil of the Congress party’s belated realisation that the Indian public (correctly) perceives the party as an anti-Hindu political outfit. The Congress never learns. Instead of maintaining a dignified silence, its leaders — as is their wont — heedlessly characterised the Prana Pratishtapana ceremony as a BJP-RSS event. Only to instantly regret it. Then they changed track and claimed that Sri Rama was “in their heart,” and that they didn’t need to visit Ayodhya to worship him. Too little too late. If this was not enough, some factions in the Congress went as far as to give full credit for rebuilding the Sri Rama Mandir to Rajiv Gandhi! In which case, Sonia Gandhi & Co should only be too happy to attend the ceremony on January 22. By her own party’s logic, her deceased husband’s plan has been fulfilled by the BJP. And so, in the fitness of all things decent and proper, she should actually be thankful to the BJP. But she and her party cannot do that because they, more than anybody, know the circumstances under which Rajiv Gandhi was forced to open the locks of the gates of the disputed structure. There’s just no polite way of saying this: Rajiv Gandhi had cynically used Sri Rama Mandir as a tradable commodity as a barter for Shah Bano. This is the underlying reality of the Nehru dynasty’s faith in Sanatana Dharma. Everyone from Jawaharlal Nehru up to Rajiv Gandhi had sought refuge in Sanatana Dharma solely for political purposes — either to remain in power for perpetuity or to survive in politics. Jawaharlal Nehru died a bitter man, utterly humiliated in the twilight of his life. For one who wore Hindu-baiting as a badge of honour, his last wish was to have an orthodox Hindu cremation, and his ashes were to be scattered in the purifying waters of the Ganga. Indira Gandhi had hurriedly re-embraced Sanatana Dharma as a guilty and frightened Prime Minister after what she had done by unleashing the Emergency and vertically splitting the Hindu and the Sikh communities. And Rajiv Gandhi had literally used Sri Rama himself as a pawn in a brand of politics that had repeatedly proven detrimental to Hindus. The generations that have endured his Prime Ministership will testify to the abject condition to which he had reduced the Hindu community. The Shah Bano case apart, he holds the dubious distinction of reducing India as the first country that banned The Satanic Verses under pressure from the worst elements of the Islamic clergy. As far as Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s Hindu credentials are concerned, the less said, the better. The Congress never learns. Even as I write this, the Congress party’s opposition to the Sri Rama Mandir remains intact due to that age-old reason: The mortal fear of losing Muslim votes. Or whatever is left of that vote bank. This fear has smothered the faith of the individual members of the Congress party towards Sri Rama and Sanatana Dharma. This is why millennia ago, our sages gave this immortal piece of wisdom: Any person who remains silent when it is his duty to support Dharma, automatically supports Adharma. The contemporary manifestation of this wisdom is this: Any person who truly loves India is a Hindu. The converse is also true. The writer is the founder and chief editor The Dharma Dispatch_._ Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.