Its apparent failure notwithstanding, the Kanchi Shankaracharya’s mediation in the Ayodhya impasse marks a definite step forward in the movement for the recovery of the birthplace of a God intimately linked with resistance to the molestation of Hindu society in the medieval period. Many Indians today are unaware that Rama began to dominate the dharmic spectrum in northern India in an era when it was virtually reeling under incessant assault from invading iconoclasts. A warrior par excellence, the God has still a long way to go before His conquest of anti-spiritual forces is successful and He receives His due coronation.
Disappointed devotees who pinned their hopes on the Shankaracharya’s initiative would do well to be patient. They may recall that even with Rishi Vashisht in-charge of preparations for Rama’s abhishek as Crown Prince, the God found himself exiled to the forests without much ado, and nonchalantly quit Ayodhya. In the Valmiki story it was a long route back to Ayodhya; today it is an incomplete return in a makeshift tent. Yet bhaktas can take comfort in the fact that the God cannot be dislodged again from the re-possessed site. What is in dispute, therefore, is only the timing of the grand new temple.
Thus, there is much to be satisfied about. Swami Jayendra Saraswati has performed a sterling service by legitimizing the honourable return of Ayodhya to the Hindu community, and he has done so in a manner difficult to negate or reverse. Swamiji is highly esteemed and political parties like the Congress, the Samajwadi Party or the Left parties cannot dare take liberties with him. Even the Muslim Personal Law Board has conceded his status.
Hence, despite the Board’s defiance, the gains have been tangible. The most important to my mind is the fact that the Shankaracharya has, once and for all, closed the (largely perceived) gap between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the formal Hindu spiritual leadership on Ayodhya. This means that regardless of panthic loyalties (Shaiva, Vaishnava and so on) all Hindu groups are officially committed to recovery (whatever the timeframe) of the three holy sites demanded by the VHP. This is not a small development in the uneven history of Hindu self-affirmation, and only a Shankaracharya as bold and confident as the present one could have moved so rapidly in this direction.
In my view, what is far more relevant for the Hindu community is the fact that the Rama Janmabhoomi issue offers an ideal opportunity to introspect over the meaning and larger goals of the movement, and to affirm these in our own lives. What, for instance, is the significance of Sri Rama in the life of the nation and the Hindu community?
Scholars have generally traced the worship and popularity of Sri Rama to the efforts of the ascetic, Acharya Ramananda, probably born around 1300 AD. Ramananda’s importance lies in his pioneering religious and social reforms. He declared that any true devotee of Vishnu could join his panth and that caste was no barrier. Hence, even those at the bottom of the social ladder were admitted as equals in the eyes of God in Ramananda’s sampradaya. For, as he is reported to have averred: “Jati pati puchai nahi koi, Hariko bhajai so Harika hoi” (‘nobody asks about anyone’s caste, anyone who worships Hari becomes Hari’s own’).
This was certainly a revolutionary statement then; it remains amazingly relevant and contemporary even today. When we hear of instances of Dalits being denied entry to village temples, or being beaten or punished for attempting entry or for trying to share water sources, we would do well to remember that our spiritual preceptors did not acquiesce in such inhuman practices.
Ramananda used the vernacular idiom to disseminate his views and thus reached out to ordinary folk who could easily empathize with him. But his really outstanding contribution was to supplant and surpass the hitherto personalized devotion to Radha and Krishna by the worship of Rama and Sita, who better exemplified the collective aspirations of the Hindu community. Ramananda’s disciples furthered the masters’ work by instituting orders of ascetics who were willing to fight to defend Hindu temples and dharma from the harassment and molestation they suffered in the medieval era.
Sri Rama found His next most powerful proponent in the Maharashtrian saint-poet Namdev (died approx. 1350 AD). Namdev’s teacher, Visoba Khechara, was a Shaivite saint. Scholars believe that being a great pilgrim and wanderer, Namdev may have encountered Rama devotees in the course of his ceaseless wanderings in Prayag and other places in north India. It was Namdev who launched the practice of repeating the name of Rama (Ram naam) as a form of worship (jaap) that would lead to salvation. It is interesting to note, however, that Namdev remained throughout passionately devoted to Vithoba (Krishna) of Pandharpur, who was his kula-deva (family deity).
The discerning reader would have gauged how ephemeral sectarian affiliations proved to be in the practice of dharma by exalted saints. Rama was also central to the teachings of the weaver-poet Kabir, though Kabir’s Rama was formless as he shunned the worship of God through images. There do not seem to be any charismatic Rama bhaktas in the long years between 1400 AD and 1560 AD, a period which saw the rise of great Krishna devotees like Vallabhacharya, Mirabai and Surdas.
Yet there can be little doubt that the followers of Ramananda worked assiduously to keep the masters’ legacy alive. By the third quarter of the sixteenth century (approx. 1577 AD), Tulsidas’ outstanding epic, Ramacharitamanas, made its’ presence felt and settled once and for all the status and supremacy of Rama in northern India. Read and sung by millions, it determined the moral and religious frontiers of believers for several centuries. Just as the Mahabharata and Harivamsa had secured the status of Krishna, so Rama’s eminence as Maryada Purushottom was ensconced with the Ramayana of Tulsidas.
Tulsidas’ equally enduring legacy is the popular Hindu prayer, Hanuman Chalisa, which daily reverberates in Hindu homes across the country. Written in the popular vernacular of his times, it permanently elevates the status of Hanuman, Rama’s devotee and assistant par excellence, who was directed to remain eternally on earth and answer the needs of Rama’s devotees. Around this time, Tulsidas’ contemporary, the ascetic Madhusudana Sarasvati, began to organize believers in northern India. And by the inimitable Hindu process of osmosis, these developments simultaneously percolated the south. The grand but incomplete Rama temple begun by the Vijayanagar king Krishnadeva Raya in the early sixteenth century is testimony to this powerful spiritual ingress.
Sri Rama’s most outspoken devotee was the Maharashtrian saint, Ramdas, who resented the oppression of his times and advocated resistance to it. He exhorted men to establish religious order as incarnations of God, and hinted that Shivaji, who worshipped Goddess Bhavani of Tuljapur, was such an avatar.
Today, the Indian State, fearful as it is of the rootless but noisy intellectual class, is far removed from the purposefulness that guided the actions of Shivaji. Yet, by tacitly supporting the Shankaracharya’s mediation, it has endorsed the move to re-spiritualize the political realm. In a fundamental sense, the space in which the State could pretend to function as impartial arbiter between two communities is fast shrinking…
The Pioneer, 15 July 2003