“Mandir wahin banaye hain,” they said, the slogan ringing out like a battle cry. Temples will be built there, where once stood a disputed mosque, a symbol of conflict, a scar on the nation’s soul. Yet, amidst the celebratory chants, a disquieting truth lurks – Ram, the revered deity, has become a pawn in the grand game of politics.
To claim that Ram symbolizes the ideal is, on one hand, undeniable. He is the epitome of righteousness, a warrior king, a champion of truth. But on the other hand, attributing the entirety of his essence to the political machinery, reducing him to a mere rallying point, a tool for power – that is where the ideal crumbles.
The slogan “Mandir wahin banaye hain” might not inherently be disturbing, but the context in which it thrives, the fertile ground of religious polarization, is. It becomes the banner of exclusion, the weapon of “us vs. them,” a potent force shaping not just the landscape of temples, but the very fabric of our society.
What happened to us? When did our faith, meant to be a compass guiding us towards harmony, become a battering ram for division? When did the pursuit of a temple morph into the erosion of empathy, the silencing of dissent, the widening of a chasm instead of its bridging?
This, my friends, is the brutal game – not the game of stones and mortar, but the game of hearts and minds. The game where fear mongering masquerades as devotion, where political ambitions wear the cloak of righteousness, where the whispers of doubt are drowned out by the roar of slogans.
We are losing sight of the true Ram, the one who embodied compassion, inclusivity, and justice. We are forgetting that faith, not political agendas, must define us. It’s time we reclaim the narrative, time we recognize that “Mandir wahin banaye hain” should not be a victory cry, but a call for introspection.
This is not about temples, not truly. It’s about the kind of society we want to build, the legacy we want to leave behind. We can choose to be consumed by the flames of division, or we can choose to be the water that extinguishes them. We can choose to wield faith as a weapon, or as a bridge.
The choice is ours. Let us choose wisely, for the Ramification of Ram lies not in brick and mortar, but in the hearts and minds of its people. Choose inclusivity, choose understanding, choose the ideal, not the ideology. Only then can the true image of Ram, the beacon of love and unity, shine through the smoke and embers of this brutal game.