IT IS ALWAYS FUN to see the Congress party squirm. The ensuing Prana-Pratishta of Marayada Purushottama Sri Ramachandra is the mother of all spectacles of the aforementioned Congress squirming.
The Congress has scripted its own pathetic fate.
For a moment, forget the Rama Janmabhoomi Movement, forget the decadal efforts of our archeologists, forget the skulduggery of the “eminent” historians, forget the dogged efforts of the Left-AIBMAC combine, forget even the rivers of 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 Ramachandra and get away with it unscathed? By trying to sully the Maryada — dignity, integrity, majesty — of Sri Ramachandra, 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. It 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 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.
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 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 impute the 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, she should actually be thankful to the BJP. But she and her party can’t because they more than anybody, knows 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 Nawab 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.
Nawab 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 Ganga Mata.
Indira Gandhi had hurriedly re-embraced Sanatana Dharma as a guilty woman scared out of her wits 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 proved detrimental to Hindus. Those who have endured his Prime Ministership will testify to the abject condition to which he had reduced the Hindu community.
As for Sonia, she can never be a Hindu.
And as for Rahul, the word “Ram” sounds perhaps like “Rome” to his ears.
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. This fear has smothered the faith of its individual members towards Sri Rama and Sanatana Dharma, and has thus made them anti-Hindu.
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. Anyone who hates it votes for the Congress party.
|| Sri Rama Jayam ||
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