Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
“Ayodhya ek chota sa town tha, in a radius of 7-8 km. Chota aur shaant, par udaas (Ayodhya was a small town… small and peaceful, but sad).”
Sitting in his old palace, ‘Raj Sadan’, in the heart of Ayodhya on the newly refurbished Ram Path, Yatindra Mishra, poet, art critic and scion of the erstwhile royal family of Ayodhya, talks about the town he grew up in – “stuffy, with dilapidated buildings and little hope”, whose residents would constantly express their frustration over the frisking that they have had to undergo at security barricades across the city since 1992.
“And then, in just over a year, Ayodhya transformed in front of our eyes,” says Mishra.
It’s a transformation that is centred around its most political image – the Ram temple, the inauguration of which is scheduled for January 22. Now, with two weeks left for the ceremony, the city is an almost unrecognisable form of its earlier self.
For long, Ayodhya was little more than an appendage of the district headquarters of Faizabad, spreading itself over an area of 10 sq km on the banks of the Sarayu. Until 1992, the town was all about its temples, each centuries old and each marking a milestone in the life of Lord Rama and those around him – Gulela Mandir, Vashishta Mandir, Sita Rasoi, Hanuman Mandir and so on. There was also the Babri Masjid and the simmering politics around it. That December day in 1992, when hundreds of karsevaks brought down the mosque, changing India and its politics, Ayodhya stirred too – the town turned into a fortress of barricades, with entry into the temples restricted even for its residents.
But now, in the run-up to the BJP government’s most ambitious of projects – the opening the Ram temple ahead of the 2024 elections – the “udaas” town of dilapidated buildings, narrow lanes, old temples and dharamshalas, a defunct air strip and a railway station with a broken platform, has undergone a makeover. It’s is now a city of 35 new hotels and 600 home stays, an international airport, a glitzy railway station, wide roads and decorated buildings.
The narrow lane that once led to the disputed temple site is now a wide, two-lane ‘Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Path’ with grand gates and huge walls decorated with murals.
From being one of the two Municipal Boards of Faizabad district with a budget of around Rs 12 crore, in 2017, Ayodhya got its Municipal Corporation with a budget of Rs 500 crore and an expanded jurisdiction spreading across a radius of 89.58 sqkm. A year later, in 2018, the UP government renamed the district Ayodhya.
Yatindra explains, “Until recently, the economy of this town revolved around three annual religious melas — Ram Navmi in April, Savan in July-August and Kartik Poornima in November. Now with the temple, there will be more people coming to Ayodhya than ever before.”
“Ayodhya ka jeevan ek samanya kasbai jeevan se ek nagriya jeevan ho gaya hai (Life in Ayodhya has changed from that in a small town to one in a city). From a town of dharamshalas, it is now a city of B&B and big hotels,” adds Yatindra, whose father Bimlendra Pratap Mishra is one of the trustees of the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust. Sources in the government said his ‘palace’ is likely to be converted into a heritage hotel.
Vishal Singh, Vice Chairman of the Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA), says 600 applications for home stays have been cleared in the past one year, of which more than 300 have been processed in just two months. The Authority has also cleared applications for 35 hotels, both big and small.
Officials in the Authority say they have been working marathon hours to verify these applications, get police verifications done and check safety measures before the licenses and certificates are uploaded on a new app called ‘Holy Ayodhya’. The Authority, which will soon move into a new office building near GGIC School, was set up in 1985 as the Ayodhya-Faizabad Development Authority but renamed as ADA in 2018.
These days, the Authority has been carrying out daily monitoring of 178 projects worth Rs 29,604 crore – of road, railways, beautification, parking, ghat restoration and renovation, among others — which are being implemented by 37 agencies of both the Central and State governments to “make Ayodhya equipped enough to handle large crowd after Ram Temple opens later this month”.
For many of these tourists, their first brush with this new Ayodhya is likely to begin with the sparkling new Ayodhya Dham Railway junction. Built at a cost of Rs 251 crore, the railway station, is spread across three storeys of a building that has escalators, lifts, a food plaza, waiting halls, toilets, drinking water stations, shops, and the “largest concourse in the country”.
While the old station, which was a secondary station to the main Ayodhya Cantonment station, could handle merely 25 trains and up to 10,000 passengers a day, the new station, which is about 6km from the under construction Ram temple, can handle 40 trains a day and over 50,000 passengers.
Selling samosas on the road leading to the old railway station that still stands adjacent to the new station, 53-year-old Shiv Shankar, says, “We have been told that even this road could be expanded. So we are not renovating our shops as of now.” A new, two-lane road leads to the new railway station, which Prime Minister Modi inaugurated on December 30.
Dhirendra Singh, who is visiting Ayodhya from Delhi, says, “I am here after 10 years. Not only the roads of Ayodhya, the entire city has undergone a transformation. When I last came, even the platform at the station was broken; now it is like an airport.”
At his ashram near the Nirmohi Akhada, Acharya Satyendra Das, Chief Priest of the Ram temple, gushes about how the purana (old) has given way to the naya aur navya (new) in Ayodhya. “For long, Ayodhya was behind time… khandahar, purane mandir, purani jagah (ruins, old temples, old place). Now Ayodhya is getting its lustre, there is development happening… Naya airport, naya railway station, nayi Road, navya Ayodhya. Ab yahan se shuru hoga Ram Rajya (Ram Rajya will start frrom here).”
Sitting next to him, his head bowed, is Iqbal Ansari, son of the late Hashim Ansari, the litigant in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit. Asked about this “navya Ayodhya”, Ansari says, “All citizens would like to see their city developed. Ayodhya has been Hindu-Muslim ki dharma nagari. I hope this new Ayodhya retains its Ganga-Jamuni tehjeeb”.
At a distance of few metres, at his office on Ram Path, BJP leader and Mayor Girish Pati Tripathi, who doubles up as the mahant of a local Teen Kalash temple, is busy with preparations for the upcoming ‘Pran Pratishtha’. “Today we have a budget of Rs 500 crore, but we also get funds under different heads. For instance, recently, we got Rs 40 crore to organise the Ayodhya Mela. In no time, Ayodhya will be converted into a world-class city,” he says, adding that they are in the process of hiring 1,500 safai karamcharies, covering open drains and distributing cloth bags to keep the city polythene free.
But the change he is most excited about are four roads around the temple complex – the Ram Path, Dharma Path, Sri Ram Janma Bhumi Path and Bhakti Path – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated on November 30. The four roads were, not too long ago, narrow and congested lanes leading to the Ram temple, but have now been expanded and beautified and given new names.
Ram Path, which links Sadatganj to Lata Mangeshkar Chowk at Naya Ghat, is now a 13-km-long, four-lane road built with an investment of about Rs 845 crore. The shops on either side of the road have shrunk to make space for the road-widening. Mayor Tripathi said that while the plan was to widen it to 24 metres, following objections by residents and shopkeepers, the authorities decided to stick to 20 metres. The ADA has painted shutters of shops with Hindu symbols – the shankh, trishul, gada and swastik – and houses have been painted in shades of peach with white temple-shaped motifs.
The Dharma Path, a 2-km-long, four-lane road from Lata Mangeshkar Chowk to the Lucknow-Gorakhpur highway, has been built at a cost of Rs 65 crore. Dark grey pillars carved with ‘Sri Ram’ and decorated with Sun-shaped lights depicting the ‘Surya Vansh’ dynasty to which Lord Ram is said to have belonged, line both sides of the road. The chowk has a huge veena which is now a selfie point for tourists.
But the biggest transformation has been that of the 566-meter-long Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Path leading to the temple site. The Rs 41-crore, two-lane road starts from Sugreev Kila, where a huge gate has been installed. The walls on either side are being carved with murals.
Then there is the “Bhakti Path”, a 742-metre-long road from Sringhar Ghat to Hanuman Gari that has been widened and developed at a cost of Rs 68 crore.
Standing outside his bakery on Ram Path, watching ADA workers painting the outer walls of his shop, Ravi Kumar, in his 50s, says that until last year, he used to pay a monthly rent of Rs 1,000 for the shop that has been running for 20 years now, but last year, the rent shot up Rs 8,000. “The owner has said I will have to pay Rs 10,000 once the temple opens in January. I have had to borrow to meet this sudden spike in rent. Bas yahi umeed hai ki mandir khulne ke baad bhagya khul jaye (Now there is just one hope, that with opening of the temple, our fortunes also open up).”
Among those who have tied their fortunes to the temple is Manoj Kumar Tiwari, who works as a supervisor at the Ram Temple construction site. “I have been working for three months at the temple site. Earlier, I was working in Saudi Arabia but when I came here on leave, I got to know about this vacancy at the temple site and applied. I hope with this temple our youngsters find more jobs,” he says.
Around 13 km from the temple is the Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, among the latest postcards of this new Ayodhya. The airport has become operational with Air India and Indigo commencing operations.
Where once lay an airstrip spread across 178 acres, with hardly any traffic, now stands the new airport across 821 acres, its facade built in the ‘nagara’ style of North Indian temple architecture.
The terminal has been decorated with murals and artworks and other symbols depicting the Treta Yuga, the Hindu era during which Lord Ram is believed to have ruled over Ayodhya. The building has ‘shikhars’ like in temples and an entire wall in the terminal has paintings and murals depicting the “life and times of Lord Ram”.
The old runway of 1,500m x 30m has been extended to 2,200m x 45m. Officials say the plan is to extend the runway further to 3,700 meters to accommodate bigger aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and 777.
Built at a cost of Rs 1,462 crore, of which the Airports Authority of India has spent about Rs 328 crore and the remaining Rs 1,134 crore by the Uttar Pradesh government, the airport has two aprons and hangars for eight aircraft in the first phase. The 6,250 sqm terminal building is expected to accommodate over 500 passengers during peak hours.
At his home in Raj Sadan, Yatindra Mishra says, “Usually, my friends and other coming to Ayodhya from abroad or other states would land in Lucknow and then come to Ayodhya. They would then go back and stay in Lucknow to be able to catch the flight back. When I asked to stay, they would ask me, ‘Kyun? Why should we?’ Now with the airport and the way Ayodhya has changed, it’s other way around. They want to come here and I have been asking them to wait for some time.”
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
