It’s been almost two months since the consecration of the Ram Lalla idol in Ayodhya, but sculptor Arun Yogiraj says he has neither been able to absorb the feeling, nor has he been able to relax. Ever since, he has been touring the country on invitation to speak at various schools and colleges about his experience, and trying to return calls and messages that he couldn’t over the six months he was in Ayodhya, on the job. Speaking to The Indian Express during his overnight pitstop in New Delhi this week, Yogiraj shares that his name didn’t even figure in the initial shortlist of sculptors for the job, and it was just a day before the final call was to be taken by the “idol committee” formed by the Temple trust, that he was summoned to give a presentation. Interestingly, once he was shortlisted among the three artists for sculpting the idol, there was another major setback. The stone he had been using to craft the idol failed one of the quality tests when 70 per cent of his work was done, but he was told he had to do it all over again if he wanted to remain in the reckoning, said the 40-year-old Mysuru-based sculptor. A couple of months before three artists (including him) were finally shortlisted to sculpt the idols, around a dozen sculptors from across the country were invited to give their presentation to the committee, but Yogiraj says, he wasn’t on the list and was even feeling bad about it. But just a day before the committee meeting, he got a surprise call from one of the members — Sachchidanand Joshi of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts — to come prepared with his presentation as well. His work had come to notice after he had sculpted the Subhas Chandra Bose statue to be placed at India Gate, and also the Adi Shankaracharya statue in Kedarnath — both of which were unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “After my presentation, I was told that three of us (along with Ganesh Bhatt from Karnataka, and Satya Narayan Pandey from Jaipur) would be stationed in Ayodhya to sculpt the idol, one of which will be finally selected for the temple,” he recalls. The 'pran pratishtha' of the Lord Ram statue sculpted by Arun Yogiraj took place on January 22 at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, but Yogiraj says he was informed of the selection by the trust almost a month in advance, on December 29, to be precise. “I can’t forget that date,” he remarks. However, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has compensated all the three sculptors, and the two idols which couldn’t make it to the sanctum sanctorum, will be installed inside the temple complex. After Arun Yogiraj started sculpting the idol in June 2023, he completed almost 70 per cent of the work by August. That's when he was set up for another test. The Chairman of the construction committee, Nripendra Misra, asked him to rush to Delhi. “I was informed that we cannot go ahead with the statue that I had been carving since one out of eight tests on the stone came out negative,” he says. Misra explained to Yogiraj that since sculpting the Ram Lalla was supposed to be a landmark work, they are accountable towards the nation. “You still have got two months,” Yogiraj was told. So, he agreed to work on a fresh stone — the Krishna Shila — September onwards. However, he tried to think of his past experience of sculpting the idol as a practice session, and got on with the job at hand. “In two months, I was able to complete the idol,” he says. Yogiraj, the fifth-generation sculptor, says he started out doing several small assignments, earning him Rs 1,500-2,000 for a piece. “I would always wonder, when would I get bada kaam,” he says, adding that he didn’t know that something like this would be in store for him.
