Carving the agenda

The Ram Janmabhoomi Trust leaders say they are surprised at the outcry over the stone carving in Ayodhya. The workshop was inaugurated by Trust chairman Mahant Ramchandra Das Paramhans in September 1990. The initial workforce of three artisans was increased to 10 workers two years later. Gradually the number of artisans grew to 50 with the induction of workers from Gujarat,Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

“If the workshop was illegal, why was it not banned when the Centre imposed a ban on our allied organisations, the RSS and the VHP?” says Paramhans. If it withstood the regimes of Chief Ministers like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati and Prime Ministers like Narasimha Rao, Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral, why should eyebrows be raised when there is a BJP government at the Centre and the state, he asks.

Paramhans accuses the media and non-BJP parties of raising the bogey of temple construction only to reap political mileage out of a non-issue. “They want to topple the Vajpayee Government over the temple issue. There is no other motive behind such a sustained campaign,” he says.

Commissioner, Faizabad division, Prem Narayan who is the receiver of the disputed area on instructions of the court, too claims that there was no new activity around the place which warranted his attention. “I can’t do anything if somebody carves stones inside his own house. There is no law to stop suchactivities,” he said.

Meanwhile, five to six truck-loads of stones being brought from Rajasthan every month are carved into 16 ft x 16 ft pillars in Ayodhya. “If the work continues on the same pace, it will take another 10 years to complete the ground work for construction of the temple,” Sompura says.

VHP leaders have, therefore, been trying to push the pace of stone-carving. The electric stone-cutter installed in the Ayodhya workshop was probably the first step to enhance the pace.

The 4.5 acre plot bought by the Temple Trust at Ramghat in Ayodhya two months ago is being seen as another step to hasten the process of work needed to kick-start the actual construction of the temple. The trust has ordered an Italian blade for its new machine to push the pace of work in the new workshop, VHP sources said. Sompura claims that 40 per cent work on the temple has been completed so far. “We have finished carving of foundation stones and some of the pillars. Finished stones are being transported here fromour Rajasthan workshop as well,” he says.

The temple would be 350-ft long, 180-ft wide and 128-ft high, built of 2.75 lakh cubic ft stones. It will require two lakh cubic ft of red sandstone and 40,000 cubic ft of granite and the rest will be marble, Sompura says. Arisans have carved only 16,000 cubic ft of red sandstones during the past eight years, he says.

Funds for artisans’ salary, the purchase of stones and their transportation from Rajasthan to Ayodhya are coming from the interest of a fixed deposit of the Temple Trust which has a corpus fund of Rs 6.5 crore, claims Paramhans.The Trust vice-president, Nritya Gopal Das, is also piqued at the “politicisation of an innocuous issue”. “We have not hastened the pace of work ever since BJP came to power three months ago. Neither have we done any new or objectionable thing like transporting the carved pillars to the 67 acres around the disputed shrine acquired by the Centre in 1993. What is the noise all about?” he says.

The Parishad leaders, whilefeigning anger over the political outrage over the “temple construction work”, find it hard to hide their glee. “The opposition by raising the issue has itself given enough political mileage to the BJP. Now no one can accuse the BJP of taking out the temple from its agenda,” says Paramhans.