The mahant and mandir

Ayodhya's enfant terrible, the Parivar’s pointman, the temple movement’s leading light... you could play with words to describe Ra...

Ayodhya’s enfant terrible, the Parivar’s pointman, the temple movement’s leading light… you could play with words to describe Ramchandra Parmahans. And the mahant would let out a roar every time you stepped into the Digambar Akhada, his very own and the largest in Ayodhya. So you are back to paint me a villain, he would shout. Those of us who had got used to his ways would remind him he had always been a wicked, old man. And a smile would cross his face: “I am half as wicked as you. I know your tribe well. You write about the Ram temple from comfortable hotel rooms. Why don’t you spend a night at a Hindu home in Ayodhya and the next night at a Muslim home in Faizabad? You will have a great story. But you won’t do that. How can you stay two nights without your quota of rum and mutton?”

There were times when he would switch off all temple talk and start recalling names — Muslim names — of his old friends. “I miss them and am sure they miss me too.” He blamed the media for the dispute: “If you hadn’t come here and the netas had stayed away, all this wouldn’t have been necessary. We would have sorted this problem on our own. So what if we dragged each other to court, called each other names? It was a family fight. But you outsiders showed up and made it a mess. Now we may have to wait a lifetime.”

One of the more visible faces of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, especially after he became president of the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, the mahant would openly badmouth the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They have hijacked Ayodhya, he would complain. But the next day he would sit with VHP leaders, plan campaigns and spew the same venom. I once put that question to him: Why blame the VHP when you know they have come here with an agenda? Shouldn’t you blame yourself for surrendering Ayodhya? He never replied but you knew it bothered him. It troubled him to see others dictating Ayodhya’s present and future. Probably that’s one reason why he couldn’t help brag: “Who do you think made the idol appear (at the disputed site)?”

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The Parivar knew his worth, so he ranked high in their Ayodhya pantheon. They would all go to him, aware he would fly into a rage at the slightest hint of being kept out of the loop. In Ayodhya, the mahant was always considered a notch above the Singhals and Togadias. The patriarch of a family he was never really comfortable with. To the Muslims of Faizabad, he remained, despite his ranting, one of their few contacts inside Ayodhya.

The mahant’s death today has snapped that old link, all the more worrying because it now gives “the outsiders” a free run of the place. Something which the wily, old man tried to resist until the very end. Ayodhya, he always maintained, lost its innocence soon after Ram.

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