Opinion Once upon a time, a Ram idol that turned the course of India’s history

However, investigators and historians have believed it to be an elaborate conspiracy to whip up communal passions in a newly partitioned India, create an emotional ground for making a claim over the property and culturally connect Hindus beyond Ayodhya to the dispute.

According to the inquiry report prepared by the Liberhan Commission following the demolition of the Babri Mosque, the original Ram Lalla idol was placed under the dome of the mosque by Abhiram Das (variously spelt as Abhay Ram Das), a sadhu of the Nirmohi Akhara. The report has quoted the FIR registered at the time to record how Das, along with others, placed the idol in the dead of the night on December 22, 1949.

“No noticeable event took place between 1947 and the 23rd December, 1949. On that date, idols of Ram Chander Ji (Ram Lalla) with inscription of ‘Sri Ram’ were installed in Garb Grah. As a consequence, an FIR was registered against Abhay Ram, Sideshwar Rao, Shiv Charan Dass and 60 others,” the report has noted.

According to the report, Ram Dubey, officer in-charge of the police station concerned, recorded the following FIR: “At about 7 AM I reached Janam Bhoomi, I came to know from the constable Mata Pershad who was on duty, that in the night 50 to 60 persons had entered in the mosque by breaking lock, scaled the walls, established the idols of Shri Ram Lalla, and written with geru and yellow colours on the wall ‘Shri Ram’. Constable Hans Raj who was present on duty at that time told them not to act in that manner but they failed to listen to him. The PAC force which was posted there was called, but by the time it reached there, they had already entered the mosque.”

The Commission, however, clarified it has not gone into the veracity of the claims made in the FIR or those by the Hindus. It said it “need not go into the question whether idols were installed or they had miraculously appeared as some of hard-core fundamentalists and the protagonists of the movement claimed during the course of their evidence”.

It noted, however, that “Puja and Bhajan were started” the same night by the Hindu side inside the mosque and even though the Centre and the state government took exception to the event, the idol was not removed.

According to sources in the VHP, its life-long member B L Sharma, who served in the armed forces, claimed to be present at the site when the idol “appeared” under the dome of the mosque. Sharma claimed to have seen a light coming from inside the mosque at 3 am. On further inspection, it was found the light was coming from the idol of Ram Lalla.

“He once told me that when the Babri Mosque was demolished, he was again there. Someone rescued the idol from under the mosque and put it in his lap. The idol was then placed back at the birthplace of Shri Ram,” VHP spokesperson Vinod Bansal told The Indian Express.

Sharma joined the BJP and contested Lok Sabha polls winning the East Delhi seat twice in 1991 and 1996. He died in 2022.

This idol, meanwhile, was placed in a make-shift structure under a tirpal where it stayed for about 28 years until after the November 9, 2019, Supreme Court verdict that gave the site to Hindus. On March 25, 2020, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, shifted this Ram Lalla idol from under the tirpal to the make-shift temple — the deity’s wooden throne now replaced by a silver one.

In 1989, the idol, as Ram Lalla Virajman, would go on to become the chief litigant from the Hindu side in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title suit in the Supreme Court.

Though a new idol is being installed, the old idol will remain in the temple and also be worshipped. VHP Working President Alok Kumar, in fact, suggested that the new idol is “in addition to the old idol”.

The Liberhan Commission Report, however, suggested the “appearance” of the idol may have been part of a conspiracy in which even the local bureaucracy was involved. It particularly picked out the role played by then District Magistrate of Gonda KK Nayar.

Recalling the sequence of events in 1949, the report said, “District Magistrate KK Nayar stated …that there was no forewarning through any intelligence channel despite the rumours that idols would be installed on the occasion of Ram Naomi. The rumours about contemplation and declaration of installing the idols by one Abhay Ram Das, a self-proclaimed Sadhu who was not a popular or credible Mahant or leader, were not believed to be trustworthy,” the Report said.

It noted that Nayar had then said “the surreptitious removal of idols, though possible, would have raised a question of administrative consequences, and administrative bankruptcy and tyranny”. He had also said it would endanger public peace.

The Commission, however, noted that post 1949, Nayar and his wife and even his employee contested election on the ticket of Hindu organisations. Nayar was elected to the fourth Lok Sabha from Bahraich in UP on a Bharatiya Jana Sangh ticket, while his wife won the Kaisarganj constituency. He died in 1977.

“The stance adopted at the time, apart from the refusal to remove the idols, would constitute a clear signal that a war had started brewing in the minds of the people and diagonally opposite views had started to be formed on whether the disputed structure was a mosque or a temple. The seeds of future discord were sown by the District Magistrate,” the Report said.

In their book ‘Ayodhya: The Dark Night’, Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K Jha noted: “Indeed, the idea that eventually changed the politics of India, though much later than its originators had anticipated, emerged for the first time among three friends — Maharaja Pateshwari Prasad Singh, head of the princely state of Balrampur, Mahant Digvijai Nath and K K Nair. The three were joined as much by their Hindu communal sentiments as their love for lawn tennis.”

Mahant Digvijainath then presided over the Gorakhnath Math, which is now headed by Yogi Adityanath.