No, this post is not about the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. This post is about a Ram Mandir in the 60s in Vivekanand Colony in Raipur M.P (now Chattisgarh). The children of the colony played all over the colony till 6.30 in the evening and finally landed up at the temple for the evening arti and even better, the evening prasad. The temple was brand new, and the idols were beautiful white marble. The pujari was enthusiastic, and decked out the idols in new clothes every day, with special clothes and ornaments for festival days. Parents sometimes landed up at arti time, to pick up their wandering children and also to see the latest decorations, and participate in the evening arti. Ram Navmi was big, with a cradle for the infant Ram, and a major pooja in the afternoon. It was great fun, and taught Hindu customs in a simple way to impressionable children. No politician ever landed up there, unless they lived nearby and also came to worship. Many temples in the country still function on the same basis, viz. as places of worship and community centres for the neighbourhood.
Why then the hue and cry about one temple in a remote and contentious place with a national holiday to watch a ceremony on TV, and matching processions all over the place? Ram, the protector, is appealed to in times of distress via the Ram Raksha, the prayer we learnt after going home after the evening arti. The time has come to appeal to him to protect us from grandiose and dubious forms of worship, and to take us back to the simpler forms of our childhood days!
This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.
