• Dr. Ratan Sharda

Rebuilding of Ram Temple has re-ignited our memories buried deep under the embers of forgotten history.

August 5, 2020, is a historic day for many reasons, not just a day on which the rebuilding of Ram Mandir will begin. August 15, 1947, was supposed to be a day when we broke away from colonialism and rebuild Bharat on the lines on which it had gained prominence in the comity of nations for centuries before foreign invaders slowly choked out its spirit in different ways.

Unfortunately, it did not happen. We were told that India was never a nation but British had made it into a nation and Nehru ji was trying to create a new idea of India, so we can stay united. With this single argument, we were trained to forget our entire knowledge-based heritage that has at least 8,000 years of documented history.

August 5 will be a milestone in post-independent India which will be remembered for —

• Rebuilding of the Ram Temple at the very site where it was destroyed

• Restoring our pride in our ancient perennial history and civilisation

• Snatching back the right to interpret our history from colonial historians and their

fellow travellers – the Marxist historians

• Decolonising our minds

Visit Mathura and your heart bleeds when you see the real janmsthan (birth place) of Krishna embedded in the peripheral wall of the giant mosque Aurangzeb built by destroying the Krishna Janmasthan temple. You visit Kashi Vishwanath temple. Before you bow to the sacred Jyotirlinga in a temple rebuilt by Ahilyabai Holkar, your heart sinks looking at the original sacred Nandi bull staring vacantly in the direction where the original Shivling was consecrated eons back – converted to mosque by Aurangzeb.

Hindus waged a sustained battle to restore Ram Temple to them for 492 years in the very location where it existed before it was destroyed by Mughals. Apart from a legal fight, we saw a mass movement like none, including the freedom struggle, when millions of people came on the roads in a peaceful manner starting in 1986 and culminating in 2020. A movement sustained in different phases for 30 years before it reached the final stages in courts of law. It was a first in Hindu society that the society rose as one irrespective of caste or creed – whether poor or rich, from north to south and from west to east – to get back the land where original temple existed. And, finally emerged victorious.

Our freedom struggle was an outcome of many factors. When all the factors came together, we were free. But it was a victory that came at a huge loss – loss of one third of our land and millions of lives. It was a parting kick from our erstwhile colonial masters. We are still bleeding. But refusal to go by colonial justice and lectures by their leftovers about Ram being everywhere, Hindus kept the battle on and finally won it against the entire system seeped in colonial thoughts arrayed against them. Hindus refused to be shamed by Left-Secular groups and settle for something demeaning like Mathura or Kashi that would bleed our hearts and drain our emotions when we visited these temples.

The colonial historians and their lackeys had created a narrative that Hindu society had nothing to offer, that Bharat was a naturally endowed land populated by orthodox, casteist, ignorant lethargic people who knew nothing beyond caste and superstition. They had no history to call their own and they had no knowledge to call their own. The entire idea was to strip Indians of their self-respect, their pride and their knowledge systems.

The enormous knowledge base Bharat had in every possible branch of philosophy, art and science was stolen or stripped off its Bharatiya roots. Muslim invaders destroyed universities, temples and knowledge system structured around them and our sense of self-esteem by destroying our centres of faith, our murtis. The official records tell us that even after burning the Nalanda University and destroying Taxila and Vikramshila, burning libraries of temples and priests; Bharat, even today, is left with 3 million manuscripts in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit!

The bleeding of our economy that began under Muslim invaders was fine-tuned by British. We were impoverished while colonial masters prospered in every sense. By the time British were challenged by us, they had created a huge West educated populace seeped in western world view that saw India only as a land of widow burners, casteist and orthodox backward looking society, with no intellect of its own. We were told that Kalidasa was Shakespeare of India though Kalidasa was born centuries before Shakespeare. We were told Chanakya was India’s Machiavelli though he mastered the statecraft thousands of years earlier. And we accepted it. Only calling card that Bharatiya people were left with was caste system.

Rebuilding of Ram Temple has re-ignited our memories buried deep under the embers of forgotten history. In a way, the people-driven struggle prolonged by Marxist historians gave us time to dig up our true history, the cruel history of Muslim invaders’ atrocities and loss of our national identity that any Indian would be proud of.

Suddenly, temples and their histories have become centres of attraction and wonder for our youth. Taj Mahal is not the only wonder, but we have 1000s of such wonders. Indians have discovered how their temples were pillaged, populace looted, raped and converted. It was the history that our Left –Secular historians wished us to forget. The struggle for Ram Temple turned out to be a struggle to rediscover our self-identity.

This struggle for restoration of pride was not against anybody, it was for restoration of our rights over our land, our history. Thus, the long litigation instigated by left historians forced us to re-discover the truth behind Mughals and Tipu Sultans, the truth behind poor cap stitching devout Aurangzeb. Historians who had been banished from the university shelves, the selfless researchers and public intellectuals like Dharampal were brought back. Young Indians rose to fill in the gaps in our history with meticulous research and rebuilding of our true history, highlight our heritage and challenge the narrative set by British and their copy cats, the Marxist historians. The first Indian to call out the fakery of Aryan Invasion Theory, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, was rediscovered.

This renaissance we see in Indian intellectual scene is the result of Ram Mandir movement. And, this is the reason why the entire Left and so-called liberal class was opposed to Ram Temple tooth and nail. They understood the repercussions of this movement. This is the reason why RSS became the prime hate symbol for the Left-Liberal all over again. RSS not just created this environment but went onto inspire an entire generation to snatch back the initiative from these groups to restore history and heritage in proper perspective.

This churn in the sphere of knowledge has finally led to decolonising our minds. There had been attempts by our leaders beginning from Swami Vivekananda to decolonise our minds. It has been a continuous exercise since then. But ideological adversaries had major advantages – head start since the time of British, absorbing the tricks of the trade taught by the British, inferiority complex of the ruling class represented by Pandit Nehru and his readiness to outsource the intellectual battle ground to the Left and providing them huge resources vis-a-vis a weak Bharat rooted intellectual class that was kept out of the powerful elite and never allowed to use any resources.

Thankfully, there were organisations like RSS, great indigenous, rooted leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya, Dr. Ambedkar, KM Munshi, Rajagopalachari and many others who kept the flame glowing for the right moment. Veteran RSS thinker Ranga Hari says your view point depends on your stand point. It took years to change that stand point from western land of Greenwich time to Ujjain based Indian timelines of Mahakaal. As the stand point changed, the view point changed too. Now the view point will be defined by Ram Mandir. This is the historic time when real decolonising of Indian mind has begun. Bharat will no more be apologetic about its past, nor about the path it chooses to regain its glory.

• Dr. Ratan Sharda is an ERP consultant, an author & a free lance columnist.

For a comprehensive site on Ayodhya Ram Mandir, visit rammandir.getfacts.in

For a detailed video on the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhumi movement , check out these videos :