It is debatable whether or not Ram & Sethu were both figments of human imagination. But Ram Temple was not.

In the middle of November 1990 I rode a train that would take me and other karsevaks home from Ayodhya. A middle-aged woman also boarded the train after we did; in fact her husband and two sons who were probably a few years older than me carried her into the train. One of us vacated a seat for her; she smiled and thanked the person. He asked her how she was feeling and she said she was fine except that she could not walk and briefly showed us legs that completely swollen. “The swelling is from walking the distance from Allahabad to Ayodhya and will be cured soon.”

We had heard the stories of karsevaks who had braved the weeklong trek of 150-miles through the fields and a jungle to be able to reach Ayodhya in time on that fateful day of 30th October 1990 to stage the Satyagraha. More than 20 million people had made the journey to Uttar Pradesh in response to the call ‘Chalo Ayodhya’ of Ramajanmabhoomi Nirman Samiti.

We also reached Allahabad on 25th October and intended to take another train to Ayodhya. However Mulayam Singh Yadav, then the Chief Minister of UP had taken the famous oath that he would not allow even a single dove to reach Babri Masjid on that day. Allahabad also resembled a war zone and all trains going towards Ayodhya were cancelled. We decided to wait for further instruction from the leaders of the movement and were directed to stay at one of the Akhadas near the sangam of Ganga and Yamuna Rivers. Hundreds of thousands of karsevaks were stranded in Allahabad and were slowly being rounded up by the police. We received instructions to stay put and to court arrest for a Jail Bharo or to stage the Satyagraha in Allahabad. We stood out as karsevaks and outsiders and sang songs, bhajans and raised slogans to catch the attention of the police further. But there simply were not enough of the police and so we whiled away the time bathing or playing at the sangam, cooking food and sightseeing until some police could attend to us. On the night of 27th October after we had had dinner the police finally came and we rejoiced with great joy and relief but honestly me and a couple of my friends too were scared to death by this first brush with law enforcers and hoped that it would be the last. We were 17 years old, had just entered college and had joined the agitation risking the ire of our parents and teachers. We were naïve in considering that a police arrest would not be on the cards and now were afraid of how that would affect our studies and future. We were not old enough to have even a driving license and had no other IDs. So we quickly decided to register false names and addresses with the police. And not very imaginatively, I recorded the name of my neighbor and the address of another school friend. The next day we were shifted to the town of Fatehpur where we were dumped in a makeshift prison temporarily fashioned out of a huge compound of RCF (Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers.) There were more than 3000 karsevaks and there were not enough police to manage us. Anyone could have left that place but it was a part of the Satyagraha strategy to stay arrested and to burden the administration until Karseva could be performed in Ayodhya on 30t October. The prison became a summer camp where we took turns to manage the rations and cook food. I remember the police officer that acted as Jail Warden that the UP administration was spending 10 rupees per prisoner per day and that we had to make do with the available stuff. We cooperated and maintained complete order. The relations with the Police were very friendly and a few times we also played Kabaddi with them. Most of the Police including the Warden had Ram, Laxman, Bajrang or Avadh in their first names and when they used to talk to us with hands folded. After lunch they allowed us to go out into the fields or to the nearby village where we were treated like heroes and offered very delicious hot jalebis and lassi or chai. We often ate Chat and some even went to the local cinema to watch Madhuri Dikshit starrer ‘Sailaab’. In the nearby field there was a small lake where we bathed and also ate fresh shingadas that grow on the plants under water. And everyday we eagerly awaited the news from Ayodhya. We watched on TV as Atalbihari Vajpayee, Advani and Vijayaraje Sindhia courted arrest and were very happy to know that Ashokji Singhal of VHP had not yet surfaced. We had faith in the leaders and in the success of the movement.

We spent the morning of 30th October singing bhajans, songs and raising slogans like the karsevaks in Ayodhya. No one knew if any karsevaks could reach Ayodhya amid the very tight security and whether Mulayam Singh was actually successful in keeping his oath. Then the news from Ayodhya started arriving. Ashokji Singhal had miraculously reached Ayodhya and so did more than two lakh karsevaks out of which a few hundred also entered the Janmabhoomi complex and offered Karseva at the site of Babri Masjid along with Ashokji. The success of the Satyagraha meant a huge achievement and a great step forward for the movement. And that earned the ire of rabidly pro-Islamist Mulayam Singh Yadav. He issued the orders to the police and paramilitary forces to open fire on the karsevaks then the narrow lanes of Ayodhya became a Jallianwala Bagh. Mulayam’s army started firing indiscriminately and in a few minutes had killed more than 800 people a number that defies reason any which way you look at it. It was murder and Mulayam tried to cover it further with more brute force. The dead bodies were quickly loaded into trucks and were rushed out of Ayodhya where those were tied with stones and dumped in Sharayu River or were piled up and burned with gasoline. The Indians who were agitating for the Ram Temple were obviously the children of a lesser God than those who favored sporting the shame of Babri Masjid. It is worth pondering if Muslim agitators would have met the same fate in India. Have we heard of a similar treatment being meted out to violent Muslims in Kashmir who are killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indians for decades? We knew at that time that we were not jihadis and had participated in a peaceful protest without carrying any weapons for destruction or for even protecting ourselves.

We were released from the prison in the second week of November and went to Ayodhya to visit the site. When we were bathing in the Sharayu River a dead body had surfaced a few feet away. It was snow white and had a bullet hole in the stomach. The skin was very loosely hugging the bones and almost pealed of when we pulled the body to the riverbank. The woman we met in the train from Ayodhya was a schoolteacher and her entire family locked their house and came to Ayodhya for Karseva. My mother who had died in April of the same year was also a teacher and I believed that she would also have taken part in this agitation. That belief had helped me greatly in persuading my father and others who were concerned about me and had initially opposed my decision. The words of that woman left a deep impression on me, “The next time again I will definitely go to Ayodhya but not for any silly Satyagraha. I will be carrying an instrument to protect myself and to bring down Babri”, she said. Her words became true on 6th December 1992 when Indians finally lost their patience and took the matters in their own hands. An ignominy was erased at last and the national pride was restored. But when that glorious history was being created I had finished writing some stupid test of Japanese Language Proficiency at JNU and then rushed to the Old Delhi station to catch a train to Lucknow from where I planned to take another one to Ayodhya. However I found that all trains were canceled and also learned that Babri was no more.

Ram Janmabhoomi Temple is not a necessity of Hindus alone, there are more than 5,000 Ram Temples in Ayodhya, and Ram is probably a fictitious hero of Valmiki’s epic Ramayan. So why did Babar destroy that one particular temple out of thousands of other Ram Temples? That is because it was the faith of Indians that Ram existed, was born there and they had built a temple that was one of the holiest shrines of India. Islamist invaders targeted those prominent symbols of India’s heritage and pride, Gazni Muhammad desecrated the Somnath Temple during his every attack on India and Aurangzeb destroyed the Temples of Kashi, Mathura for the same reason. Since then Islamists have destroyed more than 30,000 place of worship of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains. It was an attack on the self-confidence of Indians, on the freedom to follow their faiths and a violation of human rights.

Japan meticulously recreated its temples and shrines that were destroyed in the World War. Once India became free it was only natural that the shame of Babri was erased and the glory of other prominent monuments was also restored. Sardar Vallabbhai Patel resurrected the Somnath Temple and it was necessary that the same be done in Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi also. It is a no-brainer, that is whether to restore the most important shrines of the national heroes or to meekly submit to the demands of the Islamists who want to glorify the legacy of India’s enemies like Babar and Aurangzeb. Is it a surprise that Pakistan has named its nuclear capable missiles ‘Babar’ though Babar was an Afghanistani?

Today I personally do not believe in any Religion, in the existence of God or even in the concept of Hindu Nationalism. But even today I am very proud of my choice of participating in the Ram Temple movement and I have no intention of dropping out of it ever. The movement did not start in the twentieth century and in the last six centuries countless Indians have laid down their lives for reclaiming those national shrines. Indians through all ages have nursed this dream and it has the same significance as the Israelis dreaming about getting Jerusalem back for 2,000 years. Betraying the Ram Temple movement would be a betrayal of those Indians, a betrayal of India and even worse, collusion with the enemies of India.

Indians have not attacked other countries and have not demolished any places of worship in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. It is the human right of Indians that their faith, the freedom of faith and places of faith be restored without further delay. It is also a golden opportunity for the Muslims in India to make a gesture that will earn the credibility that they lack as Indians and to distance themselves from the Islamists. Indians and Muslims performing Karseva together to rebuild these shrines is a practical solution for bringing about communal harmony and national integration. Indians do not need the Ram Sethu but Ram Temple is a necessity of India. We, Hindus and Muslims alike, need the Ram Temple to bridge the Babri chasm that divides us.

-Niyanta Deshpande Tokyo, Japan