Dasrathi finds Rama Janma Bhumi (Birth Place)

This blog is devoted to Mahatma Gandhi on his पून्य  तिथी (Death Anniversary), for whom RamNam was dear.

Dasrathi finds Rama जन्म भूमि Janma Bhumi (birth place)

Debi Prasad Choudhary

Los Angeles, 1/30 /2013

Dasrathi grew up in a small village, where his father worked as headmaster of a ¹basic school. The village had two temples adjacent to each other. One was ²Raghunath Temple and the other ³Gopinath temple. Dasrathi’s grant mother was a devout lady. Almost every day, she used to make garlands and take to these temples. If there are enough garlands, she used to give to all the idols, but her preference was Gopinath, who was with Sri Radha, because she was Goudya Vaishnav. The temple priests occasionally used to wait her few minutes for evening ⁴arati. Dasrathi used to accompany her, but did not like the garlands for Gopinath. He liked Raghunath because it was his maternal grant father’s name and daily his father used to read ⁵Ramcharit Manas. The Raghunath temple was also a spacious one. Once his father recited Ramcharit Manas in the temple veranda for four months and explained the content to the village folks, which included the ⁶Sarpanch of the village. He performed this act to get a son after three daughters. After completing this activity, Dasrathi’s father and Sarpanch distributed sweets to the villagers. Actually, after few months Dasrathi got a brother. He was happy because now onwards his mother will not leave food after hearing a flute melody from a distance. Dasrathi’s mother used to quit lunch or dinner after hearing flute because ⁷Josada used to practice this every evening to attend to her son on his return with cows. Since Dasrathi was the only son like Sri Krishna, his mother practiced for years, which made him uncomfortable recently. Anyway, since there was a result, Dasrathi had deep faith and respect for Sri Ram. He actually believed that Sri Ram lives there, in that temple.

The Raghunath temple housed two sets of idols of Sri Ram, Lakshman, Sita and Hanumanji with folded hands. One of the sets was made out of brass and and gave a golden look. The other was more colorful in which Sri Ram was blue, Lakshman and Sita were in white and Hanumanji was red. Only, the colored idols were movable (चलंती⁸ chalanti). Dasrathi was never clear about the relationship between these two sets of idols and never bothered to know. He thought the colored idols are real things. During ⁹Ramnavami, every year there used to be almost ten days of festival in the temple. The red triangular flag with a picture of Sri Hanumanji used to be changed. Dasrathi was always eager to know if the eyes of Hanumanji on the flag are in proper orientation with respect to the village. Because, the believe was if there was a mistake it would bring evil to the village mostly in the form of burning straw roofs of poor villagers and increased theft activity.

On Ramnavami evening there used to be ritual for the birth of Sri Ram. Behind closed door there used to be activity in which, as Dasrathi’s grand mother would describe him that Sri Ram used be born from a mud pot filled with rice. He never questioned how every years Sri Ram is born from these mud pots with the same shape, unlike his own sisters and brother. But he believed in this event without doubt. On 4^th or 5^th day, there used to be marriage ceremony of Sri Ram and Sita followed by (बनबास) ¹⁰ Banbas on four separate chariots.  In the end (पटाभिषेक)  ¹¹Patavisak.  In the end, there used be a big village festival with four or five theater groups performing with lots of loud music throughout the day. Dasrathi witnessed this for four to five years when he was younger than 10 years old. He had never seen any other temple, let along the existence of other religions. So, there was no need for doubting that Sri Ram was born anywhere else. For Dasrathi and his grand mother Raghunath temple was the real birthplace of Sri Ram, since she never bothered to find out  any other place either.

Only after many years when Dasrathi was working as a practicing scientist, he came to know the real birthplace of Sri Ram when ¹²Babri Masjid was demolished. By this time he had forgotten the childhood Raghunath temple. It was a tense situation. That day the state government was dismissed and the city where Dasrathi was working had curfew. Following this event, he listened to the heroic act of many people who returned from ¹³Ayodhya and felt a sort of pride that at last the birthplace of Rama will have a grand temple. This changed when there was a big riot related to this event. He was very uncomfortable and became doubtful if the temple was worth it.

Several years after the demolition of Babari Masjid, Dasrathi visited Banaras and Mathura and noticed huge Mosques adjacent to the holy Hindu places of worships. He was uncomfortable and a bit angry.  He thought there was a bad history and it should be corrected, even if there is a brief period of unrest. Now Dasrathi took interest in knowing more about what happened in Babri Masjid demolition and following events. Fear and disgust overwhelmed him as he started hearing the advocates of making a grand temple in Ayodhya. These people were mostly ignorant, funny looking. Once he travelled on train with a group of ¹⁴Sadhus, who are mostly supporters of making temple in the birthplace of Sri Ram. He was in a reserved compartment, where Sadhu’s occupied without ticket. The ticket inspector used to vacate them occasionally. Dasrathi was amused on one of the conversion of Sadhus. One of them was narrating the excitement on the occasion of a gas cylinder blast saying “महाराज, क्या मजा आया । टंकी फटी । और भाग दौड़ मच गई । लूट सुर होगई । ” (Sir, what an excitement. There was a blast of gas tank. There was stampede and rampage.)

These days Dasrathi likes to make sense of Ram Janma Bhumi. For his devout grand mother this sacred place is in that village where he spent his first ten years. His grand mother never went to Ayodhya. It is unlikely that he will ever visit Ayodhya. He feels that village temple as sacred as any other place. As he reads Sri Ram Charit Manas again and again keeping the tradition of his father, he finds making a temple by killing others is definitely not compatible with the personality of ¹⁵Maryada Pursatom, who asked his wife to go to forest to please his subject. Also, Sri Ram is not the contemporary God. Now Dasrathi believes that the God has incarnated in his 9^{th 16}Avatar as Sri Jaganath and living in Puri right now. So, what is the need of temple in his previous birthplace? Since Dasrathi is a devout Hindu like his grand mother, he appreciates the deed of Sri Krishna before his death. Actually, Sri Krishna never bothered about his birthplace. He moved and created grand cities for living. Perhaps anticipating future trouble, Sri Krishna asked the sea to drawn his city before his death. He has now taken the form of Sri Jaganath and residing in Puri. So, for Dasrathi it does not make sense to make a memorial for a living person The God.

But, what happens to hindu pride? Dasrathi thinks, “¹⁷भाड़ मै जाय ” (let it do in drains). Dasrathi is not proud of anything anyway. Dasrathi’s grandmother used to say, अति गर्बे हता लंका (due to pride Lanka of Ravan got destroyed). Those who want to be proud should find some other way without demeaning Sri Ram and making Him ashamed. Dasrathi is convinced that Sri Ram would never have hired the current proponents of temple as his lawyer. So, Dasrathi found Ram Janma Bhumi in his childhood village, where he witnessed the birth of Sri Ram every year on Ramnavami with his grandmother. That is good enough as symbolic memorial, as his God is now living somewhere else.

¹basic school: A school that had up to 8^th standard and followed Gandhian way of teaching that included activities like agriculture and school cleaning by the students.

²Raghunath Temple: Temple devoted to Sri Ram

³Gopinath temple: Temple devoted to Sri Krishna

⁴arati: An evening ritual in the temple when a small lamp is shown to the idol of Gods.

⁵Ramcharit Manas: A book written by Tulsi Das describing the like story of Sri Ram

⁶Sarpanch: Village chief

⁷Josada: mother of Sri Krishna

⁸chalanti: Movable

⁹Ramnavami: Birthday of Sri Ram

¹⁰Banbas: Going to forest  

¹¹Patavisak: ascending to royal throne ceremony  

¹²Babri Masjid: A structure for worship for Muslims believed to have been constructed by Mogul emperor Babar after destroying a hindu temple at the birthplace of Sri Ram.

¹³Ayodhya: The city where Sri Ram was born and lived.  

¹⁴Sadhus: sacred man in Hindu faith  

¹⁵Maryada Pursatom:  The best of man who follows best traditions of the society.

¹⁶Avatar: Incarnation