Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the Ram Temple slated to be built in Ayodhya on August 5. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and to ensure maximum social distancing at the programme, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirtha Kshetra has decided that there will not be more than 200 people, including 150 invitees at the foundation stone laying ceremony.
“We have decided that there will not be more than 200 people including 150 invitees at the event,” Swami Govind Dev Giri, Treasurer of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirtha Kshetra said. Before laying the foundation stone for the construction of the temple, PM Modi will offer prayers to Lord Ram at the temple and Lord Hanuman at Hanuman Garhi Temple in Ayodhya. Chief ministers from different states will be invited to the programme, Swami Govind Dev said.
In Ayodhya, elaborate preparations are being planned for the three-day Vedic rituals at the Ram Janmabhoomi site. The rituals will begin on August 3 and end with a ‘bhumi pujan’ on August 5 before the construction of the much awaited temple begins.
Veteran BJP leader and former deputy prime minister LK Advani and other leaders of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation will also be invited to the ceremony, a Ram Mandir trust member. Kameshwar Chaupal, a member of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra, a trust set up by the Centre to oversee the construction of the temple, said they will invite Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar.
“Timings for the foundation stone laying ceremony has been decided according to the Hindu calendar and the most auspicious time (12.15 pm) on August 5, has been selected accordingly,” Mahant Kamal Nayan Das, heir to Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Chairman of Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirath Kshetra Trust said.
Vedic rituals for the ‘bhumi pujan’ will begin with a special puja offered to Lord Ganesha. According to Hindu rituals, every auspicious ceremony begins with offerings to Lord Ganesha. Next day, the priests will perform Ramacharya Puja and on the last day August 5 another ‘bhumi pujan’ will be performed, which will be attended by the Prime Minister.
An 11-member team of priests from Varanasi and Ayodhya will perform the three-day rituals. In this entire ceremony, priests from Varanasi, which is the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Modi, will have a prominent role. PM Modi is likely to remain in the temple town for two hours.
Time capsule to be placed beneath temple site
A time capsule containing the history of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement is to be placed beneath the construction site of the temple in Ayodhya.
“The capsule will be lowered 200 feet below the surface to ensure that there are no disputes in future,” Chaupal said. “The time capsule will be buried along with the foundation of the Ram mandir,” Chaupal said, adding “200 feet is the depth of the foundation”.
“It will also contain the complete history of Ayodhya and detailed life of Lord Rama written in Sanskrit on ‘tamra patras (copper plates)’ in the Sanskrit language,” Chaupal said. When asked why the copper plates would be inscribed in only Sanskrit, he said it was a language in which one could write long sentences in very few words.
“The struggle for Ram Janmabhoomi, including the long-drawn case in the Supreme Court, has a lesson for the current and upcoming generations. The time capsule will be placed so that in future anyone who wishes to study the history of the temple, he’ll get the facts related to Ram Janmabhoomi so that no new controversy can arise,” Chaupal said.
The Ram Janmabhoomi time capsule has brought back memories of the “Kaalpatra”, a time capsule reportedly narrating the achievement of the first 25 years of India after Independence, which was buried in the Red Fort complex on August 15, 1973 by the then PM Indira Gandhi. Although the time period set for the capsule was 1,000 years, the Janata Party government dug it out after coming to power in 1977. The content of the “Kaalpatra”, however, was never made public.
Avoid live telecast of pujan: CPI MP
Communist Party of India MP Binoy Viswam wrote to information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar and sought his intervention to “avoid” the proposed live telecast of the Ram temple bhoomi pujan scheduled on August 5. Biswam, a Rajya Sabha MP, argued in his letter that the use of Doordarshan to telecast a religious function would be against “accepted norms of national integrity”. PM Modi and several others are expected to participate in the foundation stone-laying ceremony.
Pawar questions urgency
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar has questioned the urgency of constructing the Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya. “The eradication of Covid-19 is the priority of the Maharashtra government but some people think constructing a temple will help in its mitigation,” the 80-year old leader said while interacting with reporters in Solapur. He suggested that the Union government should focus on reviving the economy instead of constructing the temple. Pawar’s opposition to Ram temple is not new. His jibe at Modi came on July 19, a fortnight after he praised the PM for his stand on the Galwan valley standoff with China.
