Building on faith

The temple can be built in 24 hours. We don’t need any cement. We don’t need any maurang (red sand), baalu (sand) and gitti (stone chips). It will simply be assembled. Everything is right here, have a look,” says Siaram Pandey, a class VII student at the local Saraswati School. We are at the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas Karyashala, known popularly as Karsevakpuram. Karsevaks are volunteers involved in the construction of the Ram temple. Siaram and a few other students stand at the entrance and vie with each other to show visitors around for a small fee.

The entrance to this makeshift temple workshop has an elaborately carved stone gate, similar to the one which the temple will eventually have. “But that will be much taller,” says Sharad Sharma, the Vishva Hindu Parishad spokesperson. Inside the shed, the walls are plastered with old and faded prints, posters, notices and labels. They depict, among other things, various stages of the movement for a “Bhavya Ram Mandir”. Inside, a few sadhus on a charpai sing bhajans into a mike. To the right of the gate is a model of the proposed temple with a hundi next to it which is not exactly overflowing with money.

Another shed nearby has a few dusty tractor trolleys, which were probably used to ferry the massive sandstone slabs and bricks and the rusting sheets of steel and tin. A few men are working on the stones, and some welding work is in progress. The neatly numbered engraved pillars, beams and roof slabs are gathering moss outdoors. It is very noisy, although there are no more than 30 to 40 people. “Sitaram” chants emanate from huge loudspeakers placed on nearby poles and trees to the accompaniment of a scary banging sound on the metallic sheet roof caused by the monkeys that jump from one shed to another.

To the right of this hall is the model of the temple, which the karsevaks plan to build. It has been made by the renowned temple architect Chandrakantbhai Sompura of Ahmedabad. His grandfather had designed the Somnath temple as well as the Swaminarayan temples that go by the name of Akshardham in many cities the world over. Sompura’s first team of four men arrived at Ayodhya one September morning in 1990.

On another side of the premises, bricks brought by devotees are stacked together. Some have “Ram” stencilled on them, some have the names of the villages, towns and even countries from where the devotees had sent the bricks. Canada, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Sri Lanka are all represented here. There are massive stone pillars and beams, mostly carved, with dimensions and locations scribbled on top, giving the place the look of a sculptor’s studio.

“It is not a matter of completing the mandir in one day or one week. It is a grand temple that we are talking about. Only Ram Lalla knows how many people will have to work for how long. But we are so determined and so prepared to install Ram Lalla that everyone in Ayodhya, and the visitors who come here, believe that it will be assembled in a day,” says Sharma.

The VHP estimates that 67 per cent of the construction work is done, completing the ground floor and a portion of the first floor of the two-storey temple. According to Sharma, the main door frame of the temple will be made of Makrana white marble and will be engraved. The temple will be made of pink sandstone. The pillars, beams and roof slabs will be hand sculpted and ornamental. “They are lying in the open, gathering fungus. But when the temple is completed, it will be cleaned chemically,” says Sharma. They plan to use the bricks, as it represents the shradha (devotion) of tens of thousands of people.

Ramjanmabhoomi is about two kilometres from Karsevakpuram. The place is heavily secured, with uniformed men keeping constant vigil, and pilgrims and visitors, who cannot carry anything with them, are frisked four times before they begin a long walk inside a steel meshed cage-like tunnel that meanders all the way to the spot where Ram Lalla is placed, under a tarpaulin sheet. It is exactly at the centre of what was below the middle dome of the demolished Babri mosque. A quick glance is all that they get of Ram Lalla and anyone staying a bit longer is nudged out. There is a lamp lit, some flowers could be seen, and a pujari distributes prasad.

Every alternate Sunday, a group of observers visit the spot. It includes Haji Mehboob Ahmad, a petitioner in the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya dispute case, the Faizabad divisional commissioner who is the receiver of the disputed site, the chief of the Uttar Pradesh public works department, two members of the Archaeological Survey of India, Sunni Waqf Board members Iqbal Ansari, Mohammad Umar and Maulana Mehfuzur Rahman, Justice S.K. Singh of the Allahabad High Court and retired judge T.M. Khan. “We ensure that the status quo is maintained and that there is no damage to the tarpaulin,” says Ahmad.

Sharma says building the temple will be challenging. “It was difficult to bring the heavy stones here through the narrow, winding lanes. These will have to be taken to the site through these very lanes. That cannot be done easily,” he says. Sompura and his son Nikhil who oversee the construction say they had designed the temple without knowing the exact soil bearing capacity and water level of the land. “Moreover, we cannot change the place of the garbh grih (sanctum sanctorum) because Ram Lalla’s birth room is fixed. We cannot lay the foundation of the garbh grih without touching Ram Lalla’s birth room,” says Sompura.

When the work was progressing fast, Sompura used to travel from Gujarat to Ayodhya every month. Now he goes once a year. “The temple is designed according to Shilp Shastra and is based on the compressive strength of stone. So, we can place stone over stone with tongue and groove joints and apply cement afterwards by grouting. But, it is not possible to ‘assemble’ the temple in 24 hours,” says Sompura. “Only garbh grih walls can be done [in that time]. If each and every carved stone is at site, the whole temple can be built in two years.”