Keeping the pot boiling

There is palpable anger that the VHP is exploiting the Kumbh Mela for political purposes. NEENA VYAS details a cross-section of the views.

THOUSANDS OF millennia ago, the gods and the demons fought for possession of a pot of `amrit' (nectar of immortality and salvation) extracted by churning the oceans. And during the battle that lasted years in terms of time on earth, four drops of the precious `amrit' fell to earth, one at the `sangam' (confluence) of the three great rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, where the kumbh mela is now celebrated when the planets are configured in the way they were when the `amrit' literally fell from the heavens.

The rich and the poor, the big and the small, flock in thousands and lakhs from across the country to take a dip at the `sangam' and be blessed by the `amrit' that had mixed with the waters of the holy rivers. Twenty to thirty square kilometres of the sandy river bed becomes one large tented city for the mela. The colour of the `mela' is predominantly saffron (not politically saffron) with `sadhus' and `sants' from almost every Hindu religious centre coming here to participate in the ritualistic bathing.

It is against this breathtaking backdrop of the mela, where ancient legend blends with current belief and where time past fuses into time present, that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has planned to once again bring the contentious Ram temple issue to centre-stage. Taking full advantage of the presence of a large number of Hindu religious leaders at the Kumbh, the VHP has planned a `dharam sansad' (religious parliament) to discuss the issue and possibly announce a date for the start of construction of the temple at the disputed site.

But the fact is that till now, a few days before the start of the `sansad' on January 19, the VHP leadership is not able to say precisely who will participate. The contact programme to get commitment to attend was begun by some 100 workers of the VHP on January 12. But even before that, on January 9, at a meeting of the Akhara Parishad at the Bara Akhara camp on the mela grounds, a resolution was passed by some 13 religious akharas spread throughout the country to boycott the VHP `dharam sansad'. As the Akhara Parishad head, Brahmacharya Gopalanand, said: ``What kind of religious parliament would it be when none of the Shankaracharyas expected to be present at the Kumbh will be attending? Neither the Shankaracharya of Puri, nor Sringeri, nor the Jyotishpeeth, not even the Varanasi Srimath head, Ramanandachari Ramnareshacharya, will participate in the VHP programme, and not the 13 akharas of the Akhara Parishad.''

A meeting of Shankaracharyas and other influential religious heads is also expected to take place here on January 15 to discuss the Ram Janmabhoomi issue. ``The Kumbh is not a place for politics or for confrontation, the VHP is giving the Ram temple issue a political twist, they even spread the word that I would not be attending the Kumbh Mela,'' Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati of Jyotishpeeth and the Dwaraka and Sharda peeths said.

The religious leaders opposing the VHP also want a temple to be built but not by vitiating the atmosphere or creating a confrontation with Muslims. Their belief is that it is because of the anti- Muslim stance given by the Sangh Parivar to the temple issue that Muslim clerics have taken a hard line.

However, the VHP plans to go ahead, although now some of the senior leaders such as Acharya Giriraj Kishore and Mr. Champat Rai say that even if a date is announced it is likely to be in the nature of a one-year advance notice. It seems that for the moment the VHP is planning to make the most of the thermocol model of the temple that the Digamber Akhara Mahant, Ramchandra Paramhans, unveiled some days ago. (Earlier it had been claimed that the 21-feet-long model would itself be of carved marble and stone).

The three-day `sansad' starting January 19 will be preceded by a meeting of the VHP Board of Trustees on January 16 and 17 of which Mr. Vishnu Hari Dalmiya is the president, that will be followed by an All-India VHP workers' meeting on January 17 and 18 which is expected to be attended by some 2,000 volunteers. The `sansad' itself will start with a meeting of the Marg Darshak Mandal where the resolutions will be finalised before being discussed and adopted at the wider `sansad'.

Acharya Kishore said that apart from the resolution on the temple and a possible announcement of the date for start of construction, there will be resolutions on cow protection, Ganga protection, national security, and religious conversions. Mahant Ramchandra Paramhans, who has not been able to maintain control of his own Digamber Akhara (which is a member of the Akhara Parishad which has resolved to boycott the `sansad'), has indicated that the preparations for the first phase of temple construction up to the first floor would be completed by March 31, that is, the actual construction work could begin any time after that. But other VHP leaders, including Acharya Kishore and Mr. Champat Rai (man in-charge of the VHP's mela camp), say that there would have to be a year-long `jan jagran' (people's awakening) agitation.

While the VHP has been loudly proclaiming that it is demanding the construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya in the name of ``Hindu sentiment'' or what the Prime Minister himself described as ``national sentiment'', many known religious leaders have questioned the VHP's credentials to speak on behalf of Hindus or pretend that they are themselves holy men. ``Who is this Ashok Singhal?'' asked Ramnareshacharya of the Varanasi Srimath. ``When I met him I asked him directly what he knew of Hinduism and he folded his hands and pleaded ignorance,'' Ramnareshacharya said. Another religious head, Brahmachari Gopalanand of the Panchagni Akhara in Gujarat, explained the reasons for the Akhara Parishad passing a resolution against participation in the so- called `dharam sansad'. ``The Parishad feels that the way the VHP is going about the Ram temple issue is an insult to sanatan dharam which is not against any community. Attempts have to be made to build the temple not by Mr. Ashok Singhal and his men but by the truly religious heads,'' the Brahmachari said.

Other charges levelled were that there was no open public accounting of the crores of rupees taken as donations for the temple; that they sold the holy `Gangajal' to make money during an earlier agitation, and finally that they were exploiting religion and the temple issue to get votes for the BJP, the political arm of the RSS, to which Parivar the VHP also belongs.

And finally, there was the accusation that the media was reporting the activities of the VHP daily, as if that was the only thing happening at the Kumbh Mela. ``You can see here, the `sadhus' and `sants' and the people have no time for the VHP, they are here to perform their own rituals and find peace and salvation,'' another mahant of the Juna Akhara said.

There is also palpable anger that the VHP was exploiting this thousands of years old tradition of the Kumbh mela for political purposes. Here people come to cleanse their souls, they are eager to find salvation by bathing in the waters which received the drop of precious `amrit' from the heaven thousands of millennia ago, so the faithful believe. But the VHP was brewing communal poison on this great occasion which was a festival of all people, rich and poor alike. The Ram temple issue will be used to beat the Muslims with, and the resolution on conversions will certainly attack the Christian clergy.

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