ALMOST a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Ram is rashtra (Ram is the State) and dev is desh (the deity is the country) while consecrating the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22, 2024, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, Mohan Bhagwat, made a highly preposterous statement that on that day last year asli azadi (real independence) was achieved by India.
Bhagwat did acknowledge that on August 15, 1947, India had obtained political independence but asli independence could not be achieved on that day and the country had to wait for Modi to consecrate the Ram temple. Incidentally, the temple stands at the very place where Babri mosque once stood before it was demolished in 1992 in the presence of top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders. That act of demolition was held by the Supreme Court in its 2019 judgment as “an egregious violation of the rule of law”.
While Modi's statement identifying Ram with rashtra was an attempt to subvert the secular credentials of India to uphold the idea of a theocratic State, Bhagwat's above narrative constitutes an affront to the freedom fighters who fought for independence which India got on August 15, 1947 and the 75th anniversary of which was celebrated by the Modi regime in 2022.
How can a country get real independence by consecrating a place of worship? No one ever linked the independence of our country to the consecration of a place of worship.
