But what about Ramarajya?

Rama-neeti of Governance

In the 1929 Young Indian, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that “in Ramarajya… Rama and Rahim are the same, personifying truth and righteousness…”

The CBI court’s judgement on September 30 – two days before Gandhiji’s 151st birth anniversary – calls for a revisit of Rama’s discourse on dharma, truth and justice. The verdict acquitting all the accused of conspiring to demolish Babri Masjid focused on the lack of credible evidence. Truth fell a casualty purely on technical grounds.

How would divine Rama, who set high standards for ethical and moral conduct, react to a verdict like this in Ramarajya, where Gandhi said that the weakest citizen could get justice?

While the CBI court ruled that there was no evidence that the Babri demolition was pre-planned, the 2009 Justice Liberhan Commission concluded that the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, led by L K Advani’s rath yatra in 1990, played a key role in the entire saga and that the demolition itself was carried out with “great painstaking preparation and planning.” The commission said that the BJP’s top leaders and their public articulations were implicated in it all. It pointed out that the Kalyan Singh government, which gave assurances to the High Court and Supreme Court, evaded its responsibility wilfully.

In November 2019, the Supreme Court said that the Babri Masjid demolition was an “egregious violation of the rule of law” and breach of the assurance given to it. Invoking Article 142 of the Constitution, it said that “a wrong committed must be remedied” and “tolerance and mutual co-existence nourish the secular commitment of our nation and its people.”

It is pertinent to recall the Ramayana and the lessons to learn from it today. King Dasharatha prepared to crown his eldest son Rama as his successor. The king’s third wife, Kaikeyi, wanted her son Bharata to succeed him, and got Rama exiled.

Rama rejects his brother Lakshmana’s advice to revolt against his father because then he would be considered a power-monger and the kingdom would be plunged into a power struggle which would destroy harmony.

Unhappy and upset with the adharmic development wrought by his own mother, Bharata rushes to the forest and begs Rama to return as the king following Dasharatha’s death. Rama replies that the word given to his father is not dead. Rama, the ideal persona, did not want anybody to feel that he was waiting for his father’s death.

His advice to Bharata to administer the kingdom on his behalf until the period of exile was over, which appears in Ayodhyakanda, has become very relevant today. In it are the major principles of governance.

A king must have at least one scholar who can critique him and stop him when he seems headed in the wrong direction; he should listen to dissent, instead of listening to thousands of sycophants; and a king should publicly honour in his court eminent men, even if they differ with him on matters.

A servant is one who does service and should be respected, and servants’ salaries should be given on time. Ministers must be appointed after critically examining their expertise and honesty. Pampering the king’s own kith and kin, favouring some employees, intimidating others, stoking conflict among them, will all destroy the kingdom. The king should speak less, but should not be incommunicado and should not make himself unavailable. His people should be free to approach him.

In conflicts in society for property, money, anger, jealousy, etc., resulting due to differences, the strong exploit the weak, but the king should give ear to the voiceless. The poor come to the king’s court as a last resort when there is a conflict with the powerful; the tears of the innocent would destroy the peace of the kingdom.

The royal court should not pardon anyone who breaks the law, even if he is powerful and rich. But what is happening in India now? The powerful are becoming more powerful. The voiceless have become dumb.

“Taking any decision single-handedly, not completing welfare projects on time, appointing our own people to posts is Aviveka…” Remember the 2016 demonetisation?

Unsatisfiable greed, arrogance of power, laziness, lying, knowingly following the wrong path, oppressing people, stupidity, indecisiveness, illegality, insulting others unnecessarily are the great enemies of a ruler.

A king should consider himself a debtor, not the owner of the riches in the treasury. Listening to gossip, working thoughtlessly, jealousy, betrayal, finding fault with people unnecessarily, squandering money, arrogance, cruelty in punishment are weapons of self-destruction.

Though in the Ramayana, there were great leaders like Ravana, Vali, Sugriva, Dasharatha Rama is unique.

Rama admonishes Vibhishana for refusing to perform Ravana’s last rites. Ravana-ism should be killed, but the dead Ravana should be shown respects. A true Rama-ist, Mahatma Gandhi, declared, “Fight with all the moral strength British imperialism, but don’t hate the British as a people.”

Do we hear such sane voices now? But the rant raised by the so-called liberal rationalists who ask for proof of the birth of Rama in Ayodhya also deserves to be totally ignored as it is equally divisive. Most people, irrespective of their faiths, from Afghanistan to Cambodia, believe that he was born in Ayodhya.

The Ram Mandir issue has been decided, though it has taken a heavy toll on our nation in the process, and even Muslims have participated in it. Now, the country should move forward and not follow the path of a fallen state like Pakistan, though even in Pakistan, there are many who oppose communalism and fundamentalism.

Now that the temple of Maryada Purushottam is being built, those governing this nation should listen to Rama’s advice to Bharata when India is faced with a multitude of problems – mostly self-made, some made by our enemies and supposed friends. Otherwise, the very purpose of Ram Mandir will get defeated.

There is irony in Advani today seeming to be Mahabharata’s Bheeshma, Murli Manohar Joshi Guru Drona, while Uma Bharti has ended up as Ekalavya losing a thumb. Be that as it may, if the Ram Mandir episode does not result in a new era of Gandhiji’s conception of Ramarajya, I can only quote a line from eminent Kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga, “Rama cried, “Rama…Rama...”

(The writer is a former principal of Seshadripuram College and vice president of KPCC)