One of the biggest events of the year 2024 was the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. This is the culmination of one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s long-held hopes. The journey, which began in the 90s with the destruction of the Babri Mosque has finally ended for the BJP.
But why does the Hindutva movement care so much about the Ram Temple in Ayodhya?
One of the reasons is that they desire “Ram Rajya.”
But what is Ram Rajya?
According to Valmiki’s Ramayana, Ram Rajya is the rule of King Ram. It was a time when the world was filled with perfect peace and righteousness. There were no tears, no disease or death, no war or pain. There was no crime. People were filled with virtue, and they did their duties joyfully. Everybody was content and their talks all centred around Ram.
The World is Broken
The very fact that so many Indians even desire such a Utopian world testifies to the fact that our world is broken. Nobody could reasonably claim that our world is perfect — we all know of wars and rumours of wars, we know of diseases and pandemics, death and suffering. We all know of crime, corruption and injustice as everyday realities of our world.
Every major philosophy of the world dreams of, remembers, or hopes for some form of Utopia. The Hindus look forward to their Ram Rajya, the Communists work towards their classless society, the capitalist neo-liberals work towards their globalized economy without any trade barriers, and the Gandhians work towards their self-sustaining village democracy. And some worldviews remember or dream of an ancient past when the world was perfect. The Greeks dreamed of an ancient golden age, Engels and the communists often spoke of a primitive communism in the past, and even Hindu mythology would talk of Satya Yuga — the first and best of the Yugas when the world was perfect.
All of these philosophies and worldviews think of the current world as broken and either a past or a future world as the world that is perfect.
The Desire is appropriate but misplaced
Many people desire Ram Rajya because it is an appropriate desire. It is a desire that is born out of the fact that we humans were made for another world — we were made for that perfect world. Our hearts groan within us as we long for that perfect kingdom. The similarity of the desire in other traditions testifies to the fact that it is true. The differences in accounts asks us to evaluate to see which account is the truth and which is a mere corrupted echo of that truth.
The Bible gives us the true object of our longings — the Kingdom of God! The Kingdom of God is the place where our tears will be no more. It is the place where disease, sickness and death will be destroyed. It is the place where justice and righteousness will flow like a mighty river. We will have eternal life of joy and the object of our joy will be King Jesus.
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