The scam unfolding around the Ram Mandir Trust in Ayodhya is growing bigger with every passing day. Unlike many other scams in the Modi era, this is one scam which the Modi government could not deny and the Godi Media could not suppress. It is a scam which concerns as much the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust as the Modi government which appointed it. It is a scam which directly concerns the RSS and the VHP, and both organisations have had to officially admit the scam and its implications for crores of devout Hindus whose trust stands jolted. It is a scam where the local journalists and lawyers of Ayodhya are determined to fight on for complete disclosure and justice.
Ayodhya has been at the heart of the Sangh brigade's aggressive mobilisation strategy over the last four decades. The first phase of the campaign ended with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 in brazen violation of India's constitutional vision and framework of rule of law. Over the next twenty-seven years, the Indian state and society, including the executive, the judiciary, the dominant media or the civil society at large, continued to display all the fundamental waverings and weaknesses that had emboldened the Sangh brigade to carry out the demolition in the first place.
The advent of the Modi era and the growing convergence between the executive and the judiciary hastened the arrival of the bizarre 2019 Supreme Court verdict which condemned the egregiously criminal act of demolition of the Babri Masjid but handed over the land for construction of the temple and directed the Union Government to set up a trust to manage and oversee the construction of the Ram Mandir. Since then Narendra Modi has started behaving more like a 'priest King' of ancient India than an elected Prime Minister answerable and accountable to the people of India. To the Modi government, Ayodhya today is more a seat of power and hub of religious tourism and commerce than a traditional temple town of North India.
This is not the first time that allegations of corruption have surfaced around the Ayodhya Ram Mandir project. Before the current eruption of donation embezzlement allegations, there have been serial corruption charges during various phases of the Ram Mandir construction campaign. And most of these allegations came from within Ayodhya, levelled by the Nirmohi Akhara, one of the original litigants in the Ayodhya title dispute. Way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s Mahant Sitaram had accused the VHP of swindling over 1,400 crore collected from devotees from across the world. There were allegations about misappropriation of Ram Shilas or consecrated bricks in the subsequent phase. More recently there have been several disclosures of inflated land transfer deals - including a case of land purchased for Rs 2 crore transferred soon after for Rs 18.5 crore to the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.
All these allegations were systematically ignored by the Sangh-BJP establishment and successive governments. The unconstitutional act of demolition of a mosque, the electoral exploitation of religious sentiment and allegations of financial irregularities, nothing seemed to matter much as long as the temple was not yet built. But perceptions seem to have begun to change since construction of the temple. The premature inauguration of the temple ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections did not deliver the much expected electoral dividends to the BJP. The NDA lost the majority of Lok Sabha seats in UP including the seat of Ayodhya itself. Narendra Modi himself had a narrow controversial escape in Varanasi. And now the donation embezzlement scam has erupted as the biggest moral crisis for not just the temple trust but for the entire Sangh-BJP establishment.
The Sangh-BJP damage-control exercise appears aimed at having a controlled and limited investigation so as to protect the big shots and lay the blame at the doorstep of lower level employees. General Secretary of the Trust, Champat Rai, the suspected lynchpin of the scam who is also the topmost RSS appointee in the Trust, has now been replaced by another RSS appointee Krishna Mohan. Meanwhile Hindutva outfits like the Hindu Raksha Dal have asked non-Hindus not to intervene in this Hindu affair where money has only changed hands within the Hindu community! VHP international president wants the police to take action against opposition leaders complaining about the theft of donations. And RSS Sarkaryavah (general secretary) calls for Hindu unity to 'thwart the conspiracies of anti-Hindu and anti-national forces seeking to malign the Hindu dharma and society by exploiting this unfortunate incident'.
Whether it is the case of Adani's corporate fraud, MP CM Mohan Yadav's land acquisition spree in Ujjain, systematic embezzlement of donations in Ayodhya, or glorification of oppressors of women, the Sangh brigade always jumps in support of corruption and patriarchal violence. Whistle-blowers from within the RSS, like Mahipal Singh in the case of the Ayodhya donation theft scam, are sidelined, if not 'mysteriously' eliminated. The unmistakable RSS quality that informs every outfit run by the Sangh, from the BJP to the Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, is complete lack of transparency and accountability. When Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge asked the RSS to furnish its legal credentials, Mohan Bhagwat equated RSS with Hinduism to argue that Hinduism needs no registration. No religion needs registration, but RSS is not equivalent to Hinduism.
In the name of religion, the RSS has long been violating every law of the land and every tenet of the Indian Constitution. The Ram Mandir donation theft scam comes as the latest instance of the habitual RSS violation of transparency, legality and accountability. For far too long, the RSS has managed to get away with its opaque existence and unlawful operations. Shortly after independence, India's first Home Minister Sardar Patel was forced to ban the RSS in the wake of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to save India's fledgling independence from being imperilled. The RSS then secured quick relief by promising to uphold the Constitution and function as a cultural organisation.
We now have yet another taste of the RSS brand of culture which treats religion as a political weapon and exploits the religious sentiment of devout Hindus for commercial gains and profiteering. The huge Ayodhya scam gives the people of India one more opportunity to put the RSS in its place. The RSS and the Modi-Yogi double engine dispensation must not be allowed to get away with its cover-up game plan. A credible probe into all the allegations, fixation of accountability and exemplary punishment for all the guilty starting with Champat Rai and dissolution of the RSS-controlled temple trust are the minimum corrective action that Ayodhya must witness.
