Mallika Dureja
The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has decided to use rocks from Nepal, Karnataka, and Odisha to carve an idol of Ram Lalla for the sanctum sanctorum of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, which is still being built.
Already, rocks from Nepal and Mysore, Karnataka, have made it to Ayodhya. They are safe at Ram Sewakpuram, where the Trust has kept them. Soon, an Odisha boulder will also get to Ayodhya.
From these choices, the Trust will choose the hardest rocks to use for carving the Ram Lalla idol.
A member of the Trust said, “After a scientific process, only the best rock will be chosen for Ram Lalla’s idol in the sanctum sanctorum of the Ram Mandir.”
He also said that the hardest, longest-lasting rock would be chosen.
“We have to make sure that Ram Lalla’s idol stays the same for a long time and that the weather and time don’t change it,” he said.
Rajendra Singh “Pankaj,” a senior leader of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), said that all rocks that reach Ayodhya are religiously important to the Trust.
He also said that the rocks that were not used to make Ram Lalla’s idol will be kept.
A senior member of the Trust said that experts’ first ideas suggested that the rock from Nepal would be best for Ram Lalla’s idol.
People involved in the selection process in Nepal wanted the Trust to give these rocks back if they weren’t used to make the idol for the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
“The Trust has the right to choose which rock Ram Lalla will worship. But if they don’t need these rocks from the river Gandak, they have to give them back. We’ll put them back where they came from, said Kulraj Chalise, who did his PhD research on the Shaligram rocks of the Shree Krishnagandaki river in Nepal. He was part of the process of choosing the rocks and then moving the two boulders to Ayodhya.
Chalise said that the Mahant of the Janaki Mandir in Janakpur, Nepal, and everyone else involved in the selection process want the Trust to return the two rocks if they are not used to make Ram Lalla’s idol.
The Trust, for its part, has hired well-known sculptors to choose the rock and make Ram Lalla’s idol.
Sudarshan Sahu, who won the Padma Vibhushan award, Vasudev Kamath of Odisha, KV Maniya of Karnataka, and Shashtrayajya Deulkar of Pune are all on the committee. Along with other experts, they will decide on the rock and make two or three models of Ram Lalla’s idol. After that, the Trust will pick one of the models. The Trust has also decided to put up a statue of the god when he was a child.
In 2020, the Trust started looking for the rocks for Ram Lalla’s idol.
After a lot of thought, the Trust decided to get rocks from the Gandaki river in the Muktinath area of Nepal, which is in the Himalayas.
Bimalendra Nidhi, who used to be the vice prime minister of Nepal, took care of all the legal paperwork on behalf of the Trust. Nidhi hired geologists to help her choose rocks.
According to the Trust, the former Nepalese vice prime minister also played a key role in getting the proposal to give the rocks to the Trust approved by the Nepalese cabinet at the time.
Champat Rai, who is the general secretary of the Trust, says that the idol will be about 8.5 feet tall so that the sun can shine on it.
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Rai said that the Trust talked to the best architecture and building design schools in the country about how to design the Ram temple’s sanctum sanctorum so that the sun’s rays fall on the forehead of Ram Lalla every Ram Navami at noon to celebrate the birth of the god.
A group of experts from the CSIR-CBRI in Roorkee, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, and well-known temple architects has been put together to do this.
The grand opening of the Ram temple will be celebrated in Ayodhya starting in December and ending with the installation of the Ram Lalla idol in the temple’s sanctum sanctorum on Makar Sankranti, either January 14 or 15, 2024.
