What should we build at Ayodhya?

A temple was demolished and so was a mosque. Rama would have perhaps never imagined in the wildest of his dreams that his legacy would someday become the cause of so much disharmony. A lot has been written about the events and the motives. The violence of words has started giving tough competition to the violence of the body. The land has been divided but a court case still goes on. But in all this, has anyone ever asked this simple question : how would Rama actually like to be remembered? Would the construction of a temple at his birthplace really please him?

Rama is certainly one of the most revered figures in Hinduism and considered to be one of the Avatars. But he is also very different from the the rest of the people who are considered to be God-incarnate.  In Ramayana itself, when Vasistha tries to tell Rama that he is an Avatar of Vishnu, Rama disagrees and says he is son of Dasaratha. This is in stark constract to Krishna or Ramakrishna, who quite openly accept themselves being an Avatar. Now we can of course say that Rama had forgotten that he is an Avatar and needed to be reminded periodically, or that he was too humble to admit himself being an Avatar. But that would be an imposition of our personal views on Rama. If we truly believe Rama to be worthy of worship, the first thing to do is to accept and honour his opinion about himself. Now that does not mean that Hindus should stop considering him to be God-incarnate. It only means that our way of worshipping/remembering Rama has to be very different from the way we worship Krishna or other Avatars. 

How do we usually remember human beings who have made a significant contribution to society? Do we build temples for them and chant mantras every morning and evening? We usually don't, unless we are fans of Rajinikanth! What we usually do is to create institutions where their life and work can be studied thoroughly from the point of view of understanding history as well as for the purpose of finding solutions to our present day social problems. What great men of Rama's stature do and say in one lifetime has repercussions for many millennia. An academic study of Rama's life would lead to many deep insights into management and leadership through which the corporate world can also immensely benefit. Devdutt Pattanaik is surely doing a fantastic work in this direction, but we need to institutionalise these endeavours so that it can be a part of the mainstream discussion instead of just being a fringe activity. 

The Allahabad High Court has divided the land into 3 parts and given it to three religious bodies. Can we request the court to re-combine the land and hand it over to someone like Devdutt? In 1992, the name of Rama became a reason for one of the greatest communal divides in post-independent India. In 2017, the 25th anniversary of that event, can we turn history and use that same Rama to unite Indians into one irrespective of their caste, religion and economic status?