Ramarajya: Envisioning the Future and Entrenching the Past 93the derailment of all that inspired the freedom movement—the elevat-
ing chant of Vande Mataram which Maharishi Bankim Chandra gave to this
nation, the goal of Rama Rajya held out by Mahatma Gandhi as the destina-
tion of free India, the ideal of Spiritual Nationalism expounded by Swami
Vivekananda, the spirit of Sanatana Dharma which Sri Aurobindo described
as the soul and nationalism of India, and the mass devotion to the mother-
land built around the Ganapati festival by Bal Gangadhar Tilak" (italics in
original).^83
The desperate Congress party also towed blatant communal lines
toward the late 1980s. They used Arun Govil, the man who played Ram in
the famous TV serial Ramayan, in their campaign for the 1988 Allahabad
bye-election. Not to be outdone by the BJP in the 1989 general elections and
to please the larger Hindu community, Rajiv Gandhi tacitly supported the
VHP's Ramshila (foundation-laying) campaign and proclaimed that his
party would usher in Ramarajya if they won.^84 He claimed that launching
his Congress party's election campaign at Ayodhya (Faizabad), "where
Lord Rama lived, gave him immense satisfaction."^85 He was also reported
to have said, "one should be proud to be a Hindu," but he later denied
making such a statement and clarified that he had remarked "one should
be proud to be an Indian."^86
In the final analysis, however, Mahatma Gandhi's passionate dreams of
the future came to be usurped and marketed rather ingeniously by various
political and other actors. As the "lords temporal" have either launched or
redirected political parties to attain Ramarajya, the "lords spiritual" have
been prating about it all along. For instance, at the Sadhu Sammelan held
in Delhi on April 2-3,1991, the religious leaders issued three appeals that
every Hindu should rise to "liberate" and "reconstruct" the three tem-
ples in Ayodhya, Mathura, and Varanasi allegedly destroyed by Muslim
invaders; that every Hindu should use his vote to destroy the politicians
who caved in to Muslim pressure; and that every Hindu should realize the
only way to herald Ramarajya was to vote for the BJP.^87
One Hindu religious figure contends that the "principles of Rama Rajya
were upheld and followed by the succession of Hindu kings in Puranic
times." According to him, "The two distinguishing features of our culture
embodied in our spiritual and secular classics and handed down in our tradi-
tion are Dharma and Satya. Dharma is the Law of the Universe, Satya is
the Law of Men. It is these that sustain the World and make it go on its
ordained course" (italics mine). Ram possessed these virtues "in a perfect
measure," but Raavanaraajya (Ravana's rule) was marked by adharma and
asatya. Above all, "in Rama Rajya the name of Rama lived for ever in the
tongues of men and the whole world resounded with it."^88
So Ramarajya has come to be identified predominantly with Rama-
nama (Ram's name) and Ram worship rather than imaging an ideal soci-
ety. For instance, Ramdas or Samartha, one of the most famous saints of