TEMPLE OF JAGANNATH WAS OLD BUDDHISTIC TEMPLE: SWAMI

VIVEKANANDA
WHEN WILL IT BE HANDED OVER TO THE BUDDHISTS?
The RSS-BJP government of India led by a seasoned RSS whole-timer, Narendra
Modi has miserably failed in providing basic amenities, employment, education,
security and peace to 138 crores of Indians (out of which approximately 80% are
Hindus ) but on last August 5, he had a joyous news to share with the people of the
country. While laying the foundation of Ram Temple at Ayodhya on August 5,
2020, with the get-up of a prosperous Hindu sage, Prime Minister declared that
wait of Hindus of the world for centuries was over as Lord Ram‟s birthplace was
finally liberated from numerous attempts to destroy it. According to him India with
his laying down the foundation of the Temple was writing a “glorious chapter”
and declared that "Today, the Ram Janmabhoomi [birth-place] has become free
from the centuries-old chain of destruction and resurrection".

[https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ram-mandir-bhumi-pujan-full-text-of-pm-
narendra-modis-speech-in-ayodhya/]

GOSWAMI TULSIDAS PUT IN BAD LIGHT

As generally happens with our PM, he resorted to lies regarding the destruction of
Ram birth-place temple for building Babri Mosque too. According to his narrative,
borrowed from the RSS shakhas, Ayodhya represented a continuous war between
Hindus and Muslims over the Ram Temple for almost last five centuries.

While boasting of victory over the adversary (Muslims) he did not bother to look at
the epic work of poetry in Avadhi language penned by Goswami Tulsidas, namely,
RAMCHARITMANAS. This was the work which mesmerized India with the story
of Lord Ram and the latter became house-hold deity of every Hindu home. He
penned his above mentioned work during 1575-76. According to the Hindutva
version Ram birth-place temple was destroyed during 1538-1539. Thus
RAMCHARITMANAS written almost 37 years after the so called destruction of
Ram birth-place temple should have mentioned this destruction. But it did not.

Are Hindutva zealots trying to say that the greatest story-teller and worshipper of
Ram and his Court (Darbar), Tulsidas did not speak truth in his historic work? Is
not it an attempt to question the credibility of Goswami Tulsidas? Are the
Hindutva zealots trying to say that Goswami Tulsidas kept mum on the issue of the
destruction of a temple at Ram's birth-place due to some ulterior motives?
CONTEMPT OF THE SUPREME COURT JUDGMENT

PM by claiming that the Ram Janmabhoomi [birth-place] "has become free from
the centuries-old chain of destruction and resurrection" was openly contradicting
the Supreme Court judgment on Ayodhya delivered on November 9, 2019 that
Babri Mosque was not built after demolishing any temple, the appearance of idol
of Ram Lalla on the intervening night of 22/23 December 1949 was illegal and the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 was an
“egregious violation of the rule of law”. The same judgment underlined the fact
that “Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been
constructed well over 450 years ago”. In fact, PM could be tried for contempt of
the Court for his Ayodhya speech.

[https://scroll.in/article/943337/no-the-supreme-court-did-not-uphold-the-claim-
that-babri-masjid-was-built-by-demolishing-a-temple]

PURI TEMPLE IS FIT CASE FOR JUSTICE

We saw above how Babri Mosque has been demolished and a grand Ram Temple
is coming up on its place relying on a fake narrative. RSS-BJP government led by
PM Modi is committed to undo the wrong doings of the past. However, the Indian
past looked through the Hindu Muslim binary has its serious limitations. One
major problem is that despite India being a five-thousand-year-old civilization but
it is only the period 0f approximately 700-800 years in which people with the
Muslim names ruled/attacked India is under scrutiny.

Let us get acquainted what the most important ideologue of the RSS/Hindutva and
the second chief of it, MS Golwalkar wrote about destruction of Somnath Temple
in 1025-26 by Mahmud Ghazni. According to him:

“One thousand years back our people invited foreigners to invade

us. A similar danger threatens us even today. How the glorious
temple of Somnath was desecrated and devastated is a page of
history. Mahmud Ghazi had heard of the wealth and splendour of
Somnath. He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in Bharat to
plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of
Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for
his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have
perished, and the burning sands of Rajasthan would have consumed
his bones. But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to
believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In
 their folly and pettiness they believed him. And they joined him.
When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it
was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our
soul-who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was
desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of
history.”
[MS Golwalkar‟s speech in Madurai cited in „Organiser‟ dated
January 4, 1950, pp. 12, 15.]
If RSS-BJP government is really serious about executing its core issue of undoing
religious injustice in India's past then they should start working to hand over
Jagannath Temple at Puri to Buddhists immediately. Swami Vivekananda who is
regarded as an icon of the Hindutva politics and resurgent Hindu India by RSS
who was also the greatest narrator of ancient India's past, unambiguously, declared
that Jagannath Temple was originally a Buddhist Temple. According to his
admission,
“To any man who knows anything about Indian history…the temple
of Jaganath [sic] is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others
over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like
that yet. "
[Swami Vivekananda, „The Sages of India‟ in The Complete Works of
Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 3, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta, p. 264.]

It has been corroborated by another darling of the Hindutva camp. According to

him RATH YATRA, an integral part of Jagganath Temple was a Buddhist ritual
too. Bankim Chndra Chatterjee WROTE:

"I am aware that another, and a very reasonable, account of the origin
of the festival of Rath [at Jagganath Temple] has been given by
General Cunningham in his work on the Bhilsa Topes. He there traces
it to a similar festival of the Buddhists, in which the three symbols of
the Buddhist faith, Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha, were drawn in a
car in the same fashion, and I believe about the same season as the
Rath. It is a fact greatly in support of the theory, that the images of
Jagannath, Balaram, and Subhadra, which now figure in the Rath, are
near copies of the representations of Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha,
and appear to have been modelled upon them."

[Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, 'On the origin of Hindu festivals' in Essays &
Letters, Rupa, Delhi, 2010, pp. 8-9.]
In fact, Puri Temple was not the only one Hinduised. Founder of Arya Samaj,
Swami Dayanand Saraswati while describing the heroics of Shankaracharya in
SATYARTH PRAKASH:"
"For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and
advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-
days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst
those that are found whole here and there under the ground had been
buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken (by those who had
renounced Jainism)."
[SATYARTH PRAKSH BY Swami Dayanand Sarswati, chapter xi, p. 347.]
The Hindutva rulers who declare their love for indigenous religions like Buddhism
and Jainism should begin to handover their usurped temples and Vihars at the
earliest to them.

Shamsul Islam
August 14, 2020

Link for some of S. Islam's writings in English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam,
Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and video interviews/debates:

http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam

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