The snowballing scandal over allegations of misappropriation of donations and offerings at the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple at Ayodhya is the latest shocker in an all-enveloping sense of collapse that has gripped a range of Indian institutions. Our political systems, constitutional bodies, independent watchdogs and now places of faith and worship appear to swim in the same muddy waters. This casts an air of gloom over the direction of a nation with mounting cases of corruption – from exam paper leaks to land grabs and banking scandals – that are in plain sight of the people.

It is easy to see the scandal at Ayodhya as a new low. This is, after all, the place that stood at the heart of the ruling BJP’s volatile mix of politics and religion and contributed to the party’s rise on the national scene, taking it from a low of two seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha to 282 seats in 2014. In that sense, this is a scandal in the heart of the BJP’s political sanctum sanctorum. 

A New Low

The scandal also mocks the devotion and reverence of millions of the faithful who have contributed to the construction, maintenance and upkeep of the Ram temple. Some 500 million devotees are said to have visited the temple since it was consecrated on Jan 22, 2024, according to the Uttar Pradesh government.  That even such a venerable icon of faith is at risk of being plundered by the very people entrusted with its construction and upkeep is a lament that signifies what this new low might look like.

Now, reports have come in that Champat Rai, the all-powerful general secretary of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the trust that manages the temple, has resigned. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been set up by the Uttar Pradesh government, and eight people have been arrested as investigations continue. This is part of the standard political and administrative response to a standard scandal. Action of this kind is meant to restore faith but here the erosion of faith signals something much more significant.

Breakdown of Governance 

It brings home to the faithful what a breakdown of governance looks like. Hitherto, questions on democracy, transparency, due process, integrity and the like, which are all weak wickets for the establishment, were seen as questions limited to the politics of the day. If politics is murky, then those in politics must learn to play the game while they keep their hold and expand their agenda. This simplistic split view of governance – that ‘bad’ governance can be ringfenced and some ‘good’ can come out of it – collapses in the scandal at the Ram temple.  It illustrates to an audience that has so far refused to ask the hard questions of the day that a governance collapse sinks the nation and everyone with it, believers and the non-believers in one boat. Bad governance thus works like an all-consuming fire that will burn everything down.

In this light, the scandal at Ayodhya is not a new low really. It is all too expected as the slippery slope of a journey focused only on the ends without caring for the means. The collapse at Ayodhya is thus a logical culmination of a system of leadership, governance and capture of power that believes in and lives by the edict that results matter and how we get to the results does not.

In allowing this path, we bid goodbye to the one principle that Indian spiritual traditions hold above all others – that dharma must lead and artha can only follow, or that values are at the heart of the Indian way of living and thriving. Nothing in the Indian tradition counts as success or achievement when it is attained by the wrong means. It is a powerful Indian spiritual lesson, reiterated in countless discourses and kathas (spiritual tales) that all is lost when values are violated in pursuit of a goal, however noble the goal may be. 

True, there are grey areas and dilemmas but they, too, must be approached with an eye on living the values. Anything less is convenience for the short term that will come back to bite in the long term. The Ram temple controversy tells us that all this knowledge is turned on its head. The plunder is limited not to the material assets, but is a demolition of the civilisational and spiritual traditions by the very people who claim to defend them.

Collapse of Values and Trust

 The renowned scholar and teacher of Advaita Vedanta in contemporary times, Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930-2015), who Prime Minister Narendra Modi had considered his spiritual guru, spoke of this binding duty toward a life of values. Swami Dayananda taught the idea of understanding not just the values but also the value of living by those values, captured in his book titled “Value of Values”. He wrote: “The expression of my life is just the expression of my well-assimilated value structure.  Only assimilated values are my personal values … (They) reflect what is valuable to me.” 

In this teaching, values are to be internalised and become an inseparable part of the person internalising them. Their practice then comes naturally and is not imposed. Everything else becomes a charade played out in the name of values.

Yet, there is a complex and deep play about values. They appear to be of little use when results can be achieved violating every value, in letter and in spirit. As the clever and the smart begin to enjoy the game and notch up what is seen as success after success sans a value system - as has been the case with the ruling establishment in India - they set up the system for a spectacular collapse. 

Trust disappears, systemic decay sets in and every achievement begins to ring hollow as yesterday’s markers of “success” reveal themselves today to be the stepping stones to a monumental collapse.

Indeed, one of the best lessons on values comes to us from Mahatma Gandhi who saw no distinction between means and ends – the means are the ends because they are the seeds that will flower tomorrow. A rotten seed cannot grow into a useful tree after all.

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR, Mumbai. The views expressed are personal and not necessarily shared by editors of SAM. By special arrangement with The Billion Press)