Dear Shri Amit Shah Ji,

You have always surprised me. Like when you divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories without any rhyme or reason. This was not even mentioned in your party’s election manifesto. At least in the case of abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, it had been a core agenda of the party.

As such, the nation could expect your government to abrogate the Impugned Article but what was the logic for the vivisection of the state? The only logic I can find is that you want greater say in the administration of the Union Territories. Imagine how another home minister of another government uses some logic to divide the state of Gujarat.

I am sure destiny will force you or your successor to recreate J&K to save the loss of face India suffered. Be that as it may, what prompted me to write this letter is your recent speech in Tripura where you announced that the Ayodhya temple would be thrown open to the public on January 1, 2024.

I thought you were the home minister entrusted with the responsibility of managing internal security. I did not know that your brief included fixing the date and time of a temple inauguration. That is the job of the priests who know which day and time are auspicious for the consecration of a temple.

What you did not realise is that by setting the date and time, you have admitted the fact that the Ayodhya temple is more a political project than a religious one. Let me be frank, I was never in doubt about the whole Ayodhya movement which was out and out a political initiative.

I am not an apologist of the Congress party but I feel that you were not proper when you blamed the Congress party for delaying the construction of the temple. You said this because of either your ignorance or because you wanted to hide the truth. Either way, this does not redound to the credit of the home minister of the country.

I do not have to tell you that there was once a mosque at the place where the temple is coming up. You wanted to demolish the mosque to build the temple. Otherwise, you could have built a grander temple anywhere in the country.

The Congress was not even formed when the Muslims were saying their prayers at the Babri Masjid. There is no historical evidence to suggest that a temple was demolished to build the mosque. Had that happened Tulsi Das who was a contemporary of Babur would have mentioned the incident in his monumental work, Ramacharitamanas.

Even the litigation about the ownership of the mosque/temple preceded the setting up of the Congress. It is a travesty of truth to blame the Congress for the case. In fact, the organisation was never an interested party in the Ramjanambhoomi/Babri Masjid case.

Did it occur to you why Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the man who saw the political potential in Ayodhya, Lal Krishna Advani, who held the portfolio of home for one full term, could not build the temple? This was because of the court case in which sundry organisations affiliated to the RSS were parties. There is a Biblical saying, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”.

I have read the Supreme Court verdict which clearly allowed the construction of the temple. But I did not find any argument worth the salt to let the Hindus occupy the land. In fact, the verdict upholds almost all the contentions of the Muslims. Yet, the court favoured the Hindus because the judges knew that it was in the larger interest of the country.

Incidentally, the Muslims were disappointed with the verdict but they did not protest anywhere in the country unlike the other party which claimed that it would not accept the verdict if it went against them. Obviously, the court knew the situation and took a decision, perhaps, in the long-term interest of the nation. It is a different matter that Justice should be blind when it dispenses justice.

I know why you are keen on opening the temple in 2024. Because that is the time the country will go to polls to elect the next government. You want to cash in on Ayodhya to win another election.

You are the home minister. Do you know any country where the ruling party builds a temple or church or mosque and takes credit for it? I never heard the Pakistan government taking credit for building a grand mosque in Islamabad. It was funded by the royal family of Saudi Arabia, if I remember it correctly.

You spoke about the greatness of the temple which is nearing completion. For your information, a columnist of the British journal The Economist visited Ayodhya and gave details of the work there. He had to undergo a series of security checks before he could reach the sanctum sanctorum. 

You boasted about the greatness of the temple. Even the tallest private or commercial building at Ayodhya will be less than one-third the height of the temple. I understand that the law was amended at Ayodhya to freeze the height of private and commercial buildings there.

I also understand that the cost of the new temple is Rs 1,800 crore (18 billion). Collective worship is Semitic in origin. That is why Muslims and Christians want a large space to worship. Unlike them, Hindus need only a little space to worship.

Sabarimala is one of the most popular temples in South India. It attracts millions of pilgrims from all over the South. Now, people from Maharashtra and Gujarat have also started arriving at the temple, situated on the Western Ghats. Do you know the idol of Lord Ayyappa is situated in a small room that can be approached only by climbing 18 small, sacred steps.

I have visited the Vaishnodevi temple in Jammu. If possible, please visit it. It will do your health good if you climb up the hill the traditional way as I did, instead of arriving there by air. If Rahul Gandhi can walk all the way from Kanyakumari to Kashmir wearing a T-shirt, why can’t you climb the hill?

You will notice that the deity is placed in a small cave. The sanctum sanctorum at Tirupati is not large. The point I want to make is that size is not of the essence in Hinduism. Almost all the sacred temples, whether at Kedarnath or Varanasi, are small. In fact, a Hindu can comfortably pray in his own puja room at his house. He does not even have to go to a temple to worship.

By any reckoning, Rs 1,800 crore is a huge amount. At Rs 1.8 crore per school, the amount is sufficient to build 1,000 new schools in the country. There are thousands of government schools, even in Delhi, which do not have adequate infrastructure like laboratories and libraries.

You can imagine how impactful the amount would have been if it was utilised for education or healthcare. India was never a poor country. In fact, it was India’s wealth that attracted invaders and colonisers down the centuries. Yet, when it came to development, it remained a poor, backward country.

As home minister, you can visit any place in and out of India. You will find grand temples like the ones at Tiruchendur and Tanjore in Tamil Nadu and the Sun temple at Konark in Odisha. Enormous sums of money were spent on constructing the temple.

What I say is true about European countries also. A few hundreds of years ago, people thought that the best way to please God was to construct large churches whose spires would pierce the skies. It took time for them to realise the futility of constructing such churches.

They no longer build churches. Instead, they build research centres and spend their surplus on improving the quality of life of their citizens. Just imagine, how India would have been if, instead of building large temples and temple gates, the money was used to set up schools.

The Buddhists and the Jains, to which community you belong, knew the value of education. That is why the rulers of the time encouraged setting up the Nalanda university long before Oxford and Harvard came up. Please find out what happened in the Eighth century when a certain gentleman from the deep South took the lead in driving out Buddhists from the country.

Jainism also suffered as a result of the onslaught that took the gentleman to the four corners of the country where he set up religious establishments whose pontiffs do not allow women to read the scriptures. Nor do they promote education of the masses. I am sorry to say that your own emphasis is not on education and public health.

When India attained Independence, Japan was in a pathetic condition. They had lost everything in the Second World War. They became the only people to suffer a nuclear attack. Within no time, they rose up like the phoenix bird. How could they do it? 

They believed in universalisation of education. There is not a single illiterate in Japan. India and China were in an identical situation when revolution happened in China and independence occurred in India. You may blame Communism but you can’t deny the fact that China wiped out illiteracy from the country. China also invested heavily in public health.

Japan became the world’s second largest economy, a position taken over by China. This was possible because of the investments in school education and public health made by Japan and China.

I read recently that we are trying to develop health tourism. Your government does not spend even 3 percent of the GDP on public health. Yes, there are super speciality hospitals like the one Mata Amritanandamayi opened in Faridabad. There are hospital groups like Apollo which provide state-of-the-art medical care.

What is the condition of the poor people in your own state Gujarat? Are they assured of medical care? The fact is that if a poor man or woman becomes diabetic, he will die as he cannot afford insulin and other drugs. The government is not bothered about the millions who die without proper medical care. But we take pride in providing medical care to some rich persons from countries like Sri Lanka and Maldives who come for treatment.

You built the world’s tallest statue in Gujarat. It is taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York. Do you know that the American statue was built with the financial support from the readers of Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper. No government money was spent on the project. The statue was a gift from the people of Paris. In sharp contrast, you used public money to build the Statue of Unity.

If you are sure that your government was able to develop the country, why do you need to mention Ayodhya when an election is held? Why not mention how demonetisation helped end black money and terrorism, particularly when the recent Supreme Court majority verdict did not find anything amiss in cancelling Rs 1000 notes and printing Rs 2000 notes.

A Himalayan blunder was whitewashed in the process. You are the home minister. You know that Christians are one of the most peaceful communities in India. Statistics will bear me out on this.

Yet, why is it that nearly 600 violent incidents against Christians were reported from various parts of the country last year? Why is it that they are driven out from their villages as in the erstwhile Bastar district of undivided Madhya Pradesh?

You should look into all these, instead of fixing the most auspicious time for the consecration of the Ayodhya temple. Your party came to power by promising development. Let everyone in the country, irrespective of caste and creed, believe that your government is by the people, for the people and of the people. May God bless you!

Yours etc

ajphilip@gmail.com