I happened to watch a lady journalist from a Malayalam news channel giving details of the situation in Ayodhya on January 22, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the consecration ceremony of the temple where a 21-inch Balak Ram, wielding a drawn-out arrow, is the presiding deity. She was ecstatic while giving details with a picture of the temple and the lakhs who thronged there, providing the backdrop.

She mentioned that as many as 105 chartered planes reached Ayodhya that day. They were all rich people who could travel by their own planes. While giving details of these flights, I noticed that many were chartered by diplomatic missions in the country, obviously like those of rich European, American, and Asian countries.

In her excitement, she also mentioned that Narendra Modi arrived at Ayodhya in an aircraft that can rival Air Force One, the US Presidential Boeing Aircraft. She showed a helicopter showering flower petals on the crowd at Ayodhya. Then she observed that "all this shows that India is no longer a nation of paupers".

She went on to describe how broad the central avenue had become and how cultural groups presented programs to entertain the lakhs who assembled there. She also said nobody had to pay for food as free food was provided by the likes of Ambanis and Adanis. She also mentioned the names of celebrities from Amitabh Bachchan to Katrina Kaif who attended the function.

The caption for her story mentioned that the Muslims in Ayodhya were all happy over the goings-on. I wish she had shown at least one Muslim gentleman or woman who endorsed her statement. If the people of Ayodhya are happy, as she says, I am sure the Muslims of Ayodhya, too, would be happy.

Triumphalism was manifest in her report. Was that warranted? What she did not know was that India had never been a poor country. If one travels around the country, one will find grand temples built by the kings and queens. Among them, the Queen of Indore, Ahilyabai Holkar, needs special mention for spending the maximum from the state exchequer on temples as far away as Varanasi.

Yet, her people were poor. I remember the kind of poverty in Kerala where children of my age did not have a piece of cloth to cover their genitals. They did it with the Areca leaf sheaths. It was to fight hunger that tapioca stems were imported, and tapioca cultivation was promoted in the state.

The poverty of the people did not affect the temple revenue. The Sri Padmanabha Swamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram has wealth hidden in its vaults, with which 20, if not more, Ayodhya temples can be built. Historically, the Somnath temple in Gujarat on the West Coast attracted hordes of plunderers. This was because of the gold and other jewellery that the temple hoarded.

That is why I say that India was never a poor country. Alas, while the rulers were wealthy enough to indulge in their fancies — the Kapurthala Maharaja had an orderly whose full-time job was to keep all his gold and jewel-studded Swiss watches in running order — the poor went poorer and poorer. When Queen Victoria visited India, she attended a Durbar, where the Maharajas and Maharanis vied with one another in giving her costly gifts.

The place where the Durbar happened in Delhi today attracts tourists. The prosperity of a country is measured in terms of the people's living standards. True, it has improved a lot since 1947, when India became independent. Where is the prosperity that the reporter waxed eloquent about? Let me admit here that Ayodhya is one place I have not visited.

I have read and heard enough about Ayodhya, which literally means a place where war never occurred. It was a traditional ancient town where roads were narrow, and temples and mosques stood cheek by jowl.

In the name of widening roads and paving the way for Balak Ram, many temples and mosques were demolished. It is a faux pas to say that the "magnificent temple" stands on the Babri Masjid alone. Nobody could question this demolition drive except by risking bulldozers at their houses. Many have lost their homes. To say that the Ayodhyans are all cheering the event is to gloss over the reality.

The other day, I heard a lady on FM radio saying how foolish it was not to buy a plot of land in Ayodhya a few years ago for a couple of lakhs of rupees. Today, it would have fetched her several crores of rupees. Many land sharks have bought land there, and for them, the news that hotels in Ayodhya recorded a business of Rs 20 crore in three days is like Amritvani. Amritvani means "Blessings of Sri Ram on the devotees".

They are the ones who will benefit from the temple. The reporter mentioned the names of many businessmen who attended the ceremony. Where were they and their riches when tens of thousands of people, mostly Hindus, left for their homes from places like Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, and Poona when Modi ordered a countrywide lockdown while hounded by the policemen on the way for violating the lockdown rules?

While many did not have enough food to eat, the assets of one businessman, closest to Modi, have been increasing by Rs 1612 crore per day. But for the Hindenburg Research report, Adani might have even become the first trillionaire in the world.

The latest Oxfam report highlights the significant disparity in wealth distribution in India, saying that more than 40 per cent of the wealth created in the country from 2012 to 2021 had gone to just 1 per cent of the population while only 3 per cent had trickled down to the bottom 50 per cent.

Many of the 105 private aircraft that landed in Ayodhya on January 22 belonged to people in this 1 per cent. This is not suggestive of growth. The greatness of a country is not measured by the number of Rolls Royce that ply the roads but by the ability of the large majority to lead a life when they do not have to worry about their next meal.

In fact, the lower the percentage of a person's income spent on food, the wealthier they are. I hear on the radio daily how the Modi Sarkar has been giving free rations to the people. Does this suggest that India has become a rich country? Ask any charlatan, and he will tell you that the best way to collect money is in the name of religion.

Two days before the temple consecration, millions of saffron flags with pictures of Ram were sold in Delhi. The distributors were given the flags virtually free of cost. They sold the flags at whatever price the customer was ready to pay. There is no complaint about that.

The point is that in the name of the temple, thousands of crores of rupees, far beyond the needs, have been collected. Will any questions be asked on how the money was spent? No, whereas the Centre for Policy Research, a think-tank, has been deprived of its FCRA account. Similarly, World Vision, which supported poverty alleviation programs, has been virtually asked to pack up.

Modi needs to be credited for the euphoria he created about the temple. Will the euphoria last? When elections were held in UP, MP, and Rajasthan immediately after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, the BJP failed to return to power. Euphorias do not last long. The first thing Modi did on coming to power was build the world's tallest statue, dubbed the Statue of Unity, overlooking the Narmada dam in Gujarat.

When I visited the statue last year, I found that most of the hotels and restaurants that had opened in the hope of serving the visitors had been closed. The other day, the Gujarat Cabinet met there to revive it as a tourist destination. A small booklet of 10 pages is sufficient to educate a person about the greatness of Sardar Patel. A statue that cost Rs 3500 crore does not tell the greatness of the man but the greatness of the statue, parts of which came from China.

When the BJP was trounced in the 1984 elections, winning only two seats, it was LK Advani who realised that the best way to get votes was to exploit the common people's affection for Lord Ram. He went on a Somanath to Ayodhya journey that was abruptly stopped in Bihar. It is a different matter that he was advised not to go to Ayodhya, for it would have forced Modi to share the limelight with Advani.

When he was Home Minister, he had another dream. To construct a memorial for the fallen policemen and security personnel. He built one near Teen Murti at an enormous cost. I went there some time ago to see that nobody visits the place. Modi spent a large sum of money on the Central Vista project.

Nobody says the new Parliament building is aesthetically superior to the one the British built. Similarly, he shifted the eternal flame from the India Gate to another spot in the same area. It is meant to commemorate the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country. That, too, only attracts a fraction of the people who throng the India Gate to have an ice cream, if not anything else.

Why is it that Modi's creations do not appeal to the people? Ayodhya is a different ball game altogether, as they say. People would be tempted to go to Ayodhya to see the temple. The fact is that the temple authorities do not want much crowd now, as it would impede the construction. Ideally, Modi should have waited until December, when the construction would be complete.

He wanted to cash in on the temple in the coming elections. Were people dying for a Ram temple? My friend Harcharan Bains has a large following on Facebook. As someone introduced him to me, "He is one Akali who can quote Shakespeare with as much felicity as he quotes Guru Granth Sahib."

On his Facebook page, he asked: "One more question to my Hindu brethren, especially Punjabis. Where did Sita Mata reside after being expelled from Ayodhya, her second Van-vaas? Where did her children grow up and challenged Sri Ram?" I thought he would be inundated by answers to his questions.

The Ram Tirth Temple near Amritsar is believed to be the site where Sita gave birth to Luv and Kush. It has Maharishi Valmiki's hermitage and a well with stairs where Sita used to take her bath. The temple exhibits scenes from the Ramayana. Not many answered his question because he prohibited them from using Google. The point he wanted to stress was that it did not attract a large crowd.

I grew up in Pathanamthitta in Kerala, where a rocky area called Chuttippara has a cave with a large flat bed-like rock placed on a rocky pedestal. Ram and Sita are believed to have spent some days there during their vanvas. There are footprints of Ram on the rock. Less than 40 km from Pathanamthitta is Seethathode, where Sita is believed to have bathed. Ramapuram is a place name. The irony is that there are many Ramapurams in the country.

To imprison Ram in Ayodhya is against all the tenets of the religion. Modi says that Ram Lalla was suffering under a tent, and it was he who built a proper house for him.

While doing so, he has brought a brand new Ram Lalla, chiselled from a single piece of azure-coloured Krishna Shila or black schist, while discarding what Modi and the likes of him were saying that it appeared on its own in the Babri Masjid. Grand temples are not built on lies, Modiji!