"The theft has miraculously transformed the erstwhile opponents of Ram Mandir into his ardent devotees chanting “Jai Shri Ram”.
The Congress party, which boycotted the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony in 2024, dispatched a nine-member high-level delegation for Ram Lala’s darshan last week. Even if driven by pure political opportunism, this is a welcome development, as Mahatma Gandhi, whom it swears by, regarded “Ram Naam” as cure for all ills, national and personal," says right wing intellectual S Gurumurthy.
"The cash theft at Ram Mandir that dominates national and international media headlines, has escalated into a massive political controversy, recalling the ideological conflicts of the 1990s. Just as the Mandir movement assumed immense political significance then, the theft at the temple too has gained political traction with the assembly elections in UP, the nerve centre of the Mandir movement, just months away.
While this political interest is natural and understandable, the situation today presents a stark difference," he wrote in an oped piece in 'The New Indian Express'.
Most ironically, he argues - when Mulayam Singh Yadav was Chief Minister in 1990, he ordered the police to fire and kill 16 kar sevaks and later proudly declared he would have issued the same order even if 30 had to die.
"Today, his Samajwadi Party sheds tears, claiming Ram Bhakts have been cheated."
He was also critical of media and wrote --
The overexcited Indian media competing for breaking news, too joined this political chorus. One media predicted long-term damage to the BJP. Another claimed this was a severe setback to BJP’s promise of Ram Rajya—the gold standard of probity in governance.
Capitalising on the geopolitical significance of the temple, global media entities with a history of anti-India and anti-Hindu bias, the Reuters, BBC, and Al-Jazeera, painted the incident as if it were a billion-dollar heist.
“Stealing from the gods: India’s Ram Temple hit by corruption scandal. The temple is mired in embezzlement allegations before crucial state elections, embarrassing PM Modi’s government,” screamed Al-Jazeera.
What has happened at the Ram Mandir is a theft. A pilferage easily executed by lower-level staff handling cash. Not a corruption or a scam. It would be corruption only if the top management had attempted to hush it up.
On the contrary, within days of the theft coming to light, the higher-ups initiated severe, uncompromising action. There was no sign of an institutional cover-up which only will make it a scam, notes Gurumurthy.
"When desire and greed overpower even inherently good people, crimes can occur in the most sacred of spaces—be it churches, mosques or temples. Stealing from a temple Hundi (donation box) is notoriously easy," he notes.
As the C P Ramaswami Iyer Committee report on temple administration astutely noted, money dropped into a Hundi is sacred, but the moment it is taken out, it becomes mere currency notes.
It was based on this very logic that the judiciary permitted secular governments to take over temple funds.
The true metric of integrity in any institution is not the absence of wrong doing—which is ideal—but the speed and decisiveness with which authorities respond to it. Covering up a theft is what constitutes corruption and fraud—usually orchestrated to protect higher-ups.
The Bofors scandal was exposed in 1987. As it involved the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, no FIR was registered till he was ousted from power, he pointed out.
The Ram Mandir theft is undoubtedly shocking and painful to anyone who cares about the nation’s reputation symbolised by the geopolitical reputation of the Mandir.
Yet, the tsunami of hyperbolic news and allegations that obscured crucial facts, have unfairly cast an avoidable shadow on the national brand. Even neutral commentators have sadly failed to notice the sheer speed at which the Trust and the UP government acted.
In cases like Sabarimala, Puri, and the Tamil Nadu idol thefts, the sheer inaction of government boards forced courts to intervene and order probes, delaying justice by years, sometimes decades. In stark contrast, the Ram Temple Trust requested the UP government to form a SIT within days of the crime coming to light, says the article.
ends
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