Why Ram is so important

Before the Structure, 6th December, Rath Yatra, Court case, British Raj, Babur, Damascus, Istanbul, Califates, Constantinople, Conquests, Jihads, religious doctrines, organized religions, Prophets, Saints, Mount Sinai, Moses, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, David, Jacob, Sarah and Isaac, Hagar and Ishmail, and AbRam… 

There was the Ram.

Ram which means the Exalted one or the Ideal Man, or “the One” in old Semitic or Hebrew language and which means Maryada-Purshottam (The highest of the Man) in Sanskritam, translates to as close to the God himself but not God. Which is the premise behind Ram.

Real or a Mythical he is the one who personifies a man as flawless in the mirror of the God himself.

The land of Tigris-Euphrates (Near and the Middle East or Mesopotamia) knows the word Ram as the highest one only close to God or Allah (Arabic for God Pre-Islam), and that’s what Ramayan also says.

Ram never declares himself God nor do Hindus, nor the Valmiki, he always was “The One”, the flawless one, the exalted one, the avatar, the one whose human life should be emulated if you want to be close to the God, Ishwar, Onkar or Allah. His ways are the salvation, he is the mean and not the end.

And since there was a Ram on the lands of Hind, we never had another king declaring him Sun-God, the core, and origin of every conflict in the Middle East, Near East and the West.

There was no Pharaoh or Kings declaring themselves as Gods, taking in supreme authorities for themselves and their children.

Owing to Ram - The religion in India has always been a grassroots movement by the peasants and survived in folklore. Never there was a king in India who could push religion as a form of statecraft to gather armies or ran bloody conquests.

Owing to Ram - The King and Religion were always separate, while Ideals of Ram guided Indian lives be it a peasant or the King.

Owing to Ram - Fratricide for power was never a norm in India, as the west of Indus.

Owing to Ram – Even with 23% of the world’s wealth Co-existence with nature and people was the core of Indian life and not the ideas of renaissance building Empires, reiches and waging world wars to instill the supremacy of certain form of humans over everything else.

Owing to Ram - we never had a Sodom and Gomorrah, there was always a guiding light of family values instilled deep in Indians.

Owing to Ram - India never had to crucify heretics upside down.

The religion in India accepts all ways of worship as equally legitimate ways to reach the God owing to the ideals of Ram who himself sat with old and frail Shabri and ate her half-eaten berries as one form of devotion while fought Ravana with the ferocious wrath of the God himself as another form of spirituality.

Owing to Ram - there is a Buddha and there is a Gandhi.

Ram is important to India.

Owing to Ram Indians were what they were, when they made sure to take care of their elders, their brothers, their children, their wards, deal with courtesy and fairness, had respect for everything around, their flora, their fauna, rivers and had supreme prosperity.

That’s what Ram-Rajyam (The Rule or Ram) had been always – An era when people can sleep with their doors open and not in conflict with anything or anyone, not the humans, not the critters, not the beasts, not the wind or fire.

But when we strayed away from Ram, we lost our way and ended up being subjugated by the conquests, the Empires. Our backs broken so badly that we are still finding it tough to feed our hungry billions while surplus grain rots in our granaries, while we suffocate under the smog burning the husk created by surplus grain, which in turn depleted our waters, turned land barren laden with pesticide, while most of the country facing acute shortage of water and floods almost at the same times when we lost Ram and went on to subjugate the nature. All to fill our dump yards with remains of our greed bought on big billion days is smoldering year around.

*Kalki (Apocalypse by Ravi Verma)

And while all this happens, we fight on Whatsapp and tweet our selfies and dream to escape someplace else but not here, the land of Ram.

Look deep, Ram is India’s patriarch and all the good India always stood for. Ram is the king, the savior, and the calif everyone is looking for.

*Source - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_God#/media/File:Empyrean_Light_and_Shadows_of_Salvation.jpg

He is the one who bowed and washed the feet of an ordinary oarsman and never saw anyone inferior by birth or social status. When we think deep every reformer who opposed iron-clad social segregation be it Buddha, Abram, Gandhi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King are fighting for that Ram and his ideals.

*Source - By Susant purohit - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53566709

Ideals of Ram are beyond any courts or architecture of the land, and any structure built on the birthplace of Ram – Real or Mythical would be a Ram’s Temple. Architecture might differ and so would the language we might name it but would be from the man, in the end, fighting for the ideals of Ram only, East or West of the Indus will not matter in the end.

*Raja Ravi Verma - Varuna the Lord of the ocean, pacifying Sri Rama, angered at the intransigence of the sea to give way to enter Lanka.

Editors Note - My Views on Sita and questions raised about Ram's decisions towards the end when he separated from Sita and his sons for a period of time, which are proposed as patriarchal in nature. 

Ramanaya is not just the story of Rama - the Ideal King, but the ruler's family with wife, children, and brothers portraiting equally important roles.

Ramanaya at its core says a lot about equal power to the women in the story. Especially when King's father sends his eldest son off to humble life for 14 years at the behest of the Queen, and other Queens who were equally strong didn't conspire, and when the brother didn't scheme, and when kings and princes from around the world came and participated in the competition knowing only one will win and rest will go humiliated, so Sita and her sisters can take their pick, and when Sita chose the hard life with Ram.

Even Soorpnakha instigated the war for what she wanted, Sita literally owning Ashoka Grove and keeping Ravana at bay.

Rama, Lakshamana, Hanuman and the army decimated Ravana and his whole army for Sita. The daughter of the earth herself whom even fire couldn't burn - if Sita wanted to overturn she would have overturned and put Luv and Kush on the throne, had it been against the Raj Dharma (The Duty of the Ruler's family) which the Family had to abide by, which she never did. - The argument stands in both the cases as a historical incident or a legend coming from the imagination of Valmiki who wanted to send through some pointers, the ideals never deviate from the idea of Ram - The Exalted one written in 480,002 words and 24000 verses in 7 chapters before 500 BCE. 

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