The much-awaited Ram temple in Ayodhya will open in January next year. Preparations and construction are all underway at a mammoth scale. WION's Nikita Singh visited the site and brought a special segment on what to look forward to and the impact it is expected to have on India as a whole.

Absolutely beautiful. Jai Shree Ram.

The Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical, and socio-religious debate in India, centred on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The issues revolve around the control of a site traditionally regarded among Hindus to be the birthplace of their deity Rama,^[1] the history and location of the Babri Masjid mosque at the site, and whether a previous Hindu temple was demolished or modified to create the mosque.

The Babri Masjid was destroyed during a political rally on 6 December 1992 triggering riots all over the Indian subcontinent.^[2][3][4][5] Many attempts were thwarted previously, one of which led to the 1990 Ayodhya firing incident.^[6]A subsequent land title case was lodged in the Allahabad High Court, the verdict of which was pronounced on 30 September 2010. In the judgment, the three judges of the Allahabad High Court ruled that the 2.77 acres (1.12 ha) of Ayodhya land be divided into three parts, with one third going to the Ram Lalla or Infant Rama represented by the Vishva Hindu Parishad,^[7] one third going to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board, and the remaining third going to Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu religious denomination. While the three-judge bench was not unanimous that the disputed structure was constructed after demolition of a temple, it did agree that a temple structure predated the mosque at the same site.^[8][9]

The five-judge Supreme Court bench heard the title dispute cases from August to October 2019.^[8][10] On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, announced their verdict; it vacated the previous decision and ruled that the land belonged to the government based on tax records.^[11] It further ordered the land to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple. It also ordered the government to give an alternate five-acre tract of land to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board to build the mosque.^[12]

The Archaeological Survey of India during excavation of the site had found remains of a temple there which was later used as evidence in the Supreme Court of India.^[13][14]

On 5 February 2020, the Government of India made an announcement for a trust named as Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra to reconstruct a Ram temple there.^[15] It also allocated an alternative site in Dhannipur, Ayodhya to build a mosque to replace the Babri Masjid that was demolished in 1992.^[12][

Religious background

The land on which the medieval mosque, Babri Masjid, stood is traditionally considered by Hindus to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity, Rama, and is at the core of the Ayodhya dispute.^[18]

Ram Janmabhoomi (Rama's birthplace)

Rama is one of the most widely worshipped Hindu deities and is considered the seventh incarnation of god Vishnu.^[19] According to the Ramayana, Rama was a prince born in Ayodhya to parents Kaushalya and Dasharatha in the Treta Yuga,^[20] that is thousands of years before the Kali Yuga which is supposed to have begun in 3102 BCE according to the Hindu tradition.^[21]

The Ayodhya Mahatmya, described as a "pilgrimage manual" of Ayodhya,^[22][23] traced the growth of the sect in the second millennium CE. The original recension of the text, dated to the period between 11th and 14th centuries,^[24] mentions the janmasthana (birthplace) as a pilgrimage site.^[25] A later recension adds many more places in Ayodhya and the entire fortified town, labelled Ramadurga ("Rama's fort"), as pilgrimage sites

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Many of our fore parents in Guyana came from that part of India.

This is one of my favorite bhajans in Yaman Raag.  Bollywood kept us connected to our roots.

Jai Shree Ram!