Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Most arguments in favor of Ram temple at Ayodhya are predicated on the belief that the Babri site, or at the very least, the modern city of Ayodhya is indeed Rama-Janmabhoomi

But can there be an alternative argument that favors Rama temple irrespective of Janmasthal claims?

Yes

In my view, basing the entire argument for Ram temple exclusively on the Janmabhoomi claim, is to sell oneself short

Because the Janmasthal claim can be contested

The modern city of Ayodhya was known as Saketa in pre-Gupta times

A city where we have a history of settlements from about early 1st millennium BCE onwards

But the "historical" Rama of the Ikshvaku clan is likelier to have lived in the 2nd millennium BCE

Puranic genealogy places Rama in the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, if I am not wrong

Likely a prince of the Ikshvakus during the early Aryan settlements in Northern India

If he were a prince from say 700 BCE, you'd have a lot more contemporary references to him in late Vedic literature, which we don't get to see (at least I am not aware of)

Could it be possible that the Ayodhya in the Ramayana legend was eternalized by renaming Saketa during the Gupta period?

However this need not "invalidate" the Ram Mandir movement

That movement has its validity - except that it need not necessarily be the Ram-Janma-Bhoomi movement

The fact remains that much of Northern India has seen a great deal of iconoclasm starting from the demolitions in the North West in 10th century (Multan Sun Temple springs to mind) right down to the late Aurangazeb period

So the argument in favor of a grand Rama temple in a site of pilgrimage that is strongly associated with Shri Ramachandra for at least 1500 years, is not without its merits

But does it have to be positioned as the temple at the site of Rama's nativity?

It need not be, though the positioning has helped politically to market the movement, and get it the attention it deserved

The Ram Mandir movement was a necessary corrective to nearly 1000 years of iconoclasm, of which Hindus have mostly borne the brunt

It is not merely a political movement, but one that marks the cultural awakening of a long repressed people, who won't take it lying down any longer

This is not to suggest that every temple demolition has to be "undone"

It's never a great idea to right a million wrongs in the past

But certain symbolic corrections can go a long way in assuaging v v deep civilizational wounds

So in that sense, the Ram Mandir movement was a central event in the cultural history of the Hindus in the 20th century

But it need not degenerate into a fundamentalist movement that becomes a breeding house for mediocre historians and pundits

We should constantly make a case for it keeping the cultural context of the last 1000 years in mind

Not by insisting on Janmasthal status as a "historical" fact

You can insist on the Janmasthal tradition on the grounds of faith. That is perfectly OK

In current discourse, H-Right gets the emphasis v wrong

They emphasize - "Ram Lalla was born right here" as a matter of fact, not faith

But the Left will have a 1000 holes to poke in that stance.

It's a lot harder to counter the case for civilizational redressal