Ram temple model leaves Rajasthan

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR, JAN. 2. A massive model of the proposed Ram temple at Ayodhya left the Rajasthan territory today on its journey to Prayag in Uttar Pradesh. The 21-foot long, 11-foot wide and 9- foot high model was moved out without much noise on the Jaipur- Agra highway on a trailer with a few State-level VHP and Bajrang Dal functionaries and a small police party accompanying it.

According to information reaching here, the trailer carrying its covered cargo halted for night at the district headquarter town, Bharatpur, bordering Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. It resumed the journey this morning and crossed the Rajasthan border when the State police accompanying the bandwagon handed over the charge to their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh.

It would arrive at the Kumbh mela site via Agra and Kanpur by January 6-7. The model will be on display at the Mahakumb, starting from January 14 and later at the Dharam Sansad of the front organisations which are spearheading the Ayodhya temple movement. The result of 18 months of arduous work by craftsmen, otherwise trained in chiselling and polishing solid marble, the model is made of thermocol and lit by thousands of colourful bulbs forming part of the Japanese lighting system with a capacity to remain lighted for 72,000 hours.

In fact it was the intricacies of the lighting system which had partly held up the completion of the model, envisaged first by Mr. Chandresh Pandey, idol-maker of Jaipur. As per the initial programme, the model was to be ready by May this year. Later, the cut off date was prescribed by functionaries of the Sriram Janmabhoomi Nyas and the VHP as November.

The VHP/Bajrang Dal functionaries who kept refuting any role in the making of the model which has cost over Rs. 7 lakhs _ as per Mr. Pandey's claim _ till the other day, joined the journey once it started rolling out of Jaipur. Mr. Radhakrishna Rathi, vice president of Rajasthan VHP and Mr. Harihar Pareek, Bajrang Dal in charge, supervised the loading of the model into the trailer after bringing it down from the terrace of Mr. Vijay Doodi's house.

Mr. Doodi had crafted the model atop the terrace of his residence in Jaipur City. The model has 214 pillars and 900 statues carved on them as they would be in the temple envisaged at Ayodhya. Mr. Pandey, who owns Jaipur's Pandey Crafts Museum which supplies marble statues to ISCON and Laxminarain temples all over the world, claimed that he had a deal with the VHP on the making of the model.

The senior VHP vice-president, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, himself had visited the Rajasthan capital in connection with the construction of the model which, the temple zealots think, would inspire the public once again on the Ram temple issue. Mr. Pandey has been corresponding with Mr. Champat Rai, office chief of the Sriram Janambhoomi Nyas.

Mr. Champat Rai has been supervising the carving of the pillars for the temple on pink sand stone in Pindwara town of Rajasthan's Sirohi district in the past.

A Ram Lalla statue, kept ready at the Pandey museum, would be transported to the Kumbh mela site separately. The 2.15-foot marble statue of Ram Lalla, which had been kept waiting in his Khejri Ke Rasta showroom of the Pandey Crafts Corporation, was given a new coat of paint recently in connection with the fresh initiatives being taken.

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