Drove from Delhi to Patna (again) with an overnight stay at Ayodhya. Attended morning aarti and had darshan of Ram Lalla yesterday. The regular darshan (after mangal aarti early morning, which you can attend via online booking only) begins only after 6.30 am, but by 5.30 am itself there were around a thousand people in the queue. Literally.
At least based on what I witnessed; I can safely say that those news reports about ‘not much crowd at Ram Temple after election results’ is totally bunkum. I think such idiotic news reports were published after talking to shopkeepers on Bhakti Path who obviously can’t have the same level of business as earlier, because people would want to minimize their on-road presence to minimum in this maddening heat (fortunately yesterday morning there was light rainfall).
If the weather improves, the vibes improve (the magical vibes around Pran Pratishtha can’t be replicated at all I think, but that’s what I mean), cleanliness and order is maintained, people would like to spend time in the streets too and would shop for paraphernalia. In peak summers of June, they’d just want to have darshan and go back to whatever hotel/dharmshala they might be staying at. At best they’d want to have some cucumber and cold water rather than haggle with some guy over price of a miniature temple replica or a shawl or something.
Barometer of people’s faith can’t be election results. While no doubt politics impact religion and vice versa, those 'news reports' exaggerated or mispresented the situation. Not just ram temple, similar huge crowd, which appeared even more gigantic possibly due to smaller space, was there for darshan at Hanuman Garhi too. And this was when the day had almost just begun.
Also, the crowd at these places was from everywhere. One person from Nepal got separated from his family and public announcement system at Ram Mandir asked him to come at a particular place; you could hear names of other places in India similarly. When I went to collect pass of my mangal aarti the evening before, I could see people of all hues sitting in the waiting area, a good number of those from South India.
And yeah, “Jai Shri Ram” all around 🙏