| As all roads lead to Ayodhya ahead of the jubilant 22 January Ram temple Pran Pratishtha, what were the flashbulb moments of recent history that brought India to this point? For many commentators and veteran journalists it is a ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ moment too. Vir Sanghvi wrote about how there is enough evidence now on how it was Arun Nehru who had the locks of the Ram Temple/Babri Masjid in Ayodhya opened without bothering to consult Rajiv Gandhi. Arun hoped to turn it into a vote-winner in the Hindi belt by taking a ‘soft’ pro-Hindu stand, he wrote.
For centuries, Rama has been used by litterateurs and rulers to legitimise themselves. Anirudh Kanisetti began a four-part series this month on different ways of seeing Rama’s life and Ayodhya in history. The Chola emperor Virarajendra (r. 1063–69), was also aware of the political potential of Rama. By the time he came to the throne, the empire was caught in ever-escalating warfare with its neighbours, and a public argument had to be made to support the emperor’s wars. They did so by mining the Rama legend. In one case, they claimed that a king called “Chola” had been born into the solar dynasty of Rama; while on a hunt, he chased a demon in the form of a deer, followed by his army, and finally reached the Kaveri river, where he settled Brahmins.
This month, the eminent ancient India historian Patrick Olivelle began his columns with a fascinating tale of Gargi, India’s first woman philosopher of unquestioned ability.
What is PM Modi’s Kashi Tamil Sangamam outreach all about? The BJP has successfully overcome its earlier image as a North Indian party, but Tamil Nadu has always eluded it. Now, the party’s focus on Tamil Nadu is to confront the biggest stumbling block of what has come to be regarded as a certain kind of Tamil exceptionalism. R Rajagopalan wrote that one of the central goals of Kashi Tamil Sangamam is to take on and decimate Dravidianism by countering it with an excessive demonstration of a broader Tamil culturalism.
In our Ground Reports, Vandana Menon travelled to Tamil Nadu to write about a non-leather footwear revolution. Shoes for brands like Crocs, Nike, Adidas, and Puma will be manufactured in Tamil Nadu by Taiwanese giants, as the world pivots towards a new China+1 strategy to diversify production and supply chains.
Ratan Priya unearthed an exciting hot, new trend in Arunachal Pradesh. India’s ultra-rich have found a new motorsports hub in Dambuk. It is the Davos of vroom, vroom, vroom.
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