From vow to wow: Gorakhnath mutt celebrates its long-standing ties to Ram temple movement

Situated about 150 kilometres from Ayodhya, the Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur is soaked in a special fervour as the Pran Pratishtha ceremony in Ayodhya marks the fulfilment of the vow that was taken by its religious leaders one after the other over the past 100 years.

Nothing could have been a more cherished coincidence for this mutt than the fact that its mahant or the head priest, now as the chief minister of the state, is in the driving seat, leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the grand consecration ceremony becomes a spectacular show, one that is unmatched in grandeur.

In keeping with this tradition, the Gorakhnath mutt -- the seat of the Nath monastic order, a Shaivite tradition within Hinduism -- is abuzz with activities on Sunday morning with priests and volunteers preparing for special prayers that will continue till the consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya is over on Monday.

“Along with special puja, the mutt will organise bhandara (feast) for the devotees. Recitation of Ramcharitmanas and Sundar Kand by scholars is being organised in the temples located on the mutt premises,” said Dwarka Tiwari, secretary of the Gorakhnath temple trust office.

“We will commemorate the contribution of the late mahants and also rejoice in the role of present mahant, Yogi Adityanath, in the construction of the grand Ram temple,” Tiwari added in a reference to the fact that the mahants of Gorakhnath mutt laid the foundation of the Ram temple movement. Indeed, it was this movement which inspired Yogi Adityanath, then a fresh graduate and known by his pre-monastic name of Ajay Singh Bisht, to visit Gorakhpur in 1992 to meet Mahant Avaidyanath, the then head priest of Gorakhnath mutt, and renounce family life to become a monk of the Nath tradition, which challenged the orthodox practices in the society and influenced the Bhakti movement.

Over three decades later, the Pran Pratishtha of Ram Lalla on Monday will be an emotional moment for chief minister Yogi Aditynath when he arrives in Ayodhya with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries.

“We have been associated with Ram temple movement from beginning. However, we are not taking credit for the consecration ceremony of Lord. We are going there as servants of Ram,” Yogi Adityanath has said.

“My intention is to make Ayodhya the most beautiful tourist destination in the world to make Ayodhya look as grand as it was in the Treta Yuga,” he has often said in an expression of his commitment to the rejuvenation of Ayodhya that began after he first became Uttar Pradesh chief minister in 2017 and got a further impetus after the Supreme Court verdict of November 2019 paved the way for the Ram temple to come up.

About 18 months after accompanying Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Ayodhya to lay the foundation stone of the temple on August 5, 2020, Yogi Adityanath became chief minister for the second successive term in 2022, launching a slew of projects to make the temple town a grand city equipped with all the facilities, including airport, wide roads, gardens, waterways and guest houses.

Nearly nine decades before that, the Gorakhnath Mutt became the centre of the Ram temple movement in 1935 when Mahant Digvijaynath became the mahant. Two years later, he joined the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937 and started mobilising Hindus for the Ram temple in Ayodhya. To give a push to the temple movement, he founded Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad Party in 1948 with Raja of Balrampur Pateshwari Prasad Singh.

On December 22-23 night in 1949, when a Lord Ram idol was placed in the disputed structure, Mahant Digvijaynath was present in Ayodhya, where he motivated the volunteers to start prayers as the state government directed the then district magistrate to remove the idol, but the official refused to execute the order, stating that it may lead to communal violence in the area. Mahant Digvjiaynath continued the Ram temple movement till his death in 1969.

Mahant Digvijaynath’s successor Mahant Avaidyanath continued the movement for the Ram temple. In 1984, he constituted the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yagya Samiti to bring all Hindu organisations and sadhus associated with the Ram temple movement on one platform. He organised a march from Sitamarhi in Bihar to Ayodhya for the liberation of the Ram temple in September 1984.

He then organised a rally in Begum Hazrat Mahal Park in Lucknow in October 1984 and handed over a memorandum to the then Uttar Pradesh chief minister ND Tiwari for the Ram temple. Further, in a rally organised in Delhi on September 22, 1989, Mahant Avaidyanath announced ‘Shilanyas’ at Ram Janmabhoomi on November 9, 1989. After performing ‘bhoomi pujan’ and ‘havan’ at the designated place outside the sanctum sanctorum, he dug the ground for laying the foundation and got the first stone laid by Kameshwar Chaupal, a Dalit.

On October 30, 1992, in the ‘Dharma Sansad’ held in Delhi, an announcement was made for launching ‘karseva’ for the Ram temple in Ayodhya from December 2, 1992. Avaidyanath addressed the karsevaks in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 recalling the 500 years of struggle by the Hindu community for the construction of the Ram temple.

Four years later, in 1996, Mahant Avaidyanth appointed Adityanath his successor, who emerged as a firebrand Hindutva leader by organising Vishwa Hindu Mahasammelan and Virat Hindu Sangam in Gorakhpur and the adjoining districts to give pace to the Ram temple movement. Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal and seers of various sects extended their support to Adityanath.

After his election to Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur in 1998, he raised the Ram temple, as well as Hindutva issues, on the floor of the House. In 2002, he launched the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) to mobilize the youth for the Ram temple movement. Soon, the HYV spread its wings in East UP as Adityanath organised Hindu sammelan for the temple.

Even as the BJP was defeated in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections as well as the 2002 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath managed to protect his stronghold Gorakhpur, key centre of the Ram temple movement.