Workers racing against time to finish grand Ram Temple

Sudama Chauhan’s life was never easy. But over the past month, the hours seem longer and more intense.

The Jharkhand resident now stirs out of bed before the first streaks of red in the sky above Hanuman Garhi, stuffing some rotis in the dorm he shares with others, before joining them in the daily walk down to the construction site. Save a short lunch break, he’ll emerge from its depths after 12 hours.

Yet, he doesn’t mind. “After all, how many people can say that they worked to build the Ram temple? I am lucky,” he said, a smile lighting up his gaunt face.

Chauhan and 4,000 of his fellow workers are racing against time to finish work for the two-storey Ram temple which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thrown open to the public next month. In this cavernous 2.77 acre plot – the size of two football fields, locked away behind a fractious legal dispute for 150 years before the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict in 2019 – the pink sandstone structure is slowly taking shape. Built in the Nagara style of architecture, it is held up by 392 columns and accessible through 44 doors, 14 gilded in gold.

“It is a matter of great happiness that the temple is about to open… the entry to the main temple will be from the east and the sanctum will be its westernmost point,” said Champat Rai, the general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

The temple will host two different sets of idols, the infant god Ram on the ground floor, and the adult king Ram holding court on the first floor. The temple – work on which began soon after the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit in 2019 – will be the first in north India to have a formal circumambulation path, known as a parkota, about 732m long, the trust said.

Stone from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Wood from Maharashtra, granite from Telangana were chiselled into shape by carpenters from Tamil Nadu, granite workers from Karnataka, idol carvers from Rajasthan and sandstone carvers from Odisha. And modern scientific technology played a key role in stabilising the foundation and structure of what is likely to become the focal point of Hindu faith in India.

“The biggest challenge was overcoming a combination of factors – an earthquake-prone area, sandy and loose soil and stopping erosion on what used to be a river slope. We used traditional materials, marrying them with modern techniques and workers,” said Girish Sahasrabhojanee, design and construction manager.

In addition to the main shrine, temples will be built at each of the four corners of the two-storey and 14-feet-wide circumambulation path, adorned with 125 bronze figurines depicting the Ramayana. Seven additional temples will be built south of the main structure, dedicated to various sages and figures in the Ramayana such as Nishadraj, Ahalya and Shabri. Around 70% of the sprawling 70-acre plot will be left vacant for 600 plants, Rai announced.

The pink sandstone temple was first envisioned in the late 1980s when then VHP chief Ashok Singhal approached architect CB Sompura. “We expanded it after the 2019 judgment and added several features,” said Sompura.

The 380-foot-long and 250-foot-wide temple – the ground floor is complete and work on the first is nearing its end – will be 161 foot tall from the ground to its peak. Around 2.1 million cubic feet of stone – including pink sandstone, white marble and granite — was used by around 4,000 labourers working at the site. Four hundred of those worked on just carving the pillars, taking 15-20 days to finish each, said Jagdish Aphale, project manager.

“At a time, 800 pilgrims will be allowed into the temple in four queues, and no outside flower or sweet offerings will be allowed as bhog. The trust will distribute prasad free of cost,” he said.

Rai flagged that the complex was self-sufficient (atmanirbhar) with two sewage treatment plants, a water treatment plant and a direct power line to the state grid. “A toilet complex with 100 washrooms, a pilgrimage centre that can handle 25,000 people and a health care centre will also be built,” he added.

The temple is equipped to handle around 200,000 visitors a day – many of whom will stay back in Ayodhya to visit some of the 1,000-odd small and big shrines in the centuries-old city dedicated to Ram. Outside the temple premises, too, the guttural rumbles of earth movers adds a constant hum to the chants wafting out of loudspeakers – the roads are being widened, the newly built footpaths polished , the facade of buildings washed in a uniform yellowish hue, temple motifs being painted on shopfronts and smashed skeletons of buildings feverishly being worked upon. “The whole city looks like a different place, like it’s getting ready for something big,” said Udaykant Jha, a shopkeeper. A museum will also be built on the premises, and will store artefacts that were recovered from the site – including those recovered by the Archaeological Survey of India during a court-ordered dig in 2003.

In the initial months of construction, experts recalled long nights of concerned discussions about the sandy soil that would make any structure unstable. In the end, a team drawing scientists from four IITs and four other central institutes decided to excavate the earth 14 metres deep, dump all the sand as debris and refill the hole with special concrete that was less porous due to the presence of fly ash and stone dust. “It was like filling up an ocean,” said Rai.

A key focus was ensuring that the temple stood for 1,000 years; in this quest, Sahasrabhojanee explained, they abandoned materials such as concrete, steel and iron for a variety of reasons, including vastu. “In the end, we fell back on stone, which has shown it can stand the test of time.”

It is just as well. It’s now lunchtime and Chauhan trundles back to the dorm for food, his older colleague Karunakar Mishra – he’s a local and has been working at the site for a year – regaling him with stories. “We hope the temple stands here forever, and so does our work,” said Chauhan. “I’ll finish here and come visit it one day.”