What Happened In Ayodhya? A 'Pran Prathistha', A Consecration, Something Else?

By Prof. Dr SN Balagangadhara, Ghent University, Belgium.

Reading reports and opinions on the Ram Mandir event in Ayodhya last January is both depressing and puzzling. It is depressing because intelligent people show a penchant for writing unintelligibly on important issues. Even though they apparently see something, they stop short of saying what they actually ‘see’. Consequently, the reader is left in the lurch. 

Hence arises the puzzle: when indifferent to the reader, why bother to write? Whatever the reason, as readers we must at least scratch where it itches. Since unintelligibility is present on the surface, scratching here could reveal what lies beneath. The surface is the “consecration”, the visible is the equivocation, and our sources are reports and opinions in The Indian Express. All answer the same question: what happened in Ayodhya?

A ‘consecration’, answer some. In that case, what was consecrated? Here are some answers:

(i) an idol;

(ii) a temple;

(iii) Hinduism;

(iv) the Hindu collective narcissism.

Surely, if saying what occurred in Ayodhya depends so much on individual whims and fancies, it speaks of the inability to identify the object of consecration. Some use Pran Prathistha here, but it is unclear what role it plays: is pran pratishtha a synonym for an English word or does it merely name the act of consecration?

Some, like Liz Mathew in her report of 24 February in the Indian Express suggest that ‘inauguration’ and ‘consecration’ are synonyms: “the Ram Temple inauguration” in one paragraph becomes “the Ram Temple consecration” in the subsequent one. Some even imply that God and a religion (Hinduism) were consecrated in Ayodhya. 

The problem is that neither is possible. First, consecration requires transmission of a superior force or quality to an object. The word ‘God’ loses meaning if there exists something superior to God. Second, since consecration is carried out within religion, what could consecrate religion itself? If religion cannot consecrate itself, no religion can possibly consecrate another religion if these words have any meaning.

In short, these claims confuse if taken as descriptions or identifications of the same event. Not because they are descriptive but because of equivocation, which generates ambiguity about the event’s identity. Thus: what occurred in Ayodhya?

To reduce ambiguity and equivocation, let us formulate the above question more concretely using some Indian words: was there a pran pratishtha of the vigrah or murti of Rama, or was there also a pran pratishtha of the Mandir? Is pran pratishtha of a dharma (‘religion’) possible? Is pran pratishtha the name of a ceremony, a segment in the act of consecration or the result of consecration? Could there be a pran pratishtha of Atman or Brahman? It is important to note that these questions do not confuse us. 

For instance, we can intelligibly say that pran pratishtha:

(a) applies to objects (vigrahs or murtis,  mostly) but excludes mandirs;

(b) it cannot be used for ideational or psychological entities (say, like narcissism);

(c) is applicable neither to qualities or properties of objects nor to Atman or Brahman;

We might be unable to explicate and defend these claims or might even give wrong answers. But they are neither nonsensical nor confusing the way they are when we speak of consecration in Ayodhya. We can answer, ‘what occurred in Ayodhya?’, because we used Indian words to formulate questions.

Let us notice what happened in these two cases. When we used the English word, the question went unanswered because the answers were incoherent. By using some set of Indian words, the question could be tackled because the answers do not threaten to become unintelligible. Even though we speak of the same event in both cases, we appear to do it differently depending on our linguistic choices.

When speaking in vernaculars, we express our intuitions regarding language use, but we appear to fail doing so when using English. There seems to be a breakdown of sorts in the second case. Even where the English sentences are correctly formulated, there they render both the identity of the event and its consequences hazy. However, there is no comparable confusion when using the Indian vernaculars. Why?

Drawing an analogy could help. Imagine an infected biological sample on a glass slide placed under a microscope. Two people observe: one ‘sees’ it as virus and the other, as bacteria. Both sightings can be assessed and there is no linguistic issue about using the correct word. Instead, it is about knowledge: is it bacteria or virus? Seeing it as either bacteria or virus is not sufficient to answer this question. We need more: Bacteriological and Virological theories, among other things.

The above analogy holds good for us. The vernacular and English words are both linguistically legitimate. Both could describe the world. In English, we see the Ayodhya event as consecration; in the vernacular, we see it as pran pratistha. These two different ‘seeings’ give birth to two different consequences: the “Indian seeing” allows an intelligible description that is either true or false; the “English seeing”, by contrast, generates unintelligibility.

In the second case, the description is a mere conglomeration of sentences that confuses and, therefore, cannot qualify as knowledge even if some of the sentences are true. What is at stake is the nature of an event. Its description must answer the question: what occurred in Ayodhya? Our vernaculars help in giving intelligible answers that are either true or false. Using English here not only muddies waters but also generates ignorance.

However, in identifying phenomena in the world, our descriptions rely on languages. As embedded cultural entities, our intuitions are indelibly cultural. Surely, most Indian writers and intellectuals also share similar cultural and linguistic intuitions. Yet these intuitions appear to go haywire when writing in English. Why?

In the analogy I used above, two issues are of importance. The first: when we see an object, we mostly see it as something. That is, one person sees the Ayodhya event as consecration and the other sees it as Pran Pratishtha. Why do they see the same event in two different ways? This is where the second issue becomes important: they use different theories which make them look differently at the world.

In the one case, in using English unreflectively, we use theories about consecration implicit in that language without awareness. None of the reporters or commentators show any learning or knowledge about the theories of consecration they use. Yet, this ignorance is covered up by the grammatically correct use of English and some of the words it contains. In one sense, we could say that they do not see consecration either but use the word to cover up a failure. Indians too use theories when speaking in vernaculars. Even though this knowledge is implicitly present in their language-use as well, it enables both reflection and thinking. We can formulate the above argument differently when we realize that this idea identifies our predicament today.

Our political and economic theories, our sociologies and anthropologies, our historiographies, our theories in psychologies, are all on loan from western culture. Even those who make their living selling ‘Indic’ thoughts in India or abroad use western frameworks to earn their wages: their ‘ontologies’, ‘epistemologies’, ‘ethics’, ‘metaphysics’, etc., are all borrowed from the West (‘realism and nominalism’, ‘norms and values’, ‘particulars and universals’, and so on); their ‘Hinduism(s)’, ‘Buddhism(s)’ and ‘Saivism(s)’ need ‘theologies and theocracies’, ‘deities and their worship’, ‘idols and idolatries’, and even an occasional ‘sanctum sanctorum’. 

Of course, western terms are spiced appropriately with Sanskrit words to make the dish appear entirely indigenous. This situation indicates that we have massively borrowed theories from western culture both explicitly and implicitly. However, borrowing these unthoughtfully does not give us automatic access to that culture; nor does it help in understanding its biases.

It is akin to borrowing money without knowing that interest must be paid on the sum and that there is a due date. Perhaps, it is even worse: Indian intellectuals do not even seem to know that they have taken huge and massive loans to meet their daily needs. The lender will send strong-arm men to beat us into submission and force a payback in regular instalments. These EMIs bleed us to death, and it is this anemic patient that you see in the reports and columns on Ayodhya. If we are oblivious to what we have borrowed (from whom and how), is the resulting ignorance a wonder?

Our reporters and intellectuals know the English syntax but fail to realise that ‘knowing English’ includes seeing the embeddedness of languages and their words in cultures and theories. Because they are not mere linguistic particles, words generate consequences. If ill-understood, but still used casually to frame descriptions of the world, they merely adorn ignorance. The current writings on Ayodhya are its exemplifications. How can we take such writings seriously? What about their further claims on polity, society, and the people of Indian culture? These are our questions today. But before going there, two warnings.

The first is about the newspaper reporters. One does not expect them to have expert knowledge of consecration. Nor any grasp of Latin as a language. Why then write of consecration and use the Latin phrase “sanctum sanctorum” to speak of garbhagriha? Perhaps, they believe that this is how one writes in English; or each reporter merely imitates the more ‘experienced’ colleague. Whatever the case, my criticism is not about their ignorance of the meaning of the word ‘consecration’.

This brings me to the second warning, which is about a pernicious trap. Even though I am not speaking about words or their uses, the temptation is to assume that this is the crucial issue. One might be easily seduced to ask: ‘what does it matter which word we use, consecration or pran pratishtha, to speak of the Ayodhya event?’ The answer is obvious: it matters the same way whether we use ‘acidity’, ‘ulcer’, or ‘stomach cancer’ to indicate abdominal unease, prescribe and take the medications. This is one aspect. The other aspect of the trap is to think that the problem is a translation issue. It is not: whether one believes that ‘pran pratishthapana’ is a “Sanskrit Untranslatable” or that translating the English ‘consecration’ into Indian languages is a “cultural” and not just a linguistic problem, the result is the same. You will merely go down the proverbial rabbit hole.

SN Balagangadhara is professor emeritus, Ghent University. His life's work as fcused on a comparative study of cultures, especially western and Indian culture.

This is the first part of a three-part series by Prof Balagangadhara. Part 2 is here, and part 3 here.