Few people other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat, and Champat Rai can claim to be closely associated with the new Ram temple at Ayodhya. Others like former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sadhvi Ritambhara, and Uma Bharti, and even Bajrang Dal’s Vinay Katiyar—pioneers of the majoritarian mobilisation in the 1980s and 1990s—were sidelined. Their decades of service to the cause of creating a Hindu votebank through the Ram temple movement has been perfunctory, acknowledged but consigned to history’s ‘thanda basta’ or cold storage. The script for the new phase of the BJP has these once heavyweights consigned to political footnotes. Sometimes, however, there is no irony in the inevitable. The sordid and still unravelling controversy of a cash and jewellery loot at the grandest Hindu temple in the world must come as more than a temporary nuisance even for the best media managers of the BJP.The controversy has placed them between a rock and a hard place. The responses tumbled in, going almost as per the script of the five stages of grief: first, denial that there was nothing noteworthy; then came the demurring by the likes of Nripendra Misra (who slipped in the more damaging one liner that this was not a theft but a dacoity); and finally anger, bargaining, and (a degree of) acceptance. This is clear from the unabashed defence offered by BJP spokespersons who claim that neither the Samajwadi Party nor the Congress has any right to question them, given their own ‘anti-Ram mandir’ past.However, it is the same ruling dispensation under PM Modi that awarded Mualayam Singh Yadav the Padma Vibhushan in 2023, despite the saffron brigade blaming him for opening fire on violent kar sevaks in 1990 when he was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Why Corruption Scandals Don't Impact the Modi Govt Like They Did in Congress EraScamming DivinityThe new Rs 1,900 crore (including GST, we are told) temple that was made possible by a controversial Supreme Court judgment in 2019 has become mired in an unseemly offerings scam, one where the ‘prasad’ was appropriated by the top of the governing trust and its key officer-bearers. On 22 January 2024, Champat Rai was the emcee for the official inauguration of the temple by PM Modi, Mohan Bhagwat, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and Governor Anandiben Patel. Days ahead of the PM’s arrival at Ayodhya, Anil Mishra and his wife played the role of main hosts or pradhan yajman and began the rituals for the consecration of the new idol. Both Champat Rai and Anil Mishra joined the RSS in the 1970s and rose through the ranks. Rai became one of the key assistants for Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) supremo, the late Ashok Singhal, and has been associated with the Ram temple movement since the 1990s. Mishra, who is a member of the regional unit of the RSS, is one of the 15 trustees of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra. Rai was the General Secretary of the trust and the de facto head. Under mounting public pressure, both Rai and Mishra have ostensibly resigned and have been questioned by the UP Police. However, including Gopal Rao, the senior RSS functionary who was brought into the Ram temple trust in 2021, these three key personnel have not been named in the FIR registered by the UP police. The first allegations came out in the first week of June when Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav raised the issue, citing statements made by Mahipal Singh, a former in-charge of the unit that looked after donations.Since then, on the one hand, a furious flurry of murky disclosures and claims has continued on a daily basis. On the other, the public image of the RSS and the BJP has continued to get sullied.While ‘chanda-chori’ or ‘chadava-chori’ and corruption of other forms is fairly common in religious establishments of all persuasions, the shocking aspect is that such grave mismanagement has happened in a temple built on the promise of 'Ram Rajya'—a utopian form of government, which has no historical basis. The new temple complex also missed the opportunity to embody the historical plurality of Ayodhya, which has strong Buddhist, Jain, Sufi, and Sikh traditions. The Ram idol itself is of the lord as a boy instead of Ram lalla or infant Ram.Amid Ram Mandir Probe, Champat Rai Steps Down As Trust's General SecretaryHow Much Did Ram Mandir 'Earn'?For most places of worship, donations are an important source of revenue required not only for maintenance and repair, but also for expansion and creation of facilities, and undertaking of charitable activities such as medical camps, and food and cloth distribution. The devotion of the believer often manifests in offerings to such temples, mosques, churches and gurdwaras. Being exempt from tax, several cases of money laundering are regularly reported from different shrines across the country. But, for this to happen in the temple that was made out to represent the ‘asmita and gaurav’ (dignity and pride) of the once persecuted Hindus is indescribably immoral.Till the time the Ram lalla idol was under a tent at the spot where Babri Masjid stood, its financial records were maintained meticulously. In the days after the 2016 demonetisation, the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid shrine received a major outpouring of donations. Its ‘earnings’ in the first 15 days of November 2016 (Rs 6.75 lakh) almost matched those through the whole of August (Rs 7.96 lakh). The late mahant Satyendra Das, then head of the government-run temple, arranged for this money to be deposited in the temple’s bank account.Most of the money was deposited in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes which were counted in the presence of a magistrate and the district treasury officer. Champat Rai cuts a diminutive figure; he keeps the physical appearance of a humble teacher that he once was and has maintained a public image of austerity. But this scandal has led to unprecedented muck-raking against the most high-profile RSS-VHP functionary and has not spared his personal life. The most vitriolic attacks have come from the Hindutva ecosystem itself, which is not surprising, given how intimately the greed for power has come to define the Ram temple movement itself. There was hope even among their opponents that with the BJP having achieved not just the Ram temple but also near total domination, they would ensure complete transparency and the highest standards of governance. Now that seems to be in tatters that will take a long time to be repaired.Age, Faith, Politics: Mohan Bhagwat’s Big Signals for BJP and India’s FutureBJP's Crisis of FaithLess than a year after the temple officially opened to lay devotees, a systematic theft of an (as yet) unaccounted for sum of money and valuables has also brought to fore the ever-simmering rivalry between different factions withing the BJP-RSS family.Opposition parties, including Samajwadi Party, whose Dalit MP defeated the BJP in Ayodhya, the Congress, and others are calling it a "brutal betrayal of trust of Hindus". They feel vindicated that their age-old charge of the BJP using Ram only for power has become self-evident.Beyond political mudslinging by opponents, the BJP is facing a larger crisis of credibility. The multiple instances of examination paper leaks and re-tests; alleged instances of corruption, including against its Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav; and the tanking economy are adding to the perception that the all is far from well within the ruling dispensation. For the hundreds of millions of Hindus who voted for the BJP’s evocative 2024 election slogan, ‘Jo Ram ko laye hain, hum unko layenge’, the siphoning away of offerings in cash, silver, and gold has become a bitter pill to swallow, perhaps more so than the defeat of the BJP in various parliamentary constituencies, including Ayodhya. One can’t help but recall lines from Kunwar Narain’s poem, Ayodhya 1992, which have become deeply relevant at this moment: “O Rama…what more can our misfortune be that your kingdom lies shrunk to a stage of dispute so petty…”(Valay Singh is a senior journalist and the author of Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)Swami Avimukteshwaranand Criticises Ram Temple FIR, Calls BJP's Hindutva 'Fake'