When Faith Is Betrayed, The Heavens Have Already Fallen

By K Raveendran

The Supreme Court vacation bench’s observation that the “heavens are not going to fall” if petitions seeking an independent investigation into the alleged misappropriation of donations to the Ayodhya Ram Temple waited for the regular judicial process was an unfortunate choice of words. The bench may have been procedurally justified in declining an urgent hearing, but its rhetorical dismissal failed to recognise the extraordinary moral, institutional and political dimensions of the controversy.

Courts routinely distinguish between genuine emergencies and matters that can await normal listing. Judicial discipline also requires caution before transferring an investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation, ordering a court-monitored inquiry or displacing the authority of the police already handling a case. Yet the legal question before the court was not merely whether money had allegedly been stolen from an ordinary organisation. It concerned offerings made by millions of devotees to one of India’s most symbolically charged religious institutions.

The distinction matters. Donations to a temple are not conventional financial transactions. They are expressions of faith, sacrifice and trust. Many contributors may never visit Ayodhya or examine the accounts of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. They donate because they believe the money is being placed at the service of a sacred purpose. Any allegation that such offerings were systematically diverted, stolen or manipulated therefore represents more than a possible economic offence. It constitutes a breach of a deeply personal covenant between devotees and the institution receiving their money. For those devotees, the heavens have already fallen.

The scandal has moved far beyond an isolated allegation. Eight people have been arrested, substantial sums have reportedly been recovered, bank transactions and cash-counting procedures have come under scrutiny, and investigators are examining whether discrepancies were episodic or part of a wider pattern. The temple had received donations running into several billion rupees, making the scale of the institution’s financial operations comparable to that of a major enterprise. Even a theft involving a small fraction of those funds raises serious questions about internal controls, supervision, auditing and accountability.

The response of the Trust itself demonstrates that the matter cannot be treated as inconsequential. Senior office-bearers have stepped down, the leadership structure has been reshuffled, and a process has begun to appoint a professional chief executive. Cash-counting systems and security arrangements are being tightened. These are not the actions of an institution facing a trivial bookkeeping dispute. They amount to an acknowledgement that the existing mechanisms failed badly enough to threaten the credibility of the entire administration.

The Trust may argue that the arrests show the system is functioning and that corrective measures should be allowed to take effect. That position has some merit. Criminal liability must be established through evidence, and no individual should be condemned merely because political parties have found advantage in amplifying allegations. A demand for a central investigation cannot automatically be treated as proof that the state police are incapable of conducting a fair inquiry.

But the burden on the Trust and the government is higher than simply securing convictions against those immediately accused. The central issue is whether the alleged theft was enabled by structural weaknesses, administrative complicity or deliberate concealment. An investigation limited to the individuals caught handling cash could produce arrests without explaining how irregularities continued within a heavily scrutinised institution. The recovery of money is not a substitute for tracing the full chain of responsibility.

A forensic audit, disclosure of collection and deposit procedures, publication of independently verified accounts and transparent identification of supervisory failures are essential. The Trust owes this not to the opposition but to the devotees whose contributions created the institution’s financial strength. The government, which has closely associated itself with the temple’s construction and consecration, cannot suddenly insist that the Trust is an entirely autonomous religious body when questions of accountability arise.

The political consequences are equally serious. The Ram Temple was projected as the fulfilment of a historic civilisational promise and became inseparable from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological identity. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s central role in the consecration ceremony underlined that political ownership. The project was presented not merely as the construction of a place of worship but as evidence that the BJP had delivered what generations of supporters had sought.

That association now creates corresponding political responsibility. A party cannot claim the emotional dividend of a religious achievement while disclaiming responsibility for failures surrounding its administration. Attempts to portray every demand for scrutiny as an attack on Hindu faith are unlikely to resolve the underlying problem. On the contrary, they risk creating the impression that faith is being used as a shield against accountability.

The opposition’s conduct also deserves examination. Congress and the Samajwadi Party will inevitably seek to convert the controversy into an electoral weapon ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Their demand for a Supreme Court-monitored or CBI-led probe may contain political calculation. Yet political motivation does not invalidate the demand itself. Opposition parties exist partly to scrutinise institutions linked to the government. The test is whether their allegations are supported by evidence and whether their proposed remedies would improve transparency rather than merely sustain a campaign narrative.

The BJP’s greater danger lies in underestimating the electoral power of wounded religious sentiment. The Sabarimala controversy offers an instructive, though not identical, precedent. The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front government in Kerala defended its implementation of the Supreme Court judgment permitting women of all ages to enter the shrine. Legally, it could claim that it was enforcing a binding constitutional ruling. Politically, however, large sections of devotees saw the government’s actions as insensitive to established religious practice.

The result was a dramatic erosion of support in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The LDF won only one of Kerala’s 20 parliamentary seats, and the CPI(M) itself later acknowledged that the Sabarimala issue had alienated sections of its traditional electorate. The episode showed that voters do not always distinguish neatly between judicial authority, administrative responsibility and political intent when they believe a sacred institution has been mishandled.

Ayodhya carries an even broader political charge. Sabarimala affected a state government whose ideological relationship with organised religion was already complex. The Ram Temple, by contrast, is foundational to the BJP’s political narrative. Any suggestion that donations offered in Lord Ram’s name were stolen under an administration identified with the temple could produce anger not only among opponents but within the party’s own support base. Religious faith is politically combustible precisely because its effects cannot be measured through conventional calculations alone. (IPA Service)