Q1.
In later centuries, the Somanātha temple was rebuilt and destroyed again several times; the existing temple was built in 1950 and inaugurated the next year by the then President of India, Rajendra Prasad. Why do you think it was decided to fund the construction entirely from public donations?
Answer
Because a temple rebuilt by the people themselves says something that a temple rebuilt out of government funds cannot say. Several reasons point the same way.
- It answers the destruction in kind. The temple had been destroyed and rebuilt “several times”. If ordinary people fund the rebuilding, the message is that the shrine survives not because one ruler ordered it but because a whole community wants it — which is much harder to destroy.
- It makes the temple belong to everybody. Money given by lakhs of small donors, from every region and background, makes each of them part-owner of the building. The chapter notes that the great temples of the past had grown rich “from the devotees’ offerings over centuries” — public donation is the same old relationship, resumed.
- India in 1950 had just become a Republic with a written Constitution. Under it the State does not favour or fund one religion. Building a place of worship from voluntary donations keeps that principle intact — the President could inaugurate the temple as a national event without the State having paid for the shrine.
- Public money had urgent claims. A country a few years past Partition needed its funds for refugees, food, irrigation and schools. Voluntary donations let the temple rise without taking from that.
The underlying idea: who pays for a monument decides what it means. Paid for by a king, it is the king’s glory. Paid for by the State, it is a government project. Paid for by the people, it is the people’s own act of memory — and that was the meaning wanted here.
Try this: find out how your nearest large temple, mosque, church, gurudwara or public library was funded — a ruler, a trust, a merchant family, or subscriptions from ordinary people. Then ask what that choice was meant to say. It is the same question in miniature.