It is a well-known fact that Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi was a strong aspirer of Ramrajya along with Swaraj in the country. He considered both of them to be interdependent and the pictures of these two were very clear in his mind. In ‘India of my dreams’ he has written that India in its original form is the land of work, not the land of enjoyment and my biggest dream about this land of work is the establishment of Ramrajya. He believed that Ramrajya is not at all possible without self-rule inspired by self-discipline and self-control, whereas India being a country of villages, the scope of his self-rule extended to village self-reliance and village self-rule. According to experts, he took inspiration for Satyagraha for Swarajya from Meerabai, whom he considered to be the first Satyagrahi, Ramrajya from Tulsidas, Charkha from Kabir and the feeling of considering strangers as one’s own peer from Narsi Mehta. He saw the reflection of all this in his most favorite prayer ‘Raghupati Raghav Rajaram Patitpavan Sitaram’. In the Ramrajya of his dreams, he had no place for any discrimination on the basis of birth, religion, sect, race, colour, language or region etc. But be it coincidence or misfortune, he was able to visit Ayodhya, the birthplace or kingdom of Lord Ram, the capital of Ram Rajya, about which he was so insistent, in his entire life, only twice. The message given during his first visit to Ayodhya on February 10, 1921, that violence is a sign of cowardice and swords are the weapons of the weak, is still discussed occasionally. It is also said that during this journey, he went among the sadhus of Ayodhya and asked them to fight for freedom and expressed confidence that all the sadhus of the country, who were 56 lakh in number in those days, should get ready for sacrifice. So we can liberate India with our penance and prayers. He had told the sages that unless we follow our religion with service and devotion, we will not be able to destroy this demonic (British) government, nor will we be able to achieve self-rule nor the rule of our religion.
But his second visit to Ayodhya in 1929 has remained completely unrecognized. In terms of message and importance, it is no less than the first Yatra. For the second time he had come to ‘Apne Ram ki Rajdhani’ in connection with the campaign to raise funds for his ‘Harijan Fund’. It is said that when his meeting was organized at Moti Bagh in the then Faizabad city for this fund collection, a gentleman gave him his silver ring. But how and what use would he make of the ring in his mission of Harijan welfare? They started auctioning it in the meeting itself, so that they could get money in return. A gentleman bid fifty rupees and the auction ended in his name. As promised, Gandhiji made her wear a ring. But that gentleman had a note of 100 rupees. After giving it to him, he started waiting to get the remaining fifty rupees back. After some time the Mahatma saw him standing and asked the reason, then he asked for his fifty rupees back. But the Mahatma embarrassed them by saying that we are traders and do not return the money received. Even more so if it is for charity. During this trip, the Mahatma also went to visit the country’s first Gandhi Ashram, established by the dedicated Sarvodaya activist Dhirendra Bhai Majumdar in Akbarpur (which is now the headquarters of Ambedkar Nagar district), located about sixty kilometers to the east of Ayodhya. While giving his much publicized message of ‘Hate the sin, not the sinner’, he was staying in the bungalow of an English priest named Sweetman. In the meeting held at Gandhi Ashram, he asked people to get organized, give up foreign clothes, spin the charkha, non-violently resist the atrocities of the landlords, commit to prohibition and boycott government schools. Then even the agitating farmers of Awadh abandoned the path of violence. It is noteworthy that before both these visits, the Mahatma had passed through Ayodhya while going from Kolkata to Haridwar for the Kumbh Mela in 1915, but had not set foot on its soil.
(These are the personal views of the author.)