THE GRAND Somanath Amrit Mahotsav concluded four days ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed the Kumbhabhisheka marking the auspicious close to the 75th anniversary of its Punarutthana (restoration).
The restoration of Somanatha is a rare instance in which providence, history, piety and human effort worked in tandem to heal a civilisational wound thereby reclaiming the pride of Hindus in the transcendental spiritual impulse that created the Somanath Temple.
When Narendra Modi flagged off the Somnath Swabhiman Parv in January, it was an unabashed declaration of the aforementioned truth. The kernel of this declaration also contained another basic historical truth: that after an entire millennium, the ideology that impelled Mahmud of Ghazni to destroy Somanath, keeps on facing repeated failures only in Bharatavarsha. Mahmud destroyed the building, not the spirit of the people who built, venerated and sustained it.
Not to forget, it was the Somanath Temple that was first restored to its former glory after Independence. The distance between its revival and the Ram Mandir restoration spans nearly three-fourths of a century; that is how long it took for Nehruvian secularism to ultimately collapse.
In hindsight, it appears that the Somanath restoration was accomplished in a breeze by Sardar Patel but it took three decades of hardscrabble Hindu activism to finally reclaim the Ram Mandir — just one temple.
Today, it almost sounds like fiction when we state an obvious truth: that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was a Congressman and that he felt no compulsion to display the Yajnopavitam over his shirt.
TRACING THE ANTIQUITY of Somanatha takes us back to the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation where Somanatha was worshipped as Pashupati, another name for Shiva. The Vedic corpus — most notably, the Rudra Prasna — abounds with reverential references to Pashupati. Pashupati is also an invariable presence in the epic, Pauranic and devotional literature.
Likewise, the name Soma in Somanatha also enjoys a similar stature. Among others, it is a technical term in the tradition of Vedic Yajnas; it is also a synonymn for moon; when it is used as a compound word, it can be split as Sa + Uma — He who is with Uma.
Since very ancient times, the Gurjara-Desha or Gujarat, was universally venerated as a sacred Shiva-Kshetra. Bharatavarsha’s civilisational memory regards India’s western coast, bulk of which lies in Gujarat, as the abode of Parashurama, a great devotee of Shiva. In fact, Bharuch, whose original name is Bhrugu-Kaccha, is named in Parashurama’s honour for he descended from the Bhrugu lineage of Rishis.
When we travel southwest from Bharuch, we reach Somanatha located at the very tip of the sea. Its original name was Kuśāvarta, situated in the Saurashtra Desha. Today, Somanatha lies in Prabhasa-Pattana (corrupted as Prabhas Patan), which still commands reverence as a Surya-Kshetra. In fact, both words, Saurashtra and Prabhasa mean the same: Surya or Sun.
Among its innumerable distinctions, Somanatha had enjoyed sanctity equalling the Triveni-Sangama at Prayagraj; here, the Kapila, Hiranya and Saraswati merged into the sea, which is unfairly known as the Arabian Sea.
In fact, one can extol the unbroken spiritual primacy of Somanatha at any length and never get enough of it. Be it the Vedic corpus, the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, Kavyas, Stotra literature, folk traditions and formal histories, the sheer abundance of material related to Somanatha is truly mind-boggling.
A supreme testimony to Somanatha’s ageless, divine appeal is the fact that its name occurs first in the Dvādaśa-Jyōtirliṅga stotram — hymn listing the twelve Jyotirlingas. This apart, Somanatha is accorded a high place in the five coastal Tirtha-Kshetras that our tradition has recognised as especially sacred: Dwaraka, Somanatha, Puri, Chidambaram and Rameshwaram.
THE ORIGINAL CREDIT for transforming Somanatha into a flourishing hub of pilgrimage goes to the monarchs of the Naga dynasty (200 - 350 CE). The Somanatha Temple that Hindus reclaimed in the 20th century was first built during their regime.
The Naga kings were followed by the Vākāṭakas, Guptas, Valabhis, Gurjara-Pratiharas, Paramaras and the Chalukyas of Gujarat. Every single king of these dynasties gave bountiful offerings to the Somanatha Temple; they expanded it, they beautified it and elevated it to a standard that is truly unfathomable by the shrunken imaginations of contemporary Hindus.
For eight hundred plus years, Somanatha was the cynosure of undivided Bharatavarsha.
It was also an eyesore.
To Mahmud of Ghazni.
The gut-wrenching story of its maiden demolition by Mahmud is too well-known to repeat here. Ever since, Somanatha became the prime target of repeated Muslim assaults. Post Mahmud, it was demolished by Ala-ud-din Khalji in 1299; by Zaffar Khan in 1393; by Mahmud Begda in 1469 and finally by Aurangzeb in 1706 — just a year before his death. It had to await the pious willpower and the iron hand of Sardar Patel to regain a semblance of its past eminence.
Throughout its protracted history, Hindus never gave up fighting to reclaim the Somanatha Temple.
As early as 1783, Ahalya Bai Holkar built a modest new temple near the destroyed one just as she had done in Kashi. Her temple still stands in both places.
Here is the brief timeline of the restoration of the Somanath Temple in the aftermath of its serial destructions:
1. The Chalukya king Bhima restored it in 1030 — four years after Mahmud’s wrecking.
2. Kumarapala - circa 1169, who enhanced Bhima’s restoration work.
3. Mahipala I - circa 1308
4. Ahalya Bai Holkar - circa 1783
5. Vallabhbhai Jhaveribhai Patel - circa 1951
Because the latest restoration by Sardar Patel is in the living memory of Hindus who are old enough to remember the epochal event as well as to witness its 75th anniversary, the story merits retelling.
That story is narrated in full in K.M. Munshi’s classic, Somanatha - The Shrine Eternal. Any country that takes its triumphs and its agonies seriously would have prescribed this work as mandatory reading right from the primary school level.
In December 1922, Munshi visited the desolate environs of the ruins of the Somanatha Temple. This is what he saw:
In December 1922, accompanied by a young man, I went to see the shrine before the dawn broke… The dawn broke; the aged hoary ruins of this once magnificent temple stood before me. I went into the temple. On the dusty floor of the gudha-mandapa, on which once stood the noblest and the mightiest in India, a police sub-inspector had tied a pony! … I left… with bitter humiliation in my heart… Reconstruction of Somanath was then but the nebulous dream of a habitual dreamer…In 1946, the British [partitioned] India…India was, for all purposes, balkanised… The Muslim rulers of Indian States had their own dreams…their eyes turned to Pakistan. One of them was the Babi Nawab of Junagadh... Eighty-two percent of the Hindu population of Junagadh… were shocked to learn that their Nawab had acceded to Pakistan... A mighty wave of indignation swept not only over the people of Junagadh, but on the whole of India.
This Hindu rage translated into concrete political action. In the end, the panicked Nawab decamped to Pakistan overnight. His shattered kingdom was left to the sweaty hands of his Diwan, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, grandfather of Benazir Bhutto. But it was too late. Junagadh had been wrested back into Hindu hands. K.M. Munshi narrates what happened next.
While Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and myself were sitting in his house at night in Delhi, a telephone message was received… that the Dewan of the Nawab had invited the Indian Army into Junagadh. When he finished the telephone conversation, his face was beaming. He told me what the message was and smiled. My first thought, I expressed in these words: "So it is JAYA SOMANATHA". Sardar smiled.
And then, on November 13, 1947, Sardar Patel visited Somanath, walked inside the decrepit temple and finally stood outside the Ahalya Bai temple facing a massive crowd. Holding a few sacred drops of sea water in his palm, he took a solemn vow, his thunderous voice reaching each ear:
On this auspicious day of the New Year, we have decided that Somanatha should be reconstructed. You, people of Saurashtra, should do your best. This is a holy task in which all should participate.
A fraction of a second after Sardar Patel had finished his speech, a princely donation of one lakh rupees was given by one, Mr. Jam Saheb. It was quickly followed by an onrush of contributions.
The foundation stone was laid on May 8, 1950. In the interim, Sardar Patel had stoically absorbed the torrent of opposition that emanated from Nehru and his coterie; he didn’t budge an inch.
May 11, 1951 was witness to an epochal civilisational reclamation: the Pratishtapana of the Jyotirlinga was performed.
On May 13, 1965, the Dhvajarohana and Kalasha Pratishtapana were completed.
The total expense for undertaking the Somanatha restoration was ₹ 24,92,000.
The reclaimed temple stood at a majestic height of 155 feet; its foundation extended down to 30 feet. It bore the same architectural style that had existed before Aurangzeb’s bigotry tore it down. In the terminology of Vaastushastra, it is known as the Kailāsa Mahāmēru Prasāda, where prasāda means “temple.” K.M. Munshi’s pithy description evokes a thrill within us: “No temple of this size… as been built in India for the last 800 years. The stone used from first floor upwards is of the same type as the stone originally used for constructing the previous Somanatha temple.”
Munshi wrote Somanatha - The Shrine Eternal in record time. He published it on April 25, 1951. The consecreation of the Jyotirlinga was completed on May 11, 1951. He dedicated the book to his dear and respected friend, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel; the simple wording is deeply moving:
“To,
Sardar Patel,
But for whom
Mine eyes would not have seen
The shrine of Somnath
Rise again.”
The tragic irony of destiny is the fact that Sardar Patel was not alive to witness the fulfilment of his sacred vow. He had braved everything; he had braved Nehru’s harassment; he had withstood and combatted sinister plots emanating from the Muslim clergy who knew they had Nehru in their fist; he had triumphed at every stage but didn’t live to see the auspicious materialisation of his triumph.
There is a subliminal but powerful message in the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also the Chairman of the Shri Somanath Trust. It is perhaps the most pronounced contrast betwen Nehru who wrote intimidating letters to the President of India and the Chief Ministers of at least 17 states trying to dissuade them from attending the inauguration of the restored Somanatha Temple.
|| Jaya Somanatha ||
The Dharma Dispatch is now available on Telegram! For original and insightful narratives on Indian Culture and History, subscribe to us on Telegram.