Race for Ram: MP to host Ramayana quiz, winners to be flown to Ayodhya

A week after the Chhattisgarh Congress government inaugurated an ambitious tourism circuit tracing Lord Ram's exile in the state, the Madhya Pradesh government on Monday announced that it will host an international quiz on the Ramayana and eight winners will be flown to Ayodhya as a reward.
This comes after the state government led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan had already announced the study of the epic as one of the elective subjects for college students, including in engineering courses, under the new education policy.

MP's Tourism, Culture and Spirituality Minister Usha Thakur said on Monday that the general knowledge competition based on the Hindu epic 'Ramayana' will be organised at both national and international levels.

The MP government has in this year's state budget also earmarked a sum of Rs 1 crore for the preparation of 'Ram Van Gaman Path' project, which seeks to retrace the route taken by Lord Ram on his way to exile. This would cover important spots such as Chitrakoot, Amarkantak, Satna, Panna, Amanganj, Katni, Jabalpur, Mandla, Dindori and Shahdol districts.

Meanwhile, in Chhattisgarh where CM Bhupesh Baghel themed his second anniversary on Ramayana, his government last week announced that they have already identified seventy-five places linked with Lord Ram, of which nine locations are being developed and beautified in the first phase of the project with a budget provision of over Rs 137 crore.

Baghel's government has also undertaken the renovation work of the Maa Kaushalya temple at Chandrakhuri of Raipur district, believed to be the birthplace of Ram's mother Kaushalya. The CM blamed the BJP for not doing anything to preserve Kaushalya's hometown or even trace Ram's journey for the fifteen years the party was in power in the State.

Ram Shankar, professor of political science at the Rani Durgavati Vishwavidyalaya in Jabalpur told ET that the while Lord Ram invoked a lot of public sentiment in the State -- particularly because in his 14-year exile it is believed that he spent most of his time in the State -- it was different from the way he is symbolically represented by political parties in the UP context. The State has given leaders such as Uma Bharti that are fiercely associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Ram was a political issue, which even former CM of the State and congress leader Kamal Nath had no qualms in pushing, he said.

"In rural MP, nobody captures people's imagination like Ram.. he is part of their every day life, and he is very important part of their social and cultural ethos. In the resurgence of Hindutva, this sentiment has only become more widespread in the State, which is why parties are competing with each other to own his legacy. Associating with Ram also makes a large section of rural voters think of you as a 'good party' which helps their politics," he added.

Senior Congress leader Ramniwas Rawat said the BJP government in MP was repeatedly using the name of Ram to avoid "difficult questions on rising unemployment, economic distress, and state of farmers in the State."

"They are using religion as a diversionary tactic so that anyone who questions them on real issues can be called anti Hindu.. They are also doing this to keep the people under the spell of religion," he said.