Ayodhya, 21 Jan: The original idol of Ram Lalla Virajman will be moved to the new Ram Temple on January 21 at 8 p.m., following Shayan Aarti.
The original idols of his brothers, Lord Lakshman, Shatrughan, and Bharat, as well as Lord Hanuman, will also be relocated to the temple.
The original idols will also be moved to the new temple before the Pran Pratishtha ceremony on January 22. The importance of relocating original idols on the evening of January 21 is that Ram Lalla Virajman will open his eyes in the new great temple tomorrow after spending 70 years in a tent and temporary construction. Ram Lalla Virajman had not met devotees for two days in decades because the temple was closed on January 20 and 21. Now he will visit them at new Ram Temple.
Ram Lalla Virajman could not have been moved earlier on January 19 and 20 because he is given a daily Bhog, but the new Lord Ram idol cannot be given the Bhog until the Pran Pratishtha. According to saints and seers in Ayodhya, it would have been weird for one idol of God to get Bhog while the other did not.
The 51-inch-tall new idol of Lord Ram Lalla has been put on a pedestal within the Ram Temple’s Garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum), and the original idols of Lord Ram (Ram Lalla Virajman) and his brothers will be placed in front of the new idol inside. The original idols have been worshiped since 1949.
The original idol of Ram Lalla stands just six inches tall, and the idols of his brothers, Lakshman, Bharat, and Shatrughana, as well as Lord Hanuman, are much smaller. The Ram Temple Trust so decided to build a larger standing idol of Ram Lalla so that devotees might have a great Darshan of the god. Devotees will now be able to see the new idol beside the original idols of Ram Lalla and his brothers.
Ram Lalla Virajman won the court fight over the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. The original idols are set on a Singhasan (pedestal) within the makeshift temple and will be transferred to the Garbhagriha in the same configuration.
