The ‘Ram Shilas’ — bricks with ‘Sri Ram’ inscribed on them which were collected from devotees across the country in 1989 just before the ‘shilanyas’ took place in Ayodhya — will now be used in the foundation of the grand Ram temple.
The bricks, with immense sentimental value, will also be used to set up a memorial wall to mark the contribution of those involved in the Ram temple movement but did not live to see the temple being built.
“In 1989, when the ‘shilanyas’ was held, nearly 50,000 of these bricks were used. The remaining bricks have been lying for almost 30 years at VHP’s temple workshop in Ayodhya,” said VHP spokesman Sharad Sharma.
Over 2 lakh bricks with ‘Sri Ram’ inscribed on them in various languages, including Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, have been collected over three decades from across country by the VHP. Several NRIs also sent ‘Ram Shilas’ at the peak of the temple movement.
Known as ‘Ram Shila’, this was the common man’s contribution to the proposed Ram temple.
Chandrakant Sompura, who has designed the model of the proposed temple, has said that a strong foundation of bricks, ‘Ram Shilas,’ will be made and on this, the temple will come up.
