Part- 2
The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust had outsourced the cash-counting process to the local SBI branch, which in turn hired an external agency, ‘Sainik Security Services’. SBI deployed 19 personnel, which included the few recommended by the Trust.
Of the eight arrested, six were from this counting team, and two were Trust employees—one of whom betrayed the immense trust placed in him by Trust general secretary Champat Rai on the quintessential RSS ethos that ‘trust breeds trust.’
The theft occurred because of over reliance on personal trust instead of systemic rigour. The counting protocols were overly relaxed, allowing for collusion.
This led to administrative negligence, paving the way for the theft. As Champat Rai himself noted, he was betrayed by someone he trusted deeply.
Bulldozer action
To date, Rs 80 lakh out of the stolen cash has been recovered. The special investigation team (SIT) set up by the UP government is actively tracking the remaining assets of the accused and investigating if any other valuables were compromised. The government’s resolve against the wrongdoers is manifest in the move to bulldoze a Rs 80-lakh house built by one of the thieves whose salary was a mere Rs 20,000.
Stolen cash a small sum?
The Ram Mandir is said to have received over Rs 3,000 crore in donations to date, with reportedly more than 90% arriving securely via bank transfers. Between April 2025 and February 2026, Rs 74 crore was reportedly collected in cash via the Hundi. It was only from this cash pool that theft occurred.
Based on internal audits and preliminary SIT reports, the embezzled amount was reportedly estimated at Rs 7 crore to 7.5 crore initially. The latest estimate of the theft gathered from Trust sources is far less, out of which most has been recovered partly in cash and partly traced as properties.
Trust sources confirm that there is not a single gram of jewellery lost. The latest estimate of the stolen cash, and the absence of any loss of jewellery, if finally established by SIT, will be a serious blow to the reckless opposition charge of a huge Rs 200 crore scam.
Already, their demand for a court-monitored investigation ignores the stark contrast between inaction in government Trust cases forcing the courts to step in to initiate the probe and the super promptness of the Mandir Trust’s action.
Now come to the politics and ideological clashes triggered by the theft that is inevitable as the Mandir battleground of UP goes to polls early next year.
Hindu nationalism: Preached by Vivekananda, accepted by Gandhi, reclaimed by Ram
Even a single rupee stolen is a tragic betrayal of Shri Ram. Ram is not merely an idol. He is the very soul of this ancient nation. He is the very symbol of the Ayodhya movement that decisively course-corrected the pseudo-secular polity, which fractured our civilisational ethos. To recall how the Ram Mandir movement reoriented our national life, here is a bit of history that the media often forgets.
After independence, the inspiring ideals and symbols of the freedom movement—the concept of Hindu nationalism expounded by Swami Vivekananda and Maharishi Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Ram Rajya, the rallying freedom battle cries of Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Vande Mataram—were marginalised. The Ram Mandir movement catalysed their renaissance.
Most of those guiding the national discourse are unaware that the concept of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (Hindu nationalism) is not an invention of the RSS. Yes, it is not the RSS’ conception. Decades before the RSS was formed, this nationalism was preached by Vivekananda and Aurobindo. It became the driving force of the freedom struggle. It was thoroughly embraced by leaders like—believe it!—Gandhi, Nehru, and even Communist stalwart Rajani Palme Dutt.
In his seminal work Hind Swaraj (1909), Gandhi wrote that Hindu theerth yatras, pilgrimage to Chardhams and reverence to Ganga Jal symbolise and proclaim our national integration and nationalism. He wrote that they “make us as one in the sense in which no two Englishmen are”. When asked about Muslims, he said they must be assimilated into the overarching national mainstream. How many in the media know this?
Jawaharlal Nehru hailed Swami Vivekananda as the pioneer of India’s freedom movement. He wrote in his Glimpses of World History (1935), “the Hindu nationalism preached by the Swami was rooted deeply in Hindu religion and culture, yet was in no way anti-Muslim.” (p. 437).
Further, Nehru acknowledged, “It is not easy to draw a line between Hindu nationalism and true nationalism. The two blend together, as India is the only home of the Hindus and they form a majority there.” (p. 720). How many participants in public discourse today have read Nehru’s Glimpses of World History?
Rajani Palme Dutt, the Indian who founded the Communist Party of Great Britain, wrote in his book titled India Today that even if Indians had grown up in monastic isolation learning only the Sanskrit Vedas, they would have undoubtedly drawn inspiration required for the freedom struggle from them. How many in the media know his name, know that he wrote that book in 1939 and revised it in 1973 and still did not change what he had said in 1939?
This freedom movement, firmly anchored in Hindu nationalism, changed course drastically on one specific day—22 March 1940. That was the day the Muslim League under M A Jinnah passed the resolution for partition of the nation. From that day, the Hindu nationalist perspective was systematically erased from the freedom narrative.
Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai began fading from public life. After independence, the Nehru-led Congress actively rejected the very ideals and symbols Nehru himself had once celebrated. The foundational pillars of our independence—Hindu nationalism, Vande Mataram, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, and Ram Rajya—were orphaned by the pseudo secular political establishment. It was the RSS which kept the flame of these noble thoughts and symbols alive amid the pseudo-secular tsunami drive for vote bank politics.
Finally, it was the RSS-led mass Ram Mandir movement that reclaimed the pre-independence values of Hindu nationalism and reoriented the derailed national polity. When pseudo-secularists challenged Hindutva as not compatible with India’s secular Constitution, the Supreme Court delivered a historic verdict in 1996, and ruled unequivocally that Hindutva is the national soul, culture, and way of life of the Indian people. When approached to review the ruling several times later, the court refused, thus confirming the Hindu foundations of our nation and nationalism.
Weaponising theft to sabotage nationalism
The Ram Mandir movement had successfully dismantled the pseudo-secular politics based on vote, thus restoring the Hindu nationalist perspective to its rightful place in the Constitution. Now, weaponising this Mandir theft, the forces that vehemently opposed the course-correction of the nation by the Ram Mandir movement, are desperately trying to derail it and drag the nation back into the abyss of pseudo-secularism.
The coordinated attempts by opposition parties and sections of the national and international media to undermine the reputation of the Ram Mandir movement is the present political and electoral challenge to the RSS and BJP. With elections approaching in Uttar Pradesh—the epicentre of national renaissance—the objective of the detractors is crystal clear: use the theft to fracture the temple movement which recalled and reinstated the pre-independence political philosophy of Hindu nationalism.
Since the UP election is months away, the opposition’s effort to use the theft to make an impact will depend on their capacity to keep the issue alive till polling. For, in the social media-driven ecosystem, the shelf-life of all issues is increasingly becoming short. If the SIT establishes the theft to be a smaller affair and that no jewellery was lost, the opposition will have egg on its face and the issue itself will be consigned to history well before the elections.
S Gurumurthy,
Editor, Thuglak Tamil Magazine.
Chairman, Vivekananda International Foundation Strategic Think Tank