| It
must be said to the credit of the Prime Minister that, after receiving Munshi's forthright
letter, he came to assess the carping critics of the Somanatha restoration at their true
worth. The fact that the President of the Republic, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, was to reinstal
the new deity must have influenced the Prime Minister to no small extent. The installation ceremony of the linga was fixed for the 11th May
1951. At this time Munshi was the Union Minister for Food and Agriculture, and he had to
make a dash to Burma in order to negotiate a rice deal. It was at this time he wrote in
great hurry the book Somanatha -The Shrine Eternal. It is a compendium of information
about the temple which has been the eternal symbol of Hindu faith and the destruction of
which by Mohame Ghazni had been burned into the collective sub-conscious of the race, as
an unforgettable national disaster.
The installation of the new deity by Dr. Rajendra Prasad
took place in the presence of a huge concourse of people, who had come from every part of
India, and nobody would have been happier on that occasion than Munshi, who saw his
incessant dream of Somanatha reconstruction come true on that day. |
