Gumnami Baba & Ram Temple: A dual quest for this family

AYODHYA: The son, grandson and great-grandchildren of former Faizabad city magistrate Guru Dutt, on whose watch the Ram Lalla idol was placed inside the Babri mosque in 1949, are fighting a unique twin battle.

Three years ago, Dutt's grandson Shakti Singh moved the Allahabad high court seeking the truth behind Gumnami Baba who many believe was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The case is still on. Dutt's descendants are also running a signature petition in favour of the building of a Ram temple.

"I want the people of this country to remember what my grandfather did in 1949," Shakti says.

Government records in Faizabad, including the Gazette and FIRs, have chronicled that Dutt, the then-district magistrate KK Nair and an Ayodhya temple priest, Abhiram Das, had overseen the placement of the Ram idol on December 22, 1949, and that a Muslim guard, Abdul Barkat, standing outside the Babri mosque, told police that day that he he had seen "a flash of divine light and the figure of a very beautiful, godlike child of 4-5 years".

Shakti grows emotional as he narrates mysterious tales in his family related to the Ram temple and Gumnami Baba. His home is called Ram Bhawan and it was here that Gumnami Baba died in September 1985.

"I got married on December 6, 1985 — the same year that Netaji (Gumnami Baba) died. Babri was demolished on the same date in 1992, seven years later," Shakti says. The family — wife, son, daughter and ageing father — still have the same aim: to save the legacies of Bose and Ram, and have handed over more than 2,760 items, including letters, binoculars and a hand-made map of Bangladesh, all claimed to have belonged to Bose.

His home has huge framed photographs of visits by Uma Bharti, Murli Manohar Joshi, LK Advani and Aditya Nath Yogi, all of whom have dashed to Ram Bhawan over the years to launch their political battles.