No sooner was the Ayodhya verdict out than one question zipped around the world among Indians online: what is Nirmohi Akhara? And as one query added: “And what does it have to do with Sita’s kitchen?” While the curious online world waited for word and insight on the third party to be given a third of Ayodhya’s disputed land by the Supreme Court, glib answers flew: from ‘Mayawati’s gym’ to ‘a sect of wrestlers to keep peace between Hindus and Muslims’.
Innocent to the world of akharas, online India’s curiosity prompted interesting takes including equating Nirmohi sadhus with the Juna akhara ones as the ‘cool guys’ who would eventually bring “Rastafarian” culture to Ayodhya”. As another user pointed out, “Nirmohi akhara is not on any social networking site, has no website, does not have a Twitter handle and no wikipage. How are we supposed to know about it?” No sooner than asked, within an hour and a half a basic wikipage on Nirmohi akhara was up. By evening, searches threw up about 23,000 results for the Hindu sect, in the main reports on the Ayodhya verdict.
What really delighted online India was that Nirmohi akhara topped Trending Worldwide on Twitter, followed by Allahabad High Court, Ayodhya verdict and #Ayodhya. “Something to cheer about. India is ruling Twitter. Currently trending worldwide.” Soon after the verdict, five of the Trending Topics concerned Ayodhya, a euphoric first for India online.
Earlier on in the day, it was ‘India holds its breath’. Ahead of the verdict, the nation seized activity, posting itself instead for The Wait: in front of the television, computers, texting, tweeting, forwarding, simply waiting, despite the temporary block on bulk text messages. And more than the verdict, the media blitzkrieg had India captive: one event where the audience held taut the moment’s tension, a frenzy that the media added to in a cacophony of screaming bites and shaky cameras.
A measure of the phenomenal event that the run up to the verdict became — bigger perhaps than an India-Pak game of cricket — was succinctly tweeted: “If Lalit Modi had been in charge of this Ayodhya verdict, Shankar Mahadevan would have been performing by now.”
Indians responded to querying Westerners oblivious to the relevance of ‘Ayodhya’. “To my European friends wondering what Ayodhya Verdict’ is, a 60 year legal case for a 300 year dispute for a 60x40 [plot of land.” That India has yet to get its act together on basic organization was also evident. First, the Allahabad High Court’s website crashed soon after the announcement that the verdict will be released on the website. A new site came up, which continued to announce ‘Judgment shall be made available soon’ well after the verdict was out.
The cacophony of the verdict’s announcement was captured by a tweeter, “Amazing, the way the ayodhya verdict is delivered; another shining example of Indian organisational skills. Will it better CWG?” That the online nation is not totally in sync with the ways of Indian establishment also came through. One of the first reactions to the verdict was, “Again a Divide? Why couldn’t the decision have been more communal?” And “We have built enough temples and mosques. Let’s build the nation now.”
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