india

Updated: Aug 11, 2019 22:02 IST

Days after a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked, out of curiosity, whether anyone from the Raghuvansha (descendant of Lord Ram) was still residing in Ayodhya, a BJP MP and member of the erstwhile royal family of Jaipur took to Twitter to announce that her family descended from Lord Ram’s son, Kush.

“Yes, Descendants of Lord Ram are all over the world, including our family who descended from his son Kush,” Diya Kumari, MP from Rajsamand in Rajasthan and member of former Jaipur royal family, said in a tweet.

The SC bench put the question to senior advocate K Parasaran, appearing for ‘Ram Lalla Virajman’, when he was arguing that the deity and the birth place both were “juristic” entities and hence, capable of holding properties and instituting lawsuits.

This is during daily hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case.

“We are just wondering if anyone from the ‘Raghuvansha’ dynasty is still living there (at Ayodhya),” said the bench, also comprising Justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S A Nazeer.

The bench said that it was asking out of curiosity.

Diya Kumari said she felt proud to be a descendant of Lord Ram. “I am not saying this for any motive. We have no claim to the title or land at the disputed site. We also don’t want to become part of any legal process. What I said is my heart’s voice without any motive,” she said on Sunday.

According to genealogical documents at the City Palace Museum in Jaipur, the current titular king of Jaipur, Padmanabh Singh, is the 309th generation of Kush, said Ramu Ramdev, officer on special duty (OSD) at the museum.

Ramu Ramdev, OSD at the City Palace, points out Lord Rama’s birth place in an old dilapidated map of Ayodhya being taken out from archives of erstwhile royal family of Jaipur, at City Palace, in Jaipur. Photo by Himanshu Vyas/Hindustan Times)

The rulers of Jaipur belonged to the Kachhwaha clan of Rajputs, which historians said descended from Kush, Lord Ram’s son.

Historian and former head of department of history and culture at University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, Professor R Nath, wrote in his book, ‘Studies in Medieval Indian Architecture’, that a large number of pattas, parwanas and chak-namas, letters and other documents, maps and plans preserved in the Kapad-Dwar collection of SMS-II City Palace Museum (in Jaipur) testify, unequivocally, that the ownership of the Jaisinghpura of Ayodhya, where the Ram Janmasthan Temple was situated, vested perpetually with the Kachhwahas.

A very ancient map of Ayodhya and the temple is preserved at the museum, Ramdev said. The map was shown to media on Sunday. The old documents, which have a record of the genealogy of the Kachchwahas, were also put out in the public domain for reporters to see it.

Historian Nath died a few years ago. Before his death, he wrote several times to the Central government to bring forth historical critique on the Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute. One such letter, a 24-page document, is preserved at the museum in Jaipur.

Ramdev said Sawai Raja Jaising-II of Amer-Jaipur (1699-1743) purchased the land of the Ramkot at Ayodhya in 1717 AD (10 years after the death of Aurangzeb), built a Ram temple and established a Jaisinghpura, as he did in other strategically important cities of the Mughal Empire such as Kabul, Peshawar, Multan, Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Patna, Aurangabad and Ellichpur.