01Guard of Ramkot
Ayodhya’s tradition says that when Shri Rama returned to his own dham he left Hanuman behind to guard the city, and Hanuman lives on this mound, watching over Ramkot, the citadel of Rama’s birthplace. The temple is built like a small fort with round bastions at its corners. In the sanctum Hanuman is a child in the lap of his mother Anjani, a form few temples keep. Pilgrims say ‘pehle Hanuman, phir Ram’, first Hanuman, then Rama, and climb here before going on to the Ram Janmabhoomi.
02The bairagis and 1855
The temple took its present shape in the 18th century, when the Ramanandi bairagis, organised into armed akharas, made Ayodhya their stronghold under the Nawabs of Awadh, from whose court the akhara received land. In 1855 a party led by Shah Ghulam Hussain, claiming that a mosque had stood within Hanuman Garhi, attacked it; the bairagis drove them back, and the fight spilled toward the Babri structure. The Awadh government’s inquiry and British reports of the time record the episode. The Nirvani Akhara still governs the temple through its mahants.
The life of this place
- 1855An armed attack on Hanuman Garhi is repulsed by the bairagis.
Hanuman Garhi is in the centre of Ayodhya, about 1 km from the Ram Janmabhoomi temple; Tuesdays and Saturdays are crowded.
