Seethalakshmi S.

In temple towns, devotees bow before sacred idols, admiring their beauty yet rarely wondering about the hands that shaped them. This book turns to the man behind one such image: the sculptor of the mesmerizing Ram Lalla idol at Ayodhya’s Ram Janmabhoomi Temple. 

While the long history of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement has been widely told, the story of the smiling black idol of five-year-old Lord Ram, consecrated on 22 January 2024, has remained in the background. Through months of intimate conversations, master sculptor Arun Yogiraj recounts the nine demanding months of creation, marked by doubt, discipline, faith, and moments he describes as divine. 

The book also revisits some of his earlier works, including the Adi Shankaracharya statue at Kedarnath and the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose statue at India Gate, tracing the journey of an artist entrusted with shaping the icons of a nation. 

This is the story of devotion carved in stone, and of the quiet, exacting life of the man chosen to give form to Ram Lalla.