The Timeless Relevance of Somnath

Somnath has always lived in three tenses at once. It belongs to the past by memory, to the present by presence, and to the future by intention. Prime Minister Modi’s reflection, written to mark a thousand years since the first attack on the temple, succeeds because it recognises this continuity and refuses to trap Somnath in any single moment of time.

The past is acknowledged without sentimentality. Somnath’s earliest power lay not merely in stone, but in belief. The ancient verse that promises liberation through the mere sight of the Somnath Shivling reminds us that this was always a civilisational idea before it was an architectural one. Standing on the western coast of Bharat, Somnath combined spiritual centrality with economic vitality. Traders and sailors carried its fame across seas, making it a beacon of confidence in both faith and commerce. That combination, history tells us, rarely goes unchallenged.

January 1026 marks the first great rupture. The brutality of the invasion, the cruelty inflicted on the town, and the devastation of the shrine are acknowledged plainly. The historical accounts make the heart tremble. But the narrative does not linger in mourning. Suffering is recorded, not curated. The invaders appear, perform their destruction, and fade into the margins of history. What remains central is not the violence itself, but the response to it.

That response defines the present. The rebuilding of Somnath is framed not as religious assertion, but as national self-respect. The temple’s resurrection is not shown as the triumph of one belief over another, but as the recovery of a civilisation’s confidence in itself. Each time Somnath fell, it rose again — defended, rebuilt, and re-consecrated by successive generations. Over centuries, resilience stopped being heroic and became habitual. Destruction was episodic; regeneration was structural.

This continuity is embodied in people. Ahilyabai Holkar restoring worship, Swami Vivekananda recognising in Somnath the life-current of India — repeatedly destroyed and repeatedly rejuvenated. After Independence, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s resolve to rebuild the temple was an assertion that freedom also meant the freedom to remember and restore. 

The inauguration of the rebuilt temple on May 11, 1951, in the presence of President Dr. Rajendra Prasad, despite reservations from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, reflected a young nation negotiating its modern identity without severing its civilisational roots. K M Munshi’s steadfast support and writings gave intellectual shape to this act of renewal, grounding it in the idea that the eternal cannot be destroyed.

Somnath also reminds us, in the present, that India’s civilisation has never been narrowly defined. The visit of the Jain scholar Hemchandracharya centuries ago, and his prayer at Somnath, underscores its ability to awaken something universal, cutting across sectarian lines. The temple has always been a meeting point rather than a boundary.

From this present confidence flows a vision of the future. History, in Modi’s telling, is not recalled for nostalgia. It is mobilised as confidence. The past functions like muscle memory, reminding a civilisation of what it can endure and regenerate. A society that preserved its core through a thousand years of assault does not need to apologise for its self-belief today.

The sea beside Somnath still roars as it did a millennium ago. The waves rise, fall, and rise again, indifferent to conquerors and crowns. Those who came to destroy are now dust, their names reduced to symbols of ruin. Somnath stands luminous, linking centuries of memory to the promise of renewal.

There is no grand crescendo in this narrative, and that is its strength. Just a quiet assertion that we were attacked, we rebuilt, and we moved on. Having done so repeatedly, we now look ahead — towards a future shaped by the same civilisational wisdom, the same stubborn self-respect, and the same belief that endurance is not an accident but a choice.

If faith once rebuilt Somnath, it is this confidence — drawn from the past, practised in the present, and projected into the future — that sustains it today, a thousand years after the first blow fell.