Babri Masjid

The day the Babri Masjid was felled, I was in the Konkan region. In the evening I made my customary call to our Cochin office to discuss the latest work-related issues. My Bengali boss took the call and he sounded very upset: “Whatever has happened is really bad; very, very bad.” Since then, I have heard and read this comment many times. In fact, the thinking class is totally unanimous in their opinion that the destruction of the mosque is a blot on the history of India. Somehow I do not agree totally. Or rather I would have liked a third path.

Many a times I have thought of writing down my views on this topic (and then to proceed to write another post on P V Narasimha Rao), but sheer laziness as well as my reluctance to take on a controversial issue of such magnitude has always stopped me. Finally, today, the time has perhaps arrived . . .

If you happen to visit the Qutab Minar in Delhi, you will discover that the pillars, beams and other members of the surrounding mosque and other structures were removed from some twenty-seven Hindu and Jaina temples after demolishing them. The noses and ears of the figurines of the various gods carved on the pillars were intentionally chipped off to erase their Hinduness. The grand mosque that came up after vandalising so many Hindu/Jaina temples was significantly named Quwwatul-Islam Masjid (Might of Islam), ostensibly to drive home the point. Travel down south to the temples of Belur and Halebeedu and there also you can find signs of vandalism at the hands of the Muslim invaders, albeit of a smaller degree since the invaders did not have much time to make a spectacular job of it.

But what pains the most is to discover how even the holiest places of Hindus were not spared the marauders’ hammers. The intention of course was to establish Islam as the subjugator and the Hind faith as the vanquished. Rama, Krishna and Shiva are among the most revered Hindu Gods, and Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi are considered their abode. And in each of these places there stands a mosque, at the very places where Hindus go for worship. What if the Kaba at Mecca was destroyed and a Hindu temple came up over its ruins? Would it not hurt the Muslims? Would they allow the temple to remain? To think of it, this will be the exact equivalent of what happened in Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi, since these places are as holy as Mecca to the Hindus. But will the Muslim Umma accept it? Will they allow you to even discuss such a possibility, if only for debate’s sake? We know the answer, don’t we?

Such things make me very angry. Even Swami Vivekananda was enraged when he saw the extent of vandalism at the Kheer Bhavani temple at Kashmir. “Mother, your devotes of that time could not protect your temple… had I been there at that time, I would never have allowed this to happen,” – such went his thoughts. At that time he heard, as he himself later described, the divine voice of the goddess, “My child, what do you think?–You protect me or I protect you? This temple came up according to my wish and it was destroyed also due to the same reason.”

The above calmed down Swamiji, but we lesser mortals cannot grasp such reasoning easily. But that does not mean I would be wishing Hindus charging to destroy all the mosques that were built on the grounds of Hindu temples. A Hindu is extremely liberal in such things–he can appreciate the fact that such things were common in the medieval times and cannot or need not be undone at our times.

But one thing I earnestly expected of the Muslims at those turbulent times was to understand the hurt that a Hindu felt because of acts of such vandalism, and to let the Hindus know that the Muslims felt much sorry for that. The Vatican regularly does this. But that, sadly, was not to happen. It is not that there did not exist learned, reasonable and accommodative people among the Muslims (the best example perhaps is Maulana Wahiduddin whose knowledge of both Islam and Hindu religion is superior to most of the scholars from both sides) who could have engineered a win-win sort of reconciliation between both the parties. But alas, Maulana Wahiduddin was never heeded to, even discarded as a ‘BJP’s Maulana’ (furthest from being the truth).

Babri Masjid has historically been the rawest wound between the two communities—history is witness to many confrontations over it through the centuries. Here was a historical opportunity to heal the wounds only if the Muslim community decided to show an accommodative attitude—after all this was an unimportant and disused mosque whereas huge Hindu sentiment was associated with it. Such a gesture would have earned the Muslims tremendous goodwill from the Hindus. Why I expect an accommodative approach only from the Muslims is because, firstly, the Hindus were the aggrieved party and not the other way round, and secondly, being a Hindu myself (and here I may be biased), I am sure the Hindus, by their predisposition towards being accommodative, would have reciprocated the well-meaning gesture.

Since this did not happen, the alternatives left were either to maintain the status quo or to set the wrong right through unilateral action (by the Hindus). The first one meant the wound was left to fester, to go deeper, and to create an even greater division between the two communities than that existed. More riots all over the country to follow, more elections to be fought on this issue.

Well, it is the second alternative, of Hindus going on the offensive, is what has actually happened. The plus side of it is that this resulted in a sort of closure, albeit incomplete, in the Hindu mind, which is evident from that fact that even the BJP now acknowledges that the Ram Mandir issue cannot be stirred up into an election issue again. This is good for the country, because otherwise the development agenda of the country would have run the risk of getting derailed time and again. But the most important thing in my mind is the moral side--that a grave wrong was thrust upon the Hindus which they have had a right to redress and have finally done so, albeit in a belligerent manner.

This is of course not a perfect solution. It has left the Muslims to feel now as the aggrieved party. So for them there has been no closure. So there will continue to be more bomb blasts.

In any case, while choosing between two bad options, I think the country has chosen the less bad one.

My whole argument is based on the supposition that the Babri Masjid was built by destroying a revered Hindu temple and thus that act is the ultimate root cause--the original sin. I strongly believe that that there must be a lot of truth in the Hindu belief throughout the centuries that this is Lord Rama’s place of birth. Even if you discard this to be only a myth, there at least existed a ram Janmabhumi temple at that site. Archaeological evidence also point towards that, but given the so-called secular discourse of the country, such evidences are ignored in the domains of government and high-brow media (like NDTV).

Perhaps P V Narasimha Rao, the then Congress Prime Minister, also thought in this manner--that this was a thorn, and to allow the thorn to be removed was the best option that presented itself. So on that fateful day, he chose inaction. But more on him on another day.