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If our secularists think that by
getting the resignation of three BJP Ministers tensions in India will lessen
and peace will prevail in the country, their understanding of peoples’
sentiments can only be described as pathetic. The Babri Masjid stood for
everything that was wrong in Hindu-Muslim relations. It needed to be dismantled.
One suspects neither the Muslim community and much less the so-called secularists
had any idea of how the Hindu mind works. The question will again be asked:
Which Hindu mind does one speak of? One can only refer to the millions
of people who voted for the BJP to raise its presence from two in the Lok
Sabha to eighty times that number. If that is not a clue to the Hindu mind,
what is?
Is there such a person as an “average
Indian"? Or, for that matter, "an average Hindu" or" an average Muslim",
or, to stick to the usual cliche, “the common man"? How well read is the
Common Person? What are his qualifications and his dis-qualifications?
Should state policy be fashioned to meet his whims and desires such as
they are or are not? Who represents the nation? The majority party? Not
even once since independence has any party won more than 50 per cent of
the total electoral votes? Was Jawaharlal Nehru, then truly representative
of Indian sentiments? Was Indira Gandhi? Or even Rajiv Gandhi who did better
than his elders at the hustings because of the assassination of his mother?
How does one define ‘national sentiment'? True, when China invaded India,
the country, almost to a man (bar the traitorous CPM) united to face the
enemy. In extreme circumstances, it is possible to say that the people
can - and do -speak with one voice. But in the matter of the Ram Janmabhoomi
issue, who represents Hindu - let alone national - sentiment? The Bharatiya
Janata Party? The Congress? The Leftist forces? If the Congress or the
Leftists or both together feel they represent the voice of the people why
don't they build a masjid on the site of the Babri Mosque that was demolished?
Can there be a better way of testing their strength and their popularity?
Let Mulayam Singh Yadav or V. P. Singh who seems so concerned with minority
rights and safety set the ball rolling by laying another foundation stone
for a mosque on the Ram Janmabhoomi site. Who prevents them from doing
so, if they so strongly believe that they have the majority sentiment -
presumably of Hindu - with them? Why prolong the agony endlessly for political
reasons? The saddest part of it all is the total silence of the Muslim
minority on the issue of the Babri Masjid. This minority neither has the
grace and the courtesy to con cede to Hindus what the latter rightfully
claim is theirs or the courage to say they, on their own, will re-build
the mosque. The truth of the matter is that the Muslims have no national
leader to decide for them one way or another. An individual here and an
individual there issues a statement of no consequence. One can only guess
what the" average Muslim' thinks in his heart. Is he afraid that if he
concedes to the Hindus on the Babri Masjid issue they may make further
demands with even more justification? Is this a matter of izzat - community
honour that dictates that no concession should be made to Hindus under
threat of force? Is it pure weakness on the community's part that' keeps
it under a shell? Or could it be that the community thinks it is more fun
to watch Hindus quarrel among themselves on what should be done, rather
than jump into the fray? The belief could just be that the longer the intra-Hindu
quarrel lasts the greater will be the delay in solving the Ram Janmabhoomi
issue. But how long does one think the issue will remain unsettled? Six
moths? A year? Till the end of the BJP-led government's term? Will the
resignation of L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati resolve
the Babri Masjid issue? Will tempers cool down? Will the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
which has been active in having components of the temple structure carved,
throw the pillars and posts into the Arabian Sea and take to sanyas? Who
do the Congress and the Opposition think they are fooling? If the Opposition
thinks that by forcing the resignation of three BJP Ministers, the Babri
Masjid issue will vanish into thin air, they are indulging in wishful thinking.
Prospects are that such will be the anger, around Hindus - let us concede
that their numbers are limited - that the problem instead of being resolved
will get intensified. The issue has to be resolved not in the Lok Sabha,
not in the holy portals of the Supreme Court but across the table in negotiations,
'between Muslim and Hindu representatives. The Muslim community pretends
that history is bunk. The tendency among Muslim intellectuals is to put
a good face on atrocities perpetrated on Hindus by Islamic rulers or when
that is not possible, to argue that Hindu rulers in the medieval period
were no better anyway. A recent book authored by Dr Dawood Kashmiri entitled
Rabies of Communalism is a case in, point. According to him, Ghazni Mohammad's
frequent attacks on Somnath Temple "were to plunder the wealth accumulated
there by pujaris through their exploitation of the religious sentiments
of superstitious Hindus", and that he was a secular-minded ruler! Dr D.
C. Ganguly, a former Reader in History, Dacca University, writing in The
Struggle For Empire (Vol. V, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan), Mohammad "made a
triumphal entry into the temple, broke down the Siva-linga into pieces...
razed the temple to the ground (and) the fragments of the Siva-linga were
carried to Ghazni where they were made to serve as steps at the gate of
the Jami Mosque - an act of profanity imitated by later Muslim, rulers".
And, of course, he also plundered wealth. Dr Kashmiri has an explanation
for every' act of profanity and Muslim intolerance. According to him the
hated jiziya tax levied on Hindus by Muslim rulers was in the Hindus own
interests and was in any event quite meager and nominal in comparison to
the ratio of Zakat levied on Muslims! Aurangzeb's army chief, we are told,
was a Hindu. Well could the British make excuses for Jallianwala Bagh massacre
and other cruelties they perpetrated in India by saying that they ran the
administration of the country entirely with the help of Indians themselves.
The fact that Tipu Sultan had a Hindu as an army chief and that his Prime
Minister was also a Hindu, Purniah, does not mitigate the fact that Hindus
throughout his rule were discriminated against, but were tolerated because
they happened to be in the majority. What needs to be noted is that Islamic
scholars refuse to see history from any other but their point of view making
any interaction with them a waste of time.
If only Dr Kashmiri had read, for example, Bimal Prasad's Pathways to India's Partition: The Foundations of Muslim Nationalism (Vol. I) he would get a different picture even of Akbar the Great, the liberal's ikon, who had issued a fathnama that said, after the fall of Chittor that "we have erased the signs of infidelity from their minds and have destroyed temples in, those places and. also all over Hindustan". When Shakespeare makes one of his characters say that “the evil that men do lives after them" he was making a point there. Quoting the Quran may warm the cockles of contemporary Muslim hearts, but few Muslim rulers followed Quranic injunctions. Nobody is questioning the Quran: what is questioned and condemned are the actions of those who professed to follow it.
If our secularists think that by getting the resignation of three BJP Ministers tensions in India will lessen and peace will prevail in the country, their understanding of peoples' sentiments can only be described as pathetic. The Babri Masjid stood for everything that was wrong in Hindu-Muslim relations. It needed to he dismantled. One suspects neither the Muslim community and much less the so-called secularists had any idea of how the Hindu mind works. The question will again be asked: Which Hindu mind does one speak of? One can only refer to the millions of people who voted for the BJP to raise its presence from two in the Lok Sabha to eighty times that number. If that is not a clue to the Hindu mind, what is? There is a Hindu mind somewhere in the four corners of our land that is altogether strange to the Jaipal Reddys, the Mani Shankar Iyers and others of their ilk. They may sneer at it, they may wish to ignore it but like Banco's ghost it will not disappear.
Hindutva has been defined by many people to suit their own purposes. Dr Kashmiri, for instance, believes that Hindutva would mean Muslims assuming Sanskrit instead of Arabic names. No BJP leader, to one's knowledge, has ever made such a suggestion, but presuming some one has, in what way would a Muslim be less of t Muslim if he had a Sanskrit name? It is not uncommon for Muslims in Indonesia to have Sanskrit names and one would imagine that Sockarno was no less a Muslim because he had a very Sanskrit name nor Suharto, nor, for that matter Meghavati Soekarnoputri. President Wahid's second daughter is named Saraswati, Indonesian Airlines is named after Garuda and a 20,000 Indonesians rupiah currency note has the figure of Ganesh on it. Does that mean all Indonesians would go to eternal hell?
A Hindustan Times (13 December)
report says that a Portuguese organisation, Fundacao Orients has taken
upon itself the restoration of the Saptakoteswara Temple at Naora, in Bocholim,
Goa, that was destroyed by Portuguese barbarians 400 Years ago for a church
to be built on its site. If the Portuguese can show the decency after the
lapse of four centuries, by voluntarily agreeing to make amends for the
past, surely it is not too much for us to expect some decency from our
loudmouthed secularists? A BJP government may come and go, Vajpayee and
his colleagues may one day quit, but the past remains with us. Bitterness
will not disappear by trying to win cookie points in meaningless debate
at the cost of the national exchequer.
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