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The Supreme Court verdict disallowing religious activity on undisputed land in Ayodhya comes as a setback for Rambhakts. The latter's strategy at Ayodhya has been direct, frontal and single-aimed. Military principles prefer an indirect, lateral approach, with alternative aims. Sir Basil Liddell-Hart, the famous Captain who taught World War II Generals, emphasised indirectness as a winning tactic. If I were a Ramyoddha (Ram warrior), I would for a while go easy on the issue and wait for the Allahabad High Court ruling. Meanwhile, I would pick satyagraha as a tactic and select, say, four new sites. Let Mathura and Varanasi wait because they would offer neither novelty nor the space for mass satyagraha.
Adhai Din Ka Jhopra is ideal. Historically authentic, it is a furlong away from the popular Ajmer Sharief shrine and associated with Prithviraj Chauhan. Its compound is spacious. The triple temple-cum-pathshala was founded by Chauhan Vigraharaja III around 1158. The Archaeological Survey of India founder-Director, Lt Gen Cunningham, wrote about this edifice in 1864. The mandirs were converted into a masjid in two and a half days. After the battle of Tarain in 1192, in which Muhammad Ghauri killed Prithviraj, the conqueror passed through Ajmer. He was so awed by the temple's magnificence that he ordered Qutubuddin Aibak, his slave General, to have it converted into a mosque where he could pray on his return journey three days later. After Mahmood Ghazni, this desecration at Ajmer was the first act of vandalism.
Another suitable site for a satyagraha would be the Adina mosque at Pandua, 18 km north of Malda in West Bengal. Joseph Beglaroff of the ASI surveyed the edifice in 1888. It was converted into a mosque by Sultan Jalaluddin Shah from a temple of Lord Shiva. Several scholars have described the edifice as having earlier been a Hindu temple. Dr Syed Mahmudul Hasan has written a detailed work. Others writers are Ilahi Bakhsh, Creighton, Ravenshaw, Buchanan-Hamilton, Westmacott, Beglaroff, Cunningham and King. Unlike Ayodhya, there is no scope for controversy. Several statues of Hindu deities including of Ganesh and Parvati are carved on Adina's walls.
Ataladevi Masjid at Jaunpur is an imposing complex with a large central courtyard bordered on four sides with colonades. Cunningham wrote at length on this temple called, till the 15th century, Dewal. It was converted into a masjid in 1405 by Sultan Ibrahim Naib Barbak. Khair-ud-din in his History of Jaunpur confirmed that the Sultan ordered Atala Dewal's destruction. The Gazetteer of Jaunpur district, dated 1908 and written by HR Nevill, confirms this report.
There is profusion of evidence about the repeated desecration of Bijamandal at Vidisha near Bhopal. The first Sultan to vandalise it in 1234 was Iltutmish, followed by Allauddin Khilji in 1293 and Bahadur Shah of Gujarat between 1526 and 1537. Emperor Aurangzeb went to the extent of having it bombarded with a field gun. Bijamandal has dimensions comparable to those of the Konark temple in Orissa and it is even today a treasure house of Hindu statues.
I would choose an appropriate day
for about a thousand satyagrahis to arrive at each of these four sites.
Official obstruction should be met with non-violence. The question of the
authorities taking physical action against peaceful agitators would not
arise for fear of public outcry. In fact, the men's safety would be the
Government's responsibility. Peaceful agitation has a moral force that
could lead to the handing over of the edifices.
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