Author: T. Mani
Chowdary
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 24, 2000
It is astounding how
people could be worked up about the Babri structure that was pulled down
in Ayodhya in 1992. First of all, Babar was not an Indian.
He was an alien invader. Secondly, in the year the General built
the mosque, the Muslim population of the city could not have been more
than a few hundreds, while the Hindu population would have been tens of
thousands. Leaving aside whether the Muslim place of worship was
constructed on the very site where there was a Hindu temple by pulling
it down, was it necessary that the mosque should be very near to the place
which is believed by millions of Hindus to be the birth place of their
most venerated God Rama? Could it not have been a few furlongs away from
the Hindus sacred place? The fact that it was built on the site or adjacent
to the site believed to be Sri Rama's birth place is to assert the Muslim
arrogance of their conquest of Hindus. How can a monument to the
humiliation of Hindus constructed by an alien invader be tolerated by the
people of this country? When they are not ruled by such conquerors? It
is a historical fact that various Hindu organisations in Ayodhya have been
repeatedly rising in revolt against Muslim powers to re-possess the site
sacred to the Hindus. Also since 1947 there had been no worship or
prayers of Muslims at the "mosque". It is arrogance and fundamentalism
and intolerance to question the belief of the Hindus that Lord Sri Rama
was born at a particular site.
Hindus do not question
the virgin birth of Jesus of prophet Mohammed going to heaven on a white
steed from Al-Aksa-mosque. The Hindus' faith and belief about Rama's
birth place cannot be less respectable than the faith of the followers
of other religions. No law can establish the facts believed in by
the Christians, Muslims and the Hindus. Let us be very clear about
it. Objective writers of history and the chroniclers of Muslim invaders
of India have recorded the fact of tens of thousands of Hindu temples having
been razed to the ground and in those very places or just by their side
mosques were built by using the bricks and stones and other materials of
the razed temples. The stones with images of the Hindu gods have
been used as steps on which the Muslims going to the mosques would be trampling.
At many a place even today such desecration can be clearly seen.
Independent India has
removed the statues of so many British generals and viceroys and even Queen
Victoria because they are symbols of India's humiliation at the hands of
the alien invaders. Many countries around the world have, after gaining
independence from their colonial masters have removed the statues of the
conquerers; have renamed their countries and their towns after their own
historical persons and places and this is still going on. People
who had been wronged like the Blacks and the native Indians in United States
and Central American Republics and the aborginals of Australia are asking
not only for apologies from the conquerors and colonists but are demanding
reparations. The Japanese emperor aplogized to the Koreans; the Federal
Republic of Germany not only apologized but paid reparations to Israel
for the inhumanity it inflicted upon the Jews of Germany; the Black majority
government in South Africa has constituted a Truth and Reconciliation commission
(TRC) before which if the White conquerors confess their crimes and inhuman
treatment of the black natives for hundreds of years, they would be pardoned.
It is natural that when the oppressed and the wronged people come into
their own, become independent they would wage a struggle for righting the
historic wrongs. It is stubbornness and arrogance and intolerance
of the former ruling classes and communities not to acknowldge their guilt.
On the other hand, if
they go on persisting in the belief that they did no wrong, the wronged
people will not be forgiving until the symbols of the worst humiliation
on their country and their faith are got rid of Rama, Shiva and Krishna,
the most venerated gods of the Hindus irrespective of one's cast and region.
In the very places of temples for these gods had come up mosques.
How would the Muslims like that by the side of Al-aksa-mosque or the mosques
in Mecca or Madina, the British conquerors had built churches? Wisdom and
prudence require that the Muslims who have chosen to live in this country
after getting it partitioned for creating an Islamic homeland for them
should amicably settle the issue. If they persist in their stubbornness
not to acknowledge that this is an independent country, that it is not
an Islamic republic, that its people had been subjected to the worst humiliation
for over 800 years, then there would be perpetual disharmony and suspicions
about the true mind of the Muslim residents of this country. History
and religion are very powerful in moulding the psyche of people.
It is for this that independent
India restored Somnath, the shrine for Shiva in the first few years of
independence itself. Somnath was three times razed to the ground
by Muslim invaders. The so called secularists in the Congress and
the perpetually anti-Indian political multi-national communists and other
parties are doing a great disservice to the Muslim residents of India in
stridently and repeatedly including them to separatism, fundamentalism
and in supporting their stubbornness not to compromise on Ayodhya and the
two other sacred Hindu sites. It is these who are more culpable than
the Muslims themselves. As long as the Rama mandir is not built in
Ayodhya the Hindu mind and Hindu people cannot be expected to be at peace.
The Rama Mandir in Ayodhya is a national agenda. If Moslims in India
agitate for the safety and sanctity of Al-Aksa in distant Israel, can't
they understand why the Hindus are agitated about Ram Mandir in Ayodhya?
History will condemn all those who are unwisely stocking the indefensible
arrogance, stubborness in the remnants of those who have perpetrated inhuman
crimes against the people of this country for centuries.
