Author: N. S. Rajaram
Publication: The Organiser
Date: May 6, 2001
In her deposition before the Liberhans
Commission inquiring into the destruction of the structure at Ramjanmabhoomi,
Smt Umashri Bharati made a pertinent observation. The Babri 'Masjid' was
a "symbol of slavery". Her reason was that it was built as a mark of conquest
by the invader Babur. Upon hearing this, the Commission put another question.
:Don't some historians say that. the Aryans-meaning the creators of the
Vedic Civilization-were also foreign invaders? Smt Bharati correctly responded
that this theory is no longer considered valid by many scholars. The two
the Babri 'Masjid' and the Aryan 'invasion' theories-belong together, because
both are imperial impositions, the First by the Mughals the other by the
British. They are both symbols of slavery. It is no coincidence that the
same people, the so-called 'secularists', are supporting both. They are
residual agents of slavery.
Babri 'Masjid'
Let me first look at the Babri 'Masjid'.
The secularist claim is that it should be regarded as a national monument
because Babur is a national hero who brought in the tolerant and secular
Mughal Empire. This is a modem fiction, initiated by Pandit Nehru, and
not how Babur saw himself. Here is what Babur wrote: "Hindustan is a place
of little charm. ...The one nice aspect of Hindustan is it is a large country
with lots of gold and money." How about his tolerance of other religions,
especially Hinduism? Here again is Babur speaking: "Chanderi had been in
the dar-ul-harb (Hindu rule) for some years and held by Sanga's highest-ranking
officer Meidini Rao, with four or five thousand infidels, but in 934 (1527-28),
through the grace of God, I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred
the infidels (Hindus), and brought it into the bosom of Islam."
Bamiyan Buddhas
In the face of this history, it
is absurd to compare the Bamiyan Buddhas with the Babri 'Masjid'. But this
does not deter our secularists from taking the argument to absurd limits.
Shashi Tharoor recently wrote that some see "...India's passionate denunciations
of the Bamiyan destruction as tainted, if not undermined, by the fact that
they issued from the lips of leaders who had condoned (and, in some cases,
incited) a comparable act of cultural barbarism on their own soil." This
is heavy stuff. But Tharoor later goes on to undermine his own argument
: "The central tenet of tolerance is that the tolerant society accepts
that which it does not understand and that which it does not like, so long
as it is not sought to be imposed upon the unwilling." (My emphasis.)
That is the whole point : "So long
as it is not sought to be imposed upon the unwilling." This is certainly
true of the Bamiyan Buddhas, but what about the Babri 'Masjid'? Here is
what Babur's descendant, a grand-daughter of Aurangzeb had to say about
building Babri 'Masjid' at Ramjanmabhoomi and a hundred other Hindu sacred
places.
".keeping the triumph of Islam in
view, devout Muslim rulers should keep all idolators in subjection to Islam,
brook no laxity in realization of jizyah, grant no exceptions to Hindu
rajahs from dancing in attendance on 'Id days and waiting on foot outside
mosques till end of prayer .... and keep in constant use for Friday and
congregational prayer the mosques built up after demolishing the temples
of the idolatrous Hindus situated at Mathura, Banaras and Avadh...
So much for Shashi Tharoor and his
history! But a secularist like him cannot be true to his image unless he
drags in a foreigner as authority-in his case one Tina Rosenberg, an 'editorial
observer' for The New York Times. Her word of course is Vedavakya. What
is beyond Tharoor and his tribe is that self-respecting nations don't let
stand symbols of national humiliation and slavery. The French have not
preserved Nazi monuments at Versailles. Even in America, where Tharoor's
authority Tina Rosenberg fulminated against the Hindus. Americans destroyed
a statue of King George III, when they declared independence in 1776. Some
forty years later, in the War of 1812, the British sacked Washington and
burned down the White House. Americans promptly rebuilt it instead of preserving
the burnt down White House as our secularists want at Ramjanmabhoomi. But
this is beyond the secularist tribe with their slavish minds.
The Aryan Invasion
This brings me to another symbol
of slavery-the now discredited Aryan 'invasion' theory of India, which
also the secularists are trying to save with cries of "saffronization".
Where the Muslim invaders attacked physically, the British method was more
subtle. As Macaulay wrote: "We must at present do our best to form a class
(of Indians) who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we
govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood, in colour, but English in
taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." In other words, he wanted
mental slaves.
And to achieve his goal, he created
his famous (or infamous) Macaulayite education system and sponsored scholars
who would interpret Indian history and tradition in a manner that would
undermine Indian heritage and uproot Hinduism from the soil. For this he
sponsored an Anglo-German scholar called Freiderich Max Muller. He is a
hero to our secularists, but here is what Max Muller himself wrote in a
letter to his wife:
"... This edition of mine (the Rigveda)
and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent
on the fate of India and the growth of millions of souls in that country.
It (Veda) is the root of their religion and to show them what the root
is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from
it in the last three thousand years."
So the Macaulay-max Muller agenda
was to uproot Indian tradition from the soil to facilitate colonial rule.
This created not only the Macaulayite education system, but also the Eurocentric
discipline called Indology. Its goal is to trace all Indian achievements
to sources outside India and make Hinduism subordinate to Christianity.
Early Indologists, including Max Muller, made no secret of it. One well-known
Indologist, Reverend W.W. Hunter, proclaimed, "Scholarship is warmed with
the holy flame of Christian zeal". The same was true of Bishop Caldwell,
the founder of Dravidian theories. Their tool in all this was the Aryan
'invasion' theory. Its strongest supporters today are Western Indologists
and their followers in India-both holdovers from colonial rule. Though
European rule has ended their careers and reputations are at stake.
This has now been discredited by
a careful study of the Harappan Civilization, culminating in N. Jha's decipherment
of the Indus script (Harappan script). So it is natural that the secularists
should have raised a hue and cry, bringing in for support their equally
discredited Western colleagues in a last ditch effort to save their sinking
Aryan 'invasion' theory and their careers and reputations. This is the
truth lurking behind the recent high decibel hue and cry over "the Horse
seal" by a few Western academics and Indian secularist scholars. The slavish
mentality of secularist scholars is reflected also in the fact that when
challenged, they run to Europe and America to complain instead of taking
their case to the people of India.
To return to what Smt Umashri Bharati
suggested: both the Babri 'Masjid' and the Aryan 'invasion' theory are
symbols of slavery. At the bottom is the ultimate enslaving tool called
the Macaulayite education system.
