From: bond@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Girish)
Subject: The Start of a New Beginning
Keywords: Ayodhya, Hindu, Muslim, secular, history, politics
Organization: University of New Brunswick
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 16:41:51 GMT


The following  article by noted  journalist  Shri M. V. Kamath  written  after
the historic  December 6 events in Ayodhya will make interesting reading. This
article has been taken from "The Illustrated Weekly of India", December 12-18,
1992.

My sincere thanks to Shri  Ramakrishna  Chada ( rachada@icaen.uiowa.edu ) for
typing this article for the net.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          _S_t_a_r_t _o_f _a _N_e_w _B_e_g_i_n_n_i_n_g

                                     by

                                 M.V. Kamath

     If out leftist intellectuals and secular editors stop screaming all  the
time  about  secularism, fundamentalism, "trishul-weilding sants" and fascist
Hindus and their ilk and try to understand the  nature  of  our  society,  we
might  still  come to terms with our past.  There are many ways to understand
the Ayodhya issue, but showering choice abuse at the VHP or the  BJP  or  the
Kalyan Singh government (or ex-government) is not one of them.

     There are Hindus and Hindus.  The President of India, Dr. Shankar  Dayal
Sharma, happens to be a Hindu and a brahmin.  So for that matter is the prime
minister of India, P V Narshima Rao.  Both have strongly condemned the  sheer
vandalism indulged in by some people against the Babri Masjid and no doubt it
will be rebuilt, this time by Hindus themselves.

     So what happens in Ayodha is not a Muslim versus Hindu affair,  millions
of  Hindus  probably  couldn't care less about the whole controversy.  Surely
many wouldn't even have heard of it a couple of decades  ago.   If  a  random
poll is taken among Hindus south of the Vindhyas, in small towns and villages
and even in poor localities in the cities today, the indifference of the peo-
ple  may  come  as  a  surprise to all concerned.  In a sense Ayodha is local
issue; from the very beginning it should have been handled as such, as  some-
thing  concerning  the  local administration.  A local issue was first turned
into a state issue and then a national issue, now there is the the  possibil-
ity of its being internationalised.

     Now in understanding Ayodha one must look at it in the  historical  per-
spective.  Some  of  our  intellectuals  tell us "But don't bring history in.
History is dead. Look to the future".  The  trouble  is  that  like  Banquo's
ghost,  it  is  ever  present in our life.  It can't be wished away.  One can
rewrite it, one can reinterpret it,but it is there.  And for many  Hindus  it
is  painful.   A  muslim  intellectual, Iqbal A Ansari writing in The Islamic
Times International (July-September 1992) got it right when he said "communal
readings  of the 700 years of medieval folks history has passed into the col-
lective Hindu psyche (which) suffers from a sense of hurt  and  humiliation".
Obviously  the  millions  of  poor Indians who have never gone to school, who
cannot read and write, who have never heard of Ghazni or Ghouri Mohammads, or
Aurangzeb  etc  haven't  the  foggiest idea of history to take a "historical"
view of Islam.  But somewhere in the subconscious even among  the  illiterate
Hindus  there  are "commun al readings" (to put it mildly) of Muslim intoler-
ance, of conversion under threat etc etc. Sikhism would not  have  been  born
were  it  not  for Muslim intolerance. The argument that the Quran says some-
thing about to each his own religion, does not wash.  If that was  so,  there
woyuld  have  been no conversions to the Islamic faith and hardly any muslims
in India.

     But, there are Muslims in India and many Hindus feel that they  betrayed
their  country  in demanding Pakistan anfd getting it.  The argument could be
made that not all Muslims wanted Pakistan.  Then who wanted  it  ?   Not  the
congress,  the dominant secular, political party in India.  It was the Muslim
league which swept the Muslim  votes  in  the  1946  elections.   The  league
secured  as  many  as  75 to 95 per cent of the Muslim votes on the cry for a
separate muslim state.  The implication was that once Pakistan  was  obtained
all those who voted for pakistan would go there.  That, of course, never hap-
pened.  Only a small percentage left; the poor had to stay behind,  cowering,
not  realising-  or, perhaps, realising too well,- the nature of their folly.
And now I quote Ansari again: "Hindus percieve Muslims as inherently  incapa-
ble  of  wholly  belonging  to India and being loyal to it, of keeping Indian
nationhood above religion; the perennial question of Indian first  or  Muslim
first".

Distrust piled on distrust.

     The Pakistanis fuelled anti-Islamic sentiment in India  by  their  crass
insistence  that  Kashmir  belonged  to  them because a majority of Kashmiris
(forgetting those in Jammu and Ladakh) were Muslims. Had Pakistan left  India
alone,  distrust of Muslims would have died a natural death. But that was not
to be. And Muslims in India have not told their co-religionists  in  Pakistan
to  shut  up. At least not loudly and not insistently. A fear has always per-
sisted in Hindu minds that Muslims are not reliable. This  has  been  another
factor governing Hindu-Muslim relations in India.

     Now the Congress has always insisted that it is secular. After partition
on non-secular lines it could not possibly behave as if it was a Hindu party.
It had to prove to itself and to others that it was indeed secular,  even  if
it  hurt  itself in the process. Nehru therefore succumbed to pressure not to
have Vande Mataram as the national anthem. When, on  December  22,  1949  the
idols  of Sri Ram, Laxman and Sita were smuggled inside the Babri masjid, the
place was ordered  closed  by  the  district  magistrate  of  Faizabad  under
instructions from the UP government headed by another brahmin, Govind Vallabh
Pant. Of course it infuriated many, but it  was  a  Congress  government  and
right  or  wrong, the Congress had to show that it was secular and never mind
if the Ayodhya dispute was over a century old and the Hindus had an emotional
link with the site.

     In the last 40 years, rightly or wrongly, the feeling has grown that the
Congress would do anything to please the Muslims in order to get their votes.
(The Muslims, it is only fair to say, have been saying  that  they  have  not
recieved  anything,  not  even  crumbs from the government and can rightfully
point out to the miniscule number of Muslims in the various  number  of  ser-
vices  and in the police). The Shah Bano case only strengthened that feeling.
In Kerala, the communist regime went to the extent of carving out a  separate
Muslim  majority district, Malapuram, adding to the feeling that Muslims will
never live peacefully side by side with Hindus. A similar district  has  been
carved out in Tamil Nadu.

     So much for the historic background and  now  for  the  emotional  back-
ground.  There  has  been  a  persistent attempt, specially by the Jawaharlal
Nehru University "intellectuals" to show that if Ram ever existed, he was the
king  of  a  minor  principality  and  hardly  a  god, that if he was born in
Ayodhya, that Ayodhya lay somewhere near the border of Nepal and in  present-
day Uttar Pradesh, that if indeed he was born in present-day Ayodhya there is
nothing to prove that he was born at the site  where  the  Babri  masjid  now
exists,  that if indeed he was born where it is claimed he was, the temple to
him was built on the foundations of a Buddhist vihara  and  so  on.  Not  the
slightest  concession  is  given to deeply held emotional feelings. The worst
instigators of communalism, to my mind are the Hindu "secular"  intellectuals
whose  arrogance  is  matched only by their insensitivity. Every religion has
its myths. A Catholic will feel insulted if one were to question either  vir-
gin birth or resurrection- and rightly so. And it takes considerable stretch-
ing of one's imagination to believe that the prophet came riding on a  winged
horse  and  landed at the site in Jerusalem where, it is believed a footprint
of his can even now be seen. If one can accept these  pleasant  myths  surely
one can accept the belief that Sri Ram was born at the Babri Masjid site?

     What a fine gesture it would have been if the Muslim leadership  at  the
very  early  stages,  had graciously conceeded the right of Hindus to build a
temple at the site and even helped them to  do  so?  What  enormous  goodwill
would  have  accrued  to the Muslim community by that one single act of grace
that would have cost them nothing, but would have wiped out the  many  angers
of  the  past?  There was even some talk that the VHP would rebuild the Babri
masjid at another site, stone by ancient stone at its own cost.  The  wounded
Hindu  psyche  would  then  have  been  healed. We would have gone a long way
towards national integration. But the Syed Shahabuddins had to  take  a  con-
frontationist stand. They would not accept a belief(let us conceed that it is
a myth) that would have cost them nothing but won  them  only  goodwill.  The
demand  was that the VHP should 'prove' that the masjid was built on the tem-
ple site.

     Let it be presumed that no temple ever existed, that  even  no  Sri  Ram
ever  existed  and  that everything is a myth. Would it have damaged Islam or
the Muslims if the latter were to have the grace to  concede  something  over
which  Hindus  have  been straining for decades? The argument is made that if
one site was conceded the VHP might have asked for three more  and  then  300
more  and  then where would it all stop? Shouldn't one take a firm stand from
the very stand and decline to oblige? And thus the argument has run. But this
was  a  matter  for negotiation and to the best of my information this matter
was never ever brought to the negotiating table.

     The truth of the matter seems to  be  that  the  Muslim  leadership  was
afraid  to  conceed  anything.  This has led to 'minorityism'-the minorities'
perrinial fear that if one concedes a point to the majority, the matter  will
not stop there.

     The irony is that it is not the Muslim who is afraid, but the Hindu with
all  the  accumulated  fears of the past. Banquo's ghost just will not disap-
pear. The Hindu psyche demands that some restitution be done to it, though it
is  not  expressed  quite that way. It is not quite revanchist. To believe so
would be a wrong reading of the situation. There is such a thing as  a  "pys-
chological"  minority  -  the existence of which is seldom recognised because
one wants to face facts, besides which, it would  be  embarrassing  to  admit
that one is afraid. But the fact remains that both the numerical minority and
the psycological minority live in fear of each other. Every time there  is  a
report of conversion to Islam it touches a raw nerve.

     Many further believe that the Muslim attitude is one of: "what  we  have
is  ours,  what  you  have  is  also ours". The Muslims voted solidly for the
Muslim League and for Pakistan. Today's generation says  that  it  cannot  be
made  to  pay  for what their fathers did. But surely those fathers are still
around who should have known better? The Shahi Imam says that he wants  India
to  be  "secular".  Were those mullahs who coughed fire and brimstone in 1946
secular?

     Then there  are  other  questions  asked:  if  the  situation  had  been
reversed,  say  in  Pakistan  or  any muslim country would a temple have been
safe?  How many temples have been destroyed in Pakistan? in Bangladesh?  even
in Kashmir?

     The secularists argument is that Indians should be  different  from  the
fundamentalists  Muslims.  They should be. but alas, they aren't.  One wished
that there never was a Ghazni or Aurangazeb or a Jinnah to haunt our  dreams.
What  is  significant is that there are many who argue that Hindu rulers also
have ransacked temples; that Ghazni only wanted the wealth of Somnath and was
unconcerned  with  idolatrous Hindus etc., etc.  It has also been argued that
Hindus have not been less vicious and that they have  had  gory  fights  with
Buddhists and Jains, so what is wrong with muslims killing Hindus?

     It is easy for our secularists to point an accusing finger at  the  VHP,
the BJP or its leaders like L K Advani.  But are Congress, Janata Dal, Janata
Party and the leftist leaders any the less guilty?  All of them were  playing
games.   The  Congress wanted to take shelter behind the judiciary; it was an
excellent example of passing the buck.  Narasimha Rao could  say  sanctimoni-
ously  that the BJP was not upholding the constitution while what seems clear
is that more than the BJP it was the non-BJP coterie that is responsible  for
what happened.  The BJP was not in need of the muslim vote.  The Congress is;
so is the Janata Dal.  The BJP may or may not be  right.   But  the  Congress
party  is frankly dishonest.  Everyone has been playing politics, as the say-
ing goes.  Nobody has any clean hands.
=============================================================================

Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian