From: dogar@rtsg.mot.com (Haroon H. Dogar)
Subject: Re: BAHAAR KAY DIN AAA GAI
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 19:24:27 GMT

jxt@calmasd.Prime.COM (Jawahar Tembulkar) writes:

>In article <dogar.711655842@opal4> dogar@rtsg.mot.com (Haroon H. Dogar) writes:

>>The thing that bothers me the most is
>>that  the mosque that my great-grandfather built with his own hands
>>[his Sadqa-jaariya] and that my mother used to sweep herself [because
>>of the sense of thawaab that he had inculcated in her] has been defiled
>>and has probably either been destroyed or turned into a Mandir or
>>Gurdwara.

>Does he know this for a fact ?  It is quite possible that if all
>the muslims left these villages, the mosque may have deteriorated
>due to no upkeep.  However, I doubt seriously that it will have
>become a Gurdwara/Mandir.

>I hope you do realize the turbulence caused by the present Babri
>Masjid/Ram Janambhumi imbroglio.  I am not aware of any mosques
>having been converted into Gurudwara/Mandir.  There have been
>occasions when houses of worship ( of all religions ) have become
>involved in stone throwing and other deplorable sorts of defilement.
>Ususally this occurs during communal riots and such like.

As far as I know, there are no Muslims or Mosques left in East Punjab
[aside from Qadian and the occasional Jalsa that takes place there].
I know that it was defiled, because I know that my great-grandfather
went to remove the Qurans and found that immigrants from West Punjab
had entered the mosques and were keeping their horses, goats, and donkeys
in the mosque and had torn up many of the Qurans and left the pages 
on the ground beneath their animals. He gathered up the remaining Qurans
and left. My Khaloo had come with the Army to evacuate the village
and he wanted to chase those people out of the mosque, but he was
stopped by my great-grandfather who was more concerned with getting
the family out and who realized that it was pointless to try to protect the
building from those people since it would soon belong to them anyway.

I don't see why the people who later moved into those villages would
leave the mosque standing, and I don't really blame them. It is vacant
land, and it was probably either destroyed for a homesite or business
or it was converted into some other use. Since there were probably no
Mandirs or Gurdwaras in those villages before, I would guess that some
of the mosques left behind were converted to these types of houses of worship.
For the Muslim, a mosque is something that he or she builds or donates to
so that he or she earns the reward of providing a place for people to pray.
Even after one is gone, we believe that as long as people continue to
pray in that moque, the builders continue to receive Allah's blessing.
If there is no one left to pray in the masjid, then what is the point
of the building? That the building was probably destroyed or converted to
some other use does graphically illustrate the loss, but it is a reality of
partition that we all accept. [At least most of my family got out alive.
Many others were not so lucky.]

The Babri masjid case is different from these, because there are still
Muslims living in the UP, and they feel threatened by what they perceive
to be a developing trend of destroying mosques or denigrating Muslim
activities [I won't say achievements because I believe the Taj Mahal to
be wasteful excess]. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that neither
side accepts the other sides view of the origins of the structure.

Still, I view this as very different from a situation where say an entire
village converts to a new religion and then builds a masjid on the site
where they had formerly built their mandir. I don't think that anyone
would blame them for removing their old structure and replacing it with
a new one which is more suited to their needs. The situation is similar to
the one is post-partition East Punjab where there is no one left to use
the original house of worship. 

-hd
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