As in 1940 when the demand for a separate homeland was put forward by the Muslim League, Indian Muslims stand on a crossroads 50 years later today. As then, they have taken a wrong turn, this time on the Ram Janambhoomi issue. As then, they have been egged on by those in authority: Lord Linlithgow (Viceroy in New Delhi) and his superiors in London then, Prime Minister VP Singh and the UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav now.
As then, the consequences are bound to be disastrous for them; UP Muslims played a leading role in forcing partition and they have been its worst victims; apparently they have not learnt from experience and appear determined to repeat history.
As then, they are not likely to heed friendly advice to turn back, indeed, unlike in 1940, the time for them to do so has almost run out. Even so the final bell has not yet tolled. They can still retrace their steps, if they so choose.
There was no dearth of Westernised self-alienated Hindu ‘leaders’ and ‘intellectuals’ in the forties willing to endorse the demand for a separate Muslim ‘homeland’, communists and fellow travellers foremost among them. There is no dearth of such ‘leaders’ and ‘intellectuals’ now. But those Hindu ‘leaders’ and ‘ intellectuals ‘ did not have to suffer the consequences of Pakistan then and their successors are not likely to suffer as a result of the mounting anger among Hindus against Muslims now. Muslims must think for themselves; once again, they are being taken for a ride.
The motives of V.P. Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav are, in any case, not very different from those of Lord Amery (then Secretary of State for India) and Lord Linlithgow. The British wanted to protect their empire; the Raja and his supporters want to corner the Muslim vote so that they can continue to rule the country. The long-term well-being of Muslims was of no concern of the British and it is of no concern to their Indian pupils and successors.
Before we proceed further, one utter falsehood may be exposed. Which is that the Allahabad High Court can settle the issue. The court has been seized of the matter for decades and can remain so seized for many more decades. It can be said to have served as a ‘useful’ device for keeping the issue frozen, as it was first up to 1949 when idols got placed well inside the mosque and then up to 1986 when the Faizabad magistrate ordered the padlock on the gate to be removed.
That order transformed the situation and made the old expedient of ‘waiting’ for the court verdict redundant, especially in the context of the growing support for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s movement for the construction of the Rama temple. It speaks for the kind of political leaders we have had at the helm of affairs in New Delhi that they have not been willing to recognise so obvious a fact and look for some other suitable way out. I might add, though, that unlike V.P. Singh, Rajiv Gandhi did not seek to promote a Hindu-Muslim confrontation and, indeed, that in his blundering way, he tried to find a via media.
The way out has in fact cried aloud to be taken. It has been self-evident since 1986 that Muslims have to be persuaded to give up their claims and allow the proposed Rama temple to be built. This might or might not have turned out to be a feasible approach. But Rajiv Gandhi should have sought to canvass it. To begin with, he should have tried to persuade major parties to treat the Ram Janambhoomi issue as a national problem. If they could somehow be persuaded not to try to make ‘political capital’ out of it, it should not have been impossible to convince Muslim ‘leaders’ of the desirability of this approach. What a pity Rajiv Gandhi missed the opportunity, leaving the Raja free to play havoc with the future of the country on this question, as on that of the so-called Mandal report.
Most of the facts of the case cannot be in dispute. It cannot, for instance, be questioned that Ayodhya had been one of the most important Jain-Buddhist-Hindu religious-pilgrimage centres for over a millennium, that Vaishnavite worshippers of Rama have for centuries treated the area where the Babri Mosque stands as the birth place of their Lord; and that Muslim invaders and rulers in the past have demolished any number of temples and built mosques on those sites or near those sites, invariably using the temple material in the construction of mosques.
To point to the fact of demolition of temples by Muslim invaders and rulers is not to be anti-Muslim. Misunderstanding and confusion arises mainly because in this more ‘tolerant’ (read secular and irreligious) period, Muslim leaders find it inconvenient to admit that their religiously more earnest forefathers thought and acted differently, and from their point of view, rightly. Of course, even then considerations of pragmatism often tempered zeal; or else so many temples could not have survived Muslim rule; even Aurangzeb accepted a measure of restraint. But that is a different issue.
Hindu catholicity contrasted then, as it does today, with Muslim orthodoxy and single-mindedness. But it needs to be remembered that what was true of Islam was also true of Christianity. Christians too demolished temples; these centres of idolatory (to them) were abominations (for them) which had to be removed as far as possible. Indeed, if anything, the Christian record is much worse in this regard than the Muslim. For European Christians practised racism as well and engaged in extermination of peoples, as in the Americas, which Muslims did not. Apartheid is a Christian concept and practice and not a Muslim one.
This is, in any case, an old story which one is obliged to recall only because the present Muslim leaders refuse to acknowledge the truth. Once this is done, only one point can be open to doubt. Which is whether a temple stood exactly at the site of the mosque. For, there can be no question that a temple, if not several temples, existed in the vicinity when the mosque was built; that it was, or these were, possibly demolished and that one of them enclosed the Chabutra just outside the mosque.
I am stretching the point to the maximum possible extent in favour of Muslims. In fact, there is not much scope for dispute on this score either. The argument in favour of this proposition is simple and, in my view, irrefutable. The popular Hindu sentiment has been engaged on this point since at least 1856. This could not possibly have been the case if the temple had not stood at the masjid site before Babar. I would have to be told of another case of similar popular emotional attachment to a site without factual justification.
Let us, however, put that too aside. Let us look at the reality on the ground. Muslims have not prayed at the site since 1936; idols have existed within the masjid since 1949; worship has been going on there ever since; all in all, the structure has not only not served as a mosque for over 40 years but has for all practical purposes served as a temple; at best (or at worst) this status quo can be preserved with the massive use of the might of the Indian state; it cannot possibly be reversed; even the Raja Prime Minister and his Chief Minister cannot dare attempt a reversal, however passionate their desire to woo the Muslim vote.
This inevitably raises the question whether the preservation of this status quo is of such critical importance for the future of Muslims in India that they should be willing to alienate millions of Hindus on a long-term basis and possibly provoke widespread riots. This could be said to be the case if there was a real danger that the removal of the Babri masjid would be followed by an endless number of similar demands by Hindus. But there is no great trouble in the years ahead. Muslims have been known for their realism in the past. They owe it to themselves (and the country) to recapture that virtue.
It can be argued by Muslims that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its allies – the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party – have deliberately whipped up emotions among Hindus and thereby given the Ram Janambhoomi issue a historic significance it does not otherwise possess. Indeed, one can even add that in the popular Hindu psyche, Ram Janambhoomi had not figured till recently the way Somnath had if only because Babar has not occupied the place Muhammad Ghaznavi has in the Hindu folklore, history and therefore demonology.
A couple of points may be made in this regard quite dispassionately. First, the RSS has borne the mark of ‘defeat’ since its birth 65 years ago; inevitably its offshoots have suffered from the same psychology. The historical truth is much more complex; in fact, it can legitimately be said that Hindus managed to keep Muslims on the defensive not only militarily in one part of the land or another during the entire period of so-called Muslim rule but also in the larger psychological sense so much so that Muslims have always feared being reabsorbed in the Hindu ‘sea’.
The British, however, managed to sell to the newly emerging Hindu intelligentsia a wholly distorted view of their past which made them believe that India had always fallen to invaders – Aryans (a fictitious invention), Huns Scythians, Muslims and finally the Europeans. The RSS embodies that view of Indian history. Indian Muslims have nothing to gain and much to lose by reinforcing this false self-view which millions of Hindus have shared for at least close to two centuries.
V.P. Singh’s sudden and utterly unprincipled decision to implement the Mandal fraud has given a new dimension to the Ram Janambhoomi question. It is the only ‘weapon’ which is now available to the BJP, the RSS, the VHP and others interested in frustrating the Raja’s plan to polarise the Hindu society on caste basis. Now they just cannot afford to compromise. It is not an accident that L.K. Advani should have decided to undertake the 10,000 km. Somnath-Ayodhya rathyatra in the wake of (and not earlier than) the Raja’s move to Mandalise (read Lebanonise) India. The BJP’s is at once a desperate and a noble effort to salvage India from the assault on it by the Raja and his men.
V.P. Singh is more subtle in his attempt to use Muslims in his war on the Hindu society than Mulayam Singh. He has also not openly declared war on the BJP and VHP as Mulayam Singh has. But there can be no question that both are pursuing the same objective and both are depending on the same instrument. It cannot pay Muslims to be so used. They should stay out of the intra-Hindu power play and the only way for them to do so in the present context is to give up the claim to the non-masjid.
Hindus have been going through a highly unsettling, painful and cruel process of a redefinition of their heritage and identity and a reconstitution of their society since the days of Rammohun Roy in the early part of the nineteenth century. This process got accelerated after Independence as a result of the spread of modern, secular education, means of transport and communication, economic growth on the Western model, adult franchise and a host of other developments. If Hindu society has not gone berserk, it is a remarkable tribute to its inherent strength and resilience. But the institutional arrangements are close to cracking up under the strain. V.P. Singh has put an enormous additional burden on them.
It is painful for me to recall that in a similar situation in the thirties Germans sought escape into a make-believe world of anti-semitism. But I regard it as my duty to refer to that ugly phase in human history. Continuing acts of self-immolation by young boys and girls leave me no choice. They speak of a depth of despair without a parallel in our modern history. It will be sheer escapism to believe that it cannot and shall not seek release in an anti-Muslim explosion if Muslims are rightly seen to be allies of the hated set-up.
As citizens, Muslims have inevitably participated in elections and thus indirectly in the intra-Hindu struggle. No one can deny them that right. They are as entitled to a free vote as anyone else. But this is a different situation altogether. V.P. Singh and Mulayam Singh are inciting them and expecting them to act as their soldiers. They are cynically promoting their ‘religious susceptibilities’ in the name of secularism and rule of law in their own narrow, selfish interest. Muslims have good reason to be wary.
Sunday Mail, 14 October 1990