The Hindu : Adieu to Ayodhya

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 06, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Adieu to Ayodhya

By Valson Thampu

It is now a decade since Babri Masjid succumbed to the frenzy of a manipulated mob. On that day, an obscure mosque was shifted to the centre of our national consciousness. A property dispute was transformed into a national perfidy. Riding the crest of this pseudo-religious fervour, its ringleaders frog-leapt to seats of power. They left Ram lalla behind in Ayodhya, as though to keep vigil over the annexed territory. Should we remember Ayodhya? Or is it wiser to consign it to oblivion?

The December 6 visuals continue to haunt: the spectacle of a horde of hooligans dancing an orgy of malice atop the mosque in broad daylight. It jabbed my eyes as I sat watching BBC news with a few friends of mine in the U.K. It stung me with a sense of guilt and shame and my head drooped in embarrassment. At home, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, may choose to whitewash the act of vandalism as an eruption of "nationalistic sentiments," but outside our territorial boundaries, Ayodhya, as a story of revenge, takes on a pre-civilisational resonance.

The Ayodhya imbroglio, taken in isolation, was truly much ado about nothing. Yet, it has become immensely significant as a mirror held up to our national life. First and foremost, it captures the sacrilege of using religion for political gains. The Deputy Prime Minster, L. K. Advani, is on record to the effect that the Bharatiya Janata Party's political fortunes derive mainly from the temple movement. The political agenda of the BJP since then, including the charade of "shila daan," leaves one in no doubt that Ayodhya was merely incidental to the BJP's march to Delhi.

Bhakti, or devotion to God, is the most sacred of human sentiments. Its exploitation in the service of un-principled politics is the worst imaginable insult to the divine and the human alike. The calloused conscience that conceives such communal perversities is the crucible of quintessential atheism. Even if a temple results from it, it can only be a standing embarrassment to Lord Ram, paragon of righteousness. Besides this, Ayodhya puts the spotlight on the fragility of the rule of law in this country, especially in situations of majoritarian aggression.

The Babri mosque was brought down through a well-orchestrated campaign at a time when the matter was sub judice and the BJP Government in Uttar Pradesh had given an undertaking to the Supreme Court that it would protect the mosque. It was bad enough that the mosque was destroyed despite this. What is even worse is that those who took the law into their own hands have been allowed till today to enjoy the fruits of their aggression.

Natural justice demands the restoration of the status quo. Unless the court comes to a contrary conclusion, the site where the idol of Ram lalla was set up in a makeshift fashion in the wake of the mosque demolition belongs to the Muslim community. That obvious legal fact was given a quiet burial simply because an idol was deposited at the site of demolition. Its continued presence in what is, de facto, encroached land is indefensible legally, morally and spiritually. And that is so even if temples and idols are quite frequently misused as cover-ups for the encroachment of public land all over the country, including New Delhi.

Since then, the statements on the subject by several of our leaders lend legitimacy to insulting the majesty of law through mob frenzy. That brings us to the third crucial issue in the wake of Ayodhya: the popularisation of a culture of violence. Politics has been a domain of violence from time immemorial. Even our non-violent struggle for freedom was not wholly free from violence. But at no period in our history has violence been accorded the extent of public legitimacy that it has been in the years since the demolition of the mosque. As a people, we are losing our inhibition about hurting, looting and killing each other. We have today reached a stage in which cruelty is paraded as collective pride without a trace of embarrassment.

It is not only the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat that should worry us. What should alarm us even more is the alacrity with which even one-day internationals routinely degenerate into gratuitous violence, as in the recently-concluded cricket series. It is as though violence has become the idiom of our spontaneity. How can the violence of nationalistic sentiments on the cricket field be condemned when the Prime Minister himself expresses his public approval of the same vis-à-vis Ayodhya?

Violence is more reprehensible when it is unleashed in the name of religion; for, it amounts to an outright contradiction of its very essence.

The least that we need to remember in this land blessed and burdened with religious plurality is that crime committed in the name of a religion is primarily crime perpetrated against that religion. Seen thus, the Ayodhya movement has done greater harm to Hinduism than to Islam. Islam lost a nondescript mosque. But, the very soul of Hinduism has been outraged.

It profits us little to remember Ayodhya merely to luxuriate in sentimentality. The question is if we are willing to be wiser for it. And that we may not be, unless we evolve an inter-religious ethos that can enrich our religious plurality and empower secular democracy.

Events all over the world prove that peace and progress are not possible without peace among religions. And that may remain a pipe dream as long as we refuse to move from conflictual religiosity to cooperative spirituality. Religion without spirituality, as the Ayodhya movement has proved beyond doubt, is ever ready to degenerate into communalism. Majoritarian communalism is only a small step away from fascism.

Ayodhya has taken us to the crossroads of fascism and secular democracy. Depending on the turn we take, Ayodhya could prove a watershed in the history of India, which it still is not.

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