Ayodhya returns to the Capital with a bang

By Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

NEW DELHI, JULY 19. Having won a ``censorship case'' after eight years of legal battle, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust today re- mounted its much talked about exhibition ``Hum Sab Ayodhya'' and topped it up with a vocal recital by its ``friend'', Ms.Shubha Mudgal, here to celebrate the vindication of its stand.

The Delhi High Court had this past week declared ``null and void'' a Delhi Government notification banning exhibition of a text panel by SAHMAT delineating various versions of the Ramayana which included a mention of Sita as sister of Rama. The Court had found the notification ``indefensible'' and noted that ``everything was pre-designed and pre-determined''.

Describing the order as a vindication of its stand, Ms Shabnam Hashmi of SAHMAT said that while the organisation had been blamed all along for putting up ``posters'' depicting Sita tying a rakhi on Ram, ``no such posters ever existed''.

Ms Hashmi said the controversy was actually ``a hate campaign against SAHMAT'', whose programme ``Muktnaad'' sought to counter ``vandalism'' that had taken place at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. ``The fact that over a thousand artists and scholars had gathered in Ayodhya had disturbed many. Their problem was why were artists descending on Ayodhya.''

Stating that the Government feared ``we were going to rebuild the mosque'', Ms Hashmi said even sale of cement and bricks had been banned a week before the exhibition. Even Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee had camped in Lucknow and held press conferences against SAHMAT, she said, adding that it was on August 12, 1993, that Bajrang Dal attacked the exhibition at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Later, the text panel was also banned by the Delhi Government.

The Court order now, she said, had given SAHMAT a chance to explain itself. ``For after the controversy several secular people had distanced themselves from us and begun attacking us.'' At the time, the exhibition was running in 17 cities. With research work coming from such distinguished historians as Prof. Irfan Habib, Prof. K.N. Panikkar, Prof. Ravinder Kumar, Prof. Athar Ali and Prof. Suvira Jaiswal, the show was attracting a lot of attention.

Prof. Habib said the exhibition had been unnecessarily targeted. ``Even though the controversial text had appeared in books and exhibitions of various Right-wing organisations, vested interests took exception to the section on Rama-Katha in the Buddhist tradition which mentioned portions of Dasaratha Jataka.'' It mentioned that ``Sita is not the wife but the sister of Rama. At the end of the exile when Rama returns to Ayodhya, Sita is made queen consort of Rama and they rule jointly for 16,000 years. Rama is said to have descended from Ikshvaku, from whom the clan of the Buddha also claims descent.''

Following the Court order, SAHMAT now plans to take ``Hum Sab Ayodhya'' to various centres across the country.

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