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Who gave Babar the right?
In trying to understand the meaning of Ayodhya, we need to ask a basic
question: by what right did this invader Babar, who despised India, its
people and its culture, demolish a temple at a site held sacred by the
people of this country and build a mosque in its place.
Let me reframe the question.Ram Janmabhumi is sacred to the Hindus because
they hold it to be the birthplace of Rama, who embodies for them the ideals
of truth, heroism, chivalry and every other virtue. What is the justification
for the mosque by Babar beyond the fact that it was erected as a mark
of conquest and of humiliation of the Hindus.
No one to my knowledge has satisfactorily explained the legitimacy of
the Babri Masjid. One can understand that many Muslims hold the tomb of
Moinuddeen Chisti in Ajmer to be sacred because he is venerated as a Sufi
saint. No such justification exists for the Babri Masjid, for it was not
intended as a place of worship. To understand temple destructions by Babar
and his descendants, we must recognize that it was part of their ideology.
Here is how one of his descendants, a granddaughter of Aurangazeb, described
why mosques should be built at the site of demolished temples: keeping
the triumph of Islam in view, devout Muslim rulers should keep all idolators
in subjection to Islam, brook no laxity in realization of Jizyah, grant
no exceptions to Hindu Rajahs from dancing in attendance on 'Id days and
waiting on foot outside mosques till end of prayer ...'
And 'keep in constant use for Friday and congregational prayer the mosques
built up after demolishing the temples of the idolatrous Hindus situated
at Mathura, Banaras and Avadh ...'This allows us to answer the question
raised earlier about Babar's right to destroy the temple and build his
mosque: Babar's ideology described by his own descendant as the triumph
of Islam gave him that right, at least in his eyes.
It is an ideology that sees everything outside the pale of Islam as an
object of derision to be humiliated and destroyed. This does not mean
that everyone especially the victims should accept it as legitimate. Accepting
the legitimacy of the Babri Masjid at Ram Janmabumi means acknowledging
the superiority of Babar's ideology over that of the overwhelming majority
of the people of India, and his right to impose it on others by force.
This is imperialism pure and simple. The Babri Masjid advocates the Muslim
leaders, the Secularists and the Congress party must acknowledge this
fundamental fact. Court cases and political postures cannot change it.
The basic problem is that the parties have avoided such fundamental issues.
Instead of trying to understand what Ram Janmabhumi and Ayodhya mean to
the Hindus, the Babri Masjid advocates have been trying to present it
as a dispute over a piece of real estate and a structure in brick and
mortar. Every living nation has national symbols and Ayodhya is India's.
A young American a former student of mine recently asked me why building
the temple at Ram Janmabhumi was so important. I asked her if Americans
would let stand a mosque built by someone like Osama bin Laden after demolishing
Mount Vernon (George Washington's home) or the Statue of Liberty. Similarly,
the Westminster Abbey in London is more than a Church, for it is inseparably
bound with English history and tradition.
This is how the people of India also look at Ram Janmabhumi: it is a
sacred spot for Hindus for historical, cultural and nationalistic reasons
and not just because it is a place of worship. Many like me who never
go to a temple still hold it sacred.To highlight this point: can the terrorist
warlord Osama bin Laden claim the ideological right to demolish the Venkateshwara
Temple in Tirupati or the Golden Temple in Amritsar and build something
else in their place to mark the triumph of his faith?
These, like Ram Janmabhumi, the Westminster Abbey, and the Statue of
Liberty, are not pieces of real estate that can be bartered or forcibly
occupied and demolished.
Symbol of slavery
When put in this light, the Secularists will scream that Babar cannot
be compared to a terrorist warlord like Osama bin Laden. Hasn't Nehru
told us that Babar was both charming and tolerant a true Secularist Like
most things that Nehru wrote it is nowhere near the truth. Babar was as
much a religious fanatic as bin Laden.
He saw himself as a Ghazi an Islamic warrior on a jihad to uproot infidelity.
Jihad was Babar's ideology, the same as bin Laden's. I will have more
to say about it later, but the point to note is that the mosque was built
on the site of the destroyed temple as a mark of slavery.Self-respecting
nations don't let stand symbols of national humiliation and slavery.
The French have not preserved Nazi monuments at Versailles. Even in America,
where Tharoor's authority Tina Rosenberg fulminated against the Hindus,
Americans destroyed a statue of King George III when they declared independence
in 1776. Some forty years later, in the War of 1812, the British sacked
Washington and burned down the White House.
Americans promptly rebuilt it instead of preserving the burnt down White
House as our secularists want at Rama Janmabhoomi. But this is beyond
the secularist tribe with their slavish minds.
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