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31. Will the reconstruction of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi temple in any way affect the position of India vis-à-vis Kashmir?

The Shri Rama Janmabhoomi movement is in no way directed against Muslims. It is a movement to redeem the honour and self-esteem of crores of Hindus of free India. It has absolutely no link with Kashmir whatsoever.

32. Are Hindu Organisation called fundamentalists in the crude sense? Will not the reconstruction of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi temple make this charge valid?

Fundamentalism, like Secularism, is talked about glibly. Leave alone very senior politician, even highly enlightened members of the Press reporters get stumped when they are requested to define FUNDAMENTALISM. In our experience, none of the secularists have yet provided a definition. It is, therefore, important to first know who is a fundamentalist, and what are his traits.

FUNDAMENTALIST is one who believes:

1. That HIS religion is the ONLY religion through which any human soul can achieve salvation.

2. That his faith is governed by some set tents written in a book on the basis of which that religion was founded and not word of the text of his basic scripture can afford any change whatsoever. That no one except those authorized in his religion has any right to interpret the provisions of his scripture and once they interpretation has been given it is final and not open to any questioning or any challenge.

3. That if any person of his own faith or any other faith dares to question, challenge or seeks to provide an alternate interpretation, the top authorities of his religion possess a divine right to punish such individual including awarding of death penalty.

4. That the entire edifice of his faith can get threatened by anyone inflicting the slightest insult to his holy book or to its contents or to his place or worship and his entire community must rise as a body to avenge it.

5. That he has a religious obligation to despise and denigrate any and every other religious faith and hence a religious duty to articulate accordingly, specially while seeking to convert others to his faith.

6. That he has Divine right granted to him by his religion to expand the number of followers of his faith by converting the followers of other faiths.

7. That by increasing the number of followers, he stands glorified in the eyes of his religion irrespective of whether such conversion is done by deceit, by offering material temptations, by exploiting their hapless plight, threats of force or by actually resorting to violence.

8. That he has a Divine right sanctified by his religion to desecrate and destroy the religious scriptures of other faiths.

9. That he has a Divine right to destroy the worship places of other religious faiths and by so doing he stands glorified in the eyes of his Lord God.

By the very definition of a fundamentalist, NO HINDU CAN EVER BECOME A FUNDAMENTALIST. However, using the Goebellsian tactics, by repeatedly calling the RSS, VHP or Bajrang Dal fundamentalists, they seek to create a perception in public that like Muslims and Christians, a Hindu also can be a fundamentalist. Fighting for restoration of Hindu honour not by Bombs or AK-47s, but by willing to lay down their lives has been dubbed as fundamentalism. In the case of a Hindu, even refusing to tolerate any further humiliation is labelled as fundamentalism.

Not even the most exalted Muslim Ulemas can possibly accept that a spot where Rama Lala is being worshipped continuously since 1949 can be classified as a Mosque.

Commenting on the demand for the restoration of three temples, KONRAD ELST writes:
..any religion would demand that much of respect for its sacred places. There is nothing narrow-minded about demanding respect. (page 129 of Rama Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid).

"The initiative now, as in the forties, lies principally with the Muslims," wrote Giri Lal Jain just after the Shilanyas (Sunday Mail, of 12th September, 1989. It was the Muslim decision and violent insistence that brought partition. Once again, it is the Muslims who will decide "whether one will move into the future as a reasonably united people or as a deeply divided people ready to cut each other’s throats at the slightest provocation".

…In a fundamental sense, the issues are simple:
a. Whether the proposed Rama temple is to become a symbol of Hindu-Muslim amity or of discord, and

b. Whether or not …. Hindu search for self-respect is to develop along anti-Muslim lines.
The Muslims have to make the choice between (a) and (b). The construction of Rama Temple at that spot is an imperative supported not only by all religious sections of Hindus, but by 10 crores signatories who petitioned the President of India for this, besides clinching material evidence establishing the Hindu claim.
The question of whether by constructing the Rama Temple the Hindus will validate the charge of being fundamentalist is no issue at all. By the very nature of his faith, calling a Hindu a fundamentalist is a contradiction in terms.

33. In destroying the Babri structure, does it not go against the essence of tolerance in Hinduism?

When it is established beyond a shadow of doubt that the Babri structure was raised after half demolishing the Rama Temple, not redeeming it in Free India would be tantamount to validating the continued Hindu humiliation by Babar. The process of redeeming the four sacred-most temples had commenced with the reconstruction of Somnath, but was halted by Nehru.

Had it not been halted, all four temples would have been redeemed without any controversy because of the feelings of deep gratitude that existed in the Muslims of that generation that had been granted protection and equality in Free India. Besides, the present-day Hindus are not the first batch of Hindus who are out to reconstruct the Rama Temple. The Thousands of Hindus who laid down their lives in the 77 earlier recorded attempts to liberate the temple were none other than Hindus. Those martyrs have showed us that unrelenting intolerance to such a humiliating ocular demonstration of the supremacy of barbarism was indeed an imperative duty.

One must distinguish between tolerance and capitulation. Claiming restoration of Only three temples against the several thousands of them that were destroyed is a magnanimous enough gesture of Hindu tolerance. It is important to mention that the sense of insult and humiliation is not the brainchild of so-called Hindu extremists.

In 1960, Sir Arnold Toynbee, the greatest (British) historian the twentieth century has produced, had delivered the Azad Memorial Lecture in Delhi (see: "One World and India") published by National Book Trust, pages 59-61). Finding little blame on the Polish people for pulling down in 1918 the Eastern orthodox Christian Cathedral in Central Warsaw that the Russians had built in 1814-15 after they captured Poland, he said:

The Russians had done this to give the Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were now masters…. The purpose for which the Russians had built it had been not religious, but political and the purposes had also been intentionally offensive. I do greatly praise the Indian Government for not having pulled down Aurangzeb’s Mosque. I am thinking particularly of two that overlook the Ghats at Banaras and of one that crowns Krishna’s hill at Mathura. Aurangzeb’s purpose in building those three Mosques was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to build the Cathedral in Warsaw. Those three Mosques were intended to signify that Islamic Government was reigning supreme, even over Hinduism’s holiest of holy places. Speaking about the monuments built by the British he said:

if my countrymen still had a say in determining the policy of the Indian Ministry of Public Works, they might press for the demolition of these Philistine reminders of the British phase of history of India. But not so the Indian authorities. They are, so far as I know, being as tender to these British monstrosities as they are to the Taj Mahal. This particular example of Indian tolerance has moved me to admiration tempered by twinges of excruciation. It needed a Toynbee to remind Nehru of India’s humiliation to hasten the removal of the monster size statues of British monarchs. Yet the same Nehru failed to experience the humiliations inflicted by Babar and Aurangzeb.

They talk of Hindu tolerance, but conveniently forget examples like the lightening indignation exploding into violence by thousands of Muslims shouting "Islam in danger" when some miscreant mischievously introduced a pig among the Namazis assembled for the Enid Namaz at Moradabad some years back or breaking down four temples in large scale arson in Kanpur City on the basis of a rumour in March 2001 that Quran was burnt in Delhi. One piece of pork or one burnt page of Quran thrown inside a Mosque by any unknown miscreant is enough reason to trigger a major outbreak of communal violence. Preaching tolerance to one community and maintaining a deafening silence against acute intolerance on the part of other defies logic.

Being treated as special class citizens since independence it has not failed to shock the country when Muslim leaders go about proclaiming to the outside world that they are treated as second-class citizens. Yes! By this gimmick, their leaders do manage to rake in millions of petro-dollars, but it deeply hurts the National image as well as the relations between Hindus and Muslims.

34. If the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi Temple were rebuilt, what would be the position of Hindus in countries where Muslims are in large majority?

Unchanged. Absolutely unchanged. Hindus all over the world are respected for their contributions to the culture and economy of the countries in which they are residing. No country will ever harm its own social and economic fabric for what is done in distant Ayodhya. The agenda now is merely to reconstruct a grand temple. It is to be remembered that no such reaction had occurred in any country, not even in Muslim majority countries, even when the structure got actually demolished despite the lie perpetrated by Shri Narasimha Rao. Because of this lie, however, temples were destroyed in Bangladesh and Kashmir, but no persecution of Hindus had taken place even there.

Any fear of Hindus getting persecuted outside, if Rama Mandir is built is quite contrary to logic.

35. Would the reconstruction of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi temple make the Christians in India insecure?

No question. No such reaction among Christians had been witnessed even when the structure had got actually demolished. The demand of restoration of temples has been categorically limited to just the three temples of Kashi, Ayodhya and Mathura. Neither Muslims, still less Christians need to be apprehensive about the thousands of sites on which Mosques or Churches stand where Hindu temples stood once. There is absolutely no Hindu agenda to recover any other temple site but these three.

36. It is said that Islam does not sanction breaking of temples. Please comment.

God knows which Islam is being referred to. The Islam known the world-over, more specially, the Islam that entered India in the last millennium was of a monstrously opposite variety. Four temples were destroyed in Kanpur City during a vicious riot that had taken place as late as March 2001.

Whoever says that Islam does not sanction destruction of temples should read the Quran or the words of the Muslim Kings and Muslim historians who have boastfully written about thousands and thousands of temples that each King destroyed. In Mecca, Mohammad himself ordered the wholesale destruction of idols except one - the well-known Black Stone of Kaaba. Every Islamic invader and looter, it seems has followed this example and destroyed Hindu Temples drawing his divine authority from the Quran.

For example, when Kassim, the horrible invader who invaded Sind around AD 711 got sick of killing over 30,000 Hindu men, women, and children. When he sent message of his ‘glorious’ accomplishment, his Kind in Mecca, reminded him the Sura 47:4 and asked him to butcher the rest. This is the ‘compassionate Islam’ that India saw over the next 1000 years. To make this point again, out of innumerable examples, two of the Suras are quoted below:

Surah 2 Ayat 193: Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.
Surah 8 Ayat 39: Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.

The doctrine of Din-Panahi propounded by Muslim Jurist Shaikh-ul-Islam during the reign of Iltutmish ordains as follows:

…And the Kings will not be able to perform the duty of protecting their faith unless for the sake of Allah and the Prophets creed, they overthrow and uproot ‘Kufr’ and ‘Kafiri’ (infidelity). But, if the total uprooting of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of ‘Kufr’ and the large number of Kafirs, the Kings should at least strive to insult, disgrace, dishonour and defame the Hindus who are the worst enemies of Allah and the Prophet…

There are over 100 verses in the Quran that enjoin every Muslim to destroy idolators, idolatry and give no quarter in this destruction save to those who embrace Islam. In Mecca, the Prophet (Mohammed), as per Ibn Ishaq’s records, "found a dove made of wood. He broke it in his hands and threw it away". Next, he (Mohammed) turned to the idols, which were housed, in and around the temple.

There were 369 in number. The apostle was standing by them with a stick in his hand, saying, the truth (Mohammed) has come and falsehood has passed away. "Verily, falsehood is bound to pass away" [Sura 17:81]. Then he pointed at them with his stick and they collapsed on their backs one after the other. When the apostle prayed the noon prayer on the day of the conquest, he ordered that all the idols, which were around the Kaaba, should be collected and burned with fire and broken up. Following however are quotations from records kept by Muslim writers: