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About Dr. N.S. Rajaram
Dr. N.S. Rajaram was born in Mysore, India in September 1943. He holds
a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from B.M.S. College in Bangalore
and Ph.D. in mathematical Sciences from Indiana University in Bloomington,
USA. He has taught and conducted research in mathematics and computer
science at several American universities and high technology companies.
For more than ten years, he was one of America's best-known workers in
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He has been an advisor to several
high technology companies in America and Europe. He has also been a consultant
to NASA.
Since 1992, he has been an independent researcher and author working
on the history and science of ancient India. His work on Vedic
Mathematics, relating it to the history of India, Egypt and Babylon is
world-renowned. He is the author of several books on the subject including
the highly acclaimed Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization written
jointly with the famous American Vedic scholar and historian Dr. David
Frawley. His most recent work relates to the decipherment of the 5000
year-old Indus script done jointly with the great Indian Vedic scholar
Dr. Natwar Jha. This is recognized as the most important breakthrough
of our time in the study of Indian history and culture. Jha and Rajaram
have just completed the book ?The Deciphered Indus Script?.
He has also published a popular book on the subject called ?From
Sarasvati River to the Indus Script?.
His columns on history, culture and current affairs have
appeared in publications worldwide. His most recent book, ?A Hindu
View of the World?, examines India and the world from a pluralistic
Hindu viewpoint. He is regarded an authority on Christianity also
having authored a book on the early history of Christianity called The
Dead Sea Scrolls and the Crisis of Christianity, published in England
in 1997. His two other books on the subject are Christianity's collapsing
Empire and Its Designs in India and Christianity's Scramble for India
and the Failure of the Indian Elite. He makes his home in Oklahoma City,
USA and Bangalore, India.
Ayodhya is a National Symbol
-N.S. Rajaram
"Babri Masjid advocates must come up with a historical and ideological
justification for having a mosque on the site sacred to Hindus."
The real question In my recently released book Profiles in Deception:
Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Voice of India, New Delhi) I have raised
a basic question. What is the real meaning of the Ayodhya movement? As
part of it I have tried also to answer the following: what gave Babar
the right to demolish a
temple at a site that the people of India have held sacred from time mmemorial?
First we must recognize that the underlying question - whether a temple
was destroyed to make way for the mosque - has been settled by archaeology,
though the English language media has not given it sufficient prominence.
To its credit, The Hindu published an article by the eminent archaeologist
Dr. B.B. Lal presenting the evidence, including an inscription, showing
the existence of previous temples at the site. Perhaps for this reason,
the Babri Masjid advocates have been focusing on court cases rather than
on the evidence and the meaning of Ayodhya. This brings us back to the
question: by what right did Babar demolish a temple at a site held sacred
by the people of this country and build a mosque in its place?
Let me reframe it. 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 he had the power to erect
it as a mark of conquest and of humiliation of the Hindus? Does might
make right? No one to my knowledge has satisfactorily addressed this question
about 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 - and the building of mosques in their place - 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 idolaters 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 ..."
Spoken like a true child of Aurangazeb! But this allows us to answer
the question raised earlier about Babar's right to destroy the temple
and build his mosque: Babar's ideology - as described by his descendent
- gave him that right. 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. Those who
demand reconstruction of the Babri Masjid are implicitly upholding Babar's
right to impose his ideology by force. Court cases and political postures
cannot erase this truth.
National symbols
The basic problem is that the concerned 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
for cultural and historical reasons.
From Babar to Bin Laden
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.
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.
Here are his own words from the
Babarnama:
"Chanderi had been in the daru'l-harb [Hindu rule] for some years
and held by Sanga's highest-ranking officer Meidini Rao, with four or
five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28], through the grace of God,
I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred the infidels, and
brought it into the bosom of Islam ..."
This was the real Babar - in his own words. When in a particularly jovial
mood, he composed the following poem happy for having become a Ghazi (religious
warrior): For the sake of Islam I became a wanderer; I battled infidels
and Hindus. I determined to become a martyr. Thank God I became a holy
warrior.
This was the man who gave India the Babri Masjid - at the spot held sacred
by Indians. He and his successors did not build it to be a place of worship-
they saw it as a mark of conquest. Ideologically, Osama bin Laden is a
modern day Babar - a Ghazi. And yet Nehru praised Babar as: ? one
of the most cultured and delightful persons one could meet. There was
no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as
his ancestors used to."
Like all Secularists, Nehru was making excuses for Babar that he himself
never made. He did not see tolerance as a virtue. Babar, the proud Ghazi,
would have seen tolerance as an insult.
So here is the plain truth: Ram Janmabhumi is a national symbol, while
the Babri Masjid is a symbol of Babar's imperialism. Those who support
the Babri Masjid either identify with Babar's imperialism or are willing
to live as its slaves. India must decide whether it wants to be a nation
or an imperial colony - it cannot be both.
Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln we
may say:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. This nation cannot
continue half a free nation and half a colony. It will become all of one,
or all of the other."
It is for the people of India to decide which half they want their country
to be.
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