Digging our personal civilisational grave
“जिधर देखो, उधर खुदा है
जहाँ नहीं है वहाँ भी खुद जाएगा”
The gag, in its Hindi authentic, acquired round a good bit throughout Delhi’s metro building drive. In the present day, it appears like the entire nation has change into a sufferer of the joke. At a take away from the initially meant sense of ‘khuda’ (dug up), the strains are actually being learn within the different sense (khuda or the Almighty):
“God is in all places, wherever you dig
And the place He isn’t, He will probably be discovered.”
Anyplace you look, one thing is being dug up or is about to be or loud calls for are being made to permit one other dig. Buried skeletons and grudges are being disinterred from the recesses of historical past, and the place discovery falls quick, innovations are filling the hole.
The insanity was initially confined to Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid. Then we have been advised that Ayodhya was only the start, and shortly, the main focus shifted to Kashi’s Gyanvapi mosque and Mathura’s Shahi Eidgah. Now, it appears a floodgate has opened—from the Jama Masjid in Sambhal to the Kamal Maula mosque in Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), Baba Budangiri dargah in Chikmagalur, Haji Malang dargah in Thane and even the Ajmer Sharif dargah.
Excavatory surveys are being carried out at greater than a dozen websites, and their furrows are marked deep inside folks’s hearts and minds. Mosques are being discovered and shut down in schools; group prayers are being halted on roads; and even solitary acts of worship give offence. The information from Moradabad is {that a} Muslim physician couple was prevented from dwelling in a flat they’d legally purchased in a housing society. A communal frenzy, initiated on the high, is now roiling the frequent folks.
Think about for a second the irony of bemoaning the plight of minority Hindus in neighbouring Bangladesh whereas cheerleading the marketing campaign to focus on Muslims right here in India; of applauding lynchings and bulldozer motion towards minorities right here whereas making heroes of people that stand for the rights of Hindu minorities there. If one other nation feedback on the standing of minorities in India, we condemn it as an assault on our sovereignty, however we don’t hesitate to challenge statements on the remedy of minorities in Bangladesh.
BJP leaders have even demanded taking the matter to the United Nations. If this isn’t hypocrisy, what’s? Shouldn’t we pause and suppose? The place is that this main us? How far and large lets dig? Can we confront the complete fact of what we unearth? Can we foresee the long-term penalties of indulging our whims immediately? Give it some thought: what number of spiritual websites may need been upturned/ destroyed on this geography prior to now 5,000 years?
How a lot mayhem perpetrated by what number of rulers? If we insist on settling all these accounts, what received’t we now have to excavate? In the present day we recall solely the tales of Muslim rulers destroying Hindu temples as a result of these are those intentionally being amplified. However in earlier eras, and even throughout these instances, didn’t Hindu rulers destroy temples constructed by different Hindu kings? Didn’t rulers of 1 dynasty or sect destroy the idols of one other? Are we ready to reckon with all that?
Historians reveal that Pushyamitra Shunga, the Brahmin king of the Shunga dynasty, destroyed numerous Buddhist and Jain websites throughout the land. Even within the medieval interval, Maratha forces demolished the temple at Srirangapatna.
In the course of the Partition riots, temples and gurdwaras have been destroyed on the opposite facet of the border, simply as numerous mosques have been razed on this facet. In accordance with historian D.N. Jha, the Bhooteswar and Gokarneshwar temples have been as soon as probably Buddhist monasteries. Even Swami Vivekananda famous that the Jagannath temple in Puri was initially a Buddhist shrine. In the present day, Jains could not make claims on these websites and Buddhists will not be in a spot the place they will demand them again, however who can assure this received’t occur sooner or later?
The stability of energy could favour one facet immediately, however who can predict what is going to occur 100 years from now? If we set a precedent of avenging historic wrongs and reclaiming spiritual websites, who will stay untouched? On this excavation frenzy, whether or not temples, mosques, gurdwaras or viharas are discovered or not, India’s basis will definitely be shaken. And neither will survive— not religion nor the nation.
The one method to escape this insanity is for all Indians to attract a line and agree that each one historic disputes previous to a sure date are completely sealed. That date can solely be 15 August 1947—the day we launched into our journey as an impartial nation. This was exactly the intent of the Locations of Worship Act, 1991. Excluding the disputed Babri Masjid–Ram Janmabhoomi website, all different spiritual websites within the nation, the 1991 legislation declared, would stay as they have been on 15 August 1947; no courtroom was allowed to reopen a dispute from an earlier date.
This legislation held agency for 33 years, and even within the Ayodhya verdict of 2019, authored by the just-retired Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, the Supreme Court docket upheld the act. But surprisingly, whereas listening to the Gyanvapi case, Chandrachud made an oral statement that even when the 1991 Act barred revisiting previous disputes, it was okay to conduct surveys—a most lamentable utterance that has unleashed a deluge of latest petitions for surveys and controversies throughout the nation.
A bench headed by CJI Sanjiv Khanna that heard the matter on 12 December has given some hope. All residents who want the nation effectively can solely hope that the courtroom will uphold the 1991 legislation and put an finish to this frenzy.
