Fifth August is a lucky day in my family. My mother's birthday fell on August 5, 1895. Father was born in July 1890 and they were married in 1925. But we are mentally on the road to Ayodhya and retrospectively to the auspicious day when the silver brick became the foundation stone of the future Ram temple, and possibly a future India. We are, most of us that is, bathing in the afterglow of the Prime Minister's image on the new-minted era. My first reaction is that of many other Indians, meaning a prolonged sigh of relief. (Am not referring to the diehard right-wingers, for whom this is the triumphant finishing tape. May they remain happy. I too am happy, have a good eye for finishing tapes. In the days when Usain Bolt was sprinting away, there was no hassle. He won by a mile. So has Mr Modi, even though Mr Advani was the one who shot off the starting blocks.)
The question remains, how will future generations of scholars and historians view this saga which started with Advani's Rath Yatra? Questions, which scholars could be confronted with, are many. I would like to list a few:
a) Is it, as is viewed by some people, the righting of a wrong perpetrated through the building of a mosque at a holy pilgrimage site of the Hindus in Mughal times? Did building a mosque help in defining the exact spot where Lord Ram was born? Was there any other proof that this sacred place, the Temenos as Greeks would call it, is the birthplace of Ram? The sea of faith that carried the movement decided the case in the Supreme Court as well.
b) Did the electoral triumph of the BJP in 2014 and 2019, and the feeble show put up by the Congress, have anything to do with the outcome? By which is meant, how did the state machinery work in protecting those responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid from a trial? The leaders till now have not faced the courts. What do chargesheets mean in our Hindu Rashtra? The case was decided by the Supreme Court a day before the CJ retired, and the judgment said squarely that this very land where the mosque stood, and was demolished, is the place where the Ram Mandir should come up. In such an old, fabled event, one cannot blame the judges. But we had a finality of sorts, which in itself was a blessing.
c) Was this a national event, or an amalgam of Hindu-tva/BJP/RSS combine? Was it a government event? Will RTI take questions like, what was the expenditure? Will the party pay for the PM's journey to Ayodhya? Mr Charan Singh, a lame-duck PM though he was, had to pay for every non-official flight he took. The money came from the fast emptying coffers of the Lok Dal. The same principle cannot be applied to the UP Chief Minister, for he was making arrangements for the PM.
d) Does 5th August mark the de facto ushering in of the Hindu Rashtra? After all, the event was played out at the national stage.
e) Scholars will also have to face other questions. Do minorities matter anymore in our Hindutva republic? We are told there was one Muslim in the congregation. Maybe two. The fact that not a single ticket was given to a Muslim by the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 is a pointer. The only Muslim majority state has been in a year-long lockdown, its status lowered and leaders in endless incarceration. A day could come when to be called secular would be an embarrassment. You could be accosted by the police and asked, 'Are you secular?' If you are, could you be an Indian, the way the DMK MP was asked, 'If you can't speak Hindi, are you an Indian?'
If we have understood the Vice President, 5th August is a date comparable to 8/9 August, when the Quit India Movement was launched by Gandhiji, or 15th August, 1947. "These events were a culmination of long drawn struggles that offer certain lessons for the present and the future." Are we seriously comparing 15th August with 5th August? It was a 60-year struggle; in fact, as a nation, we go back to 1857. Some of the greatest names pass through this road, starting with Dadabhai Naoroji, Tilak, Gokhale, Ranade, Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Subhas Bose, Nehru. (Sorry I slipped up, mentioning Jawaharlal Nehru is almost inviting a sedition charge.) And the places dot this landscape of struggle — Dandi and the salt march, and Jallianwala Bagh are unforgettable signposts. Can really all this be compared to a Toyota truck being dressed up and moved from Somnath to Ayodhya? Incidentally, none of the rightist heroes of the RSS lifted a finger, twiddled a thumb in this struggle. Nathuram Godse never took up a flag or shouted a slogan against the British in 1942. Bhikaiji Cama did, unfurling the flag at Stuttgart in 1907.
Lastly, it was a great day in Indian historiography — we have defined the place where Lord Ram was born. Now all that remains is defining the year when his birth took place.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2YLMtBo
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