AYODHYA, THE
BATTLE FOR INDIA'S SOUL - 6
By Krishna Pokharel and Paul Beckett
Thanks to Wall street Journal and
Krishna Pokharel and Paul Beckett for writing the series on the topic, it is
one of India's unfinished social business and needed to be addressed. The
article follows my commentary.
......
Article follows my comments, no comments, as I am writing a full article on the topic. Mike Ghouse
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal -The temples of Ayodhya today.
Click
here to view related slideshow.
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The road from Faizabad to Ayodhya is thick with bikes, cars,
horses, rickshaws, and vegetable stalls. Goats graze in the roadside mud.
Ayodhya itself bears few of the hallmarks of the economic expansion that has
transformed other Indian towns and cities. The streets are wide, lined with two-
or three-story houses of green, blue and yellow. Narrow lanes lead to ashrams:
compounds behind walls where the faithful congregate.
There is no noticeable business development or new construction because,
locals say, of the Babri Masjid controversy and the heavy security presence in
town. Rather, there is an air of history and decrepit permanence. The tops of
temples form the skyline.
“We want schools, hospitals, factories and mills so that the unemployed
people get jobs,” said Mohammad Aminullah Khan, 22 years old, who drives a small
van for a living. “We want a peaceful resolution to this dispute.”
As they have for centuries, bearded sadhus wander in small groups through
town. So do pilgrims, who arrive in throngs for festivals. At the bus depot,
sheets of saffron – a color considered holy in Hinduism — hang from buses packed
with the aged.
Women in saris visit street-side stalls full of the paraphernalia of
devotion: small food for offering and sacred threads, bells, and lamps. Cows
lope and monkeys scamper through the crowds.
At the main intersections, there are barriers and armed police in brown
uniforms, part of an extensive security plan throughout the town.
Down one street there is a large compound of trees, lawns and low buildings.
A sign at the entrance reads: “Karsevakpuram,” place of the “karsevaks,” or
volunteers. It is run by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the organization that
mobilized support for a temple to Lord Ram at the place where many Hindus
believe he was born.
Inside the compound, in a small building, is a model of the temple that the
VHP wants to build where the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished on Dec.
6, 1992. Acting as custodian and tour guide is Hajari Lal, the activist who said
he climbed on a dome of the mosque before it collapsed that day.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- A painting on the wall at
Karsevakpuram.
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He leads visitors around the model of “Sri Ram Janma Bhumi Mandir,” the
Birthplace Temple. The temple, said Mr. Lal, will have 212 pillars of sandstone
and 51,000 electric lights. He added: “We will build a grand temple on the
entire land.”
The pillars for the temple lie on the ground at a nearby park, which has
become an Ayodhya tourist attraction. Stonemasons chip away at the sandstone,
brought from Rajasthan. Some pillars have been lying there for two decades.
Behind an information desk hangs a large poster. It shows a portrait of Guru
Dutt Singh. He was the city magistrate of Faizabad who played a major role in
installing a statue of Ram in the Babri Masjid on Dec. 22, 1949, according to
his son. It is the same picture that hangs in his family’s living room
today.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- A stonemason at the pillar
park.
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Under the portrait, it reads, in Hindi: “The one who on Dec. 23, 1949, showed
his determination and courage when Lord Ram appeared in Ramjanmabhoomi,” the
Hindu name for the site. It notes that when Mr. Singh was ordered to remove the
idol by “the Delhi government that trod on the fatal path of Muslim
appeasement,” he resigned instead. “He lives with his immortal legacy among
countless Hindus as a result of this courageous work,” it adds. It says Mr.
Singh lived from 1894 till 1971.
Not far away, Mohammad Hashim Ansari, the Muslim tailor who has been involved
in the legal dispute over the site since 1950, spends his days in a small blue
house across from an open piece of land where there is a 24-hour armed police
guard assigned for his protection.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- The police post by Mr. Ansari’s
house.
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Mr. Ansari, now 92 years old, speaks in angry tones. He points and pokes,
staring intently. There is a painting of the Babri Masjid on the wall of his
home.
“We have had very dirty politics in our country in the name of mosque and
temple,” he said.
**
The central government today controls the site of the ruins of the Babri
Masjid and its surroundings. It is protected by a high, yellow, steel fence. On
an average day, a few thousand Hindu devotees visit the makeshift temple that
was established after the mosque’s destruction in 1992. There has been no
provision for Muslim worship at the site since late 1949.
To reach it, you walk into a small portico with a security checkpoint.
Scattered around the police there are confiscated wares: pens, notebooks,
cameras, lighters. A passageway then runs for about 50 yards beside the yellow
perimeter fence. Above is a watchtower and a CCTV camera on a lamppost.
Security personnel, part of a contingent of more than 2000, are posted behind
sandbags and concrete barriers. After another security check, you enter a green
metal caged walkway, about 10 feet high and four feet wide, with a concrete
floor. It is perhaps 200 yards long. After a slight rise, you make a final left
turn and a sign announces: “For Viev of the Diety.”
Up a flight of 10 steps, about 15 yards away, behind the flaps of a white
tent, you can make out a small, gold-covered object surrounded by lavish
curtains. It is the idol of Ram Lalla, the infant god. The tent’s canvas is
water-proof, fire-proof and bullet-proof, according to the temple’s head priest.
The faithful – women in saris, children, some men, sadhus in saffron – create a
small bottleneck as they strain for a glimpse of the statue. Then the walkway
leads you away and out.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- The perimeter fence at the
Babri Masjid site.
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One woman, as she left the site one recent day, asked a policeman: “Where is
the temple?”
“What’s important,” he said philosophically, “is not what is seen but what is
unseen.”
**
In the political arena, there has been no decisive winner from the
dispute.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which championed the construction of a Ram temple
in 1989, came to power in New Delhi in successive coalition governments in the
late-1990s.
But its coalition partners, uninterested or opposed to the BJP’s position on
Ayodhya, made it clear that building a temple was not to be on the agenda. And
the party lost the last two general elections, in 2004 and 2009, to the Congress
party, headed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, Sonia.
The canvas temple standing at the site today, hastily erected on Dec. 6,
1992, is testament to the fact that the cause of construction hasn’t advanced in
two decades.
Neither the BJP nor Congress, which also sought to use the temple movement
for electoral gain in the 1980s, has been able to muster a simple majority in
Parliament since Ayodhya became a political issue.
In part that’s because the dispute fragmented the electorate, fueling the
rise of powerful political alternatives such as the Samajwadi party in Uttar
Pradesh and the party of Nitish Kumar, chief minister in the neighboring state
of Bihar.
Both have wide support among Muslims, who have become an influential voting
bloc, especially in northern India. As a result, the nation will be governed by
diverse coalitions in New Delhi for the foreseeable future.
Lal Krishna Advani and several other leaders of the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad are facing trial in a special criminal court on a range of charges
brought by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the national investigative
agency. The charges include inciting communal violence on the day the mosque was
demolished.
Several Hindu activists are also separately facing trial in a criminal court
for their alleged involvement in the demolition. A lawyer representing the
leaders and the activists says all deny the charges; the cases continue.
Kalyan Singh, the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh — the state where
Ayodhya is located — at the time the Babri Masjid was demolished, resigned when
the mosque fell. He became the state’s chief minister again for two years in
late 1990s, heading a coalition government.
But the BJP’s overall performance in Uttar Pradesh has declined consistently
in the five state elections since the demolition. Today, Mr. Singh is an
independent member in the national Parliament. He says he accepts responsibility
for the demolition of the mosque.
Nor has a mosque been rebuilt on the site where the Babri Masjid stood. That
has angered many Muslims, who blame the Congress party for what they view as
ambivalence over the issue stretching back all the way to 1949 when the idol was
first installed in the mosque.
Today, as they have since 1949, Hindus remain in control of a place that
Muslims have considered sacred for almost 500 years, though many Hindus argue it
was sacred to them for thousands of years before that.
**
The 2010 verdict by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court which
divided the site of the mosque and the surrounding land into three parts left
all litigants dissatisfied.
The Supreme Court in New Delhi admitted their appeals and has ordered the
digitization of tens of thousands of documents. The papers, many of which are in
Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian, will have to be translated, the court said.
There is no indication when hearings may start; a verdict may yet be years
away.
Aside from Mohammad Hashim Ansari, the Muslim tailor, all the individual
litigants involved in the original filings are dead.
Bhaskar Das remains the legal representative of the Nirmohi Akhara, the
sadhus who say they have traditionally protected Ram. He is the third head of
the order to represent the sect in the suit. Now 85 years old, he is suffering
from an assortment of medical ailments. He spends his days chanting Ram’s
name.
Otherwise, a new generation is taking up the fight.
After the death in 2002 of Deoki Nandan Agarwal, who served as Ram’s “next
friend” in one of the Hindu suits, Triloki Nath Pandey, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad
activist, became Ram’s new “next friend.”
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- Krishna
Pokharel/The Wall Street Journal
- Triloki Nath Pandey at
Karsevakpuram.
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“If Muslims have to stay in this country, they have to respect the feelings
of Hindus,” Mr. Pandey, 67 years old, said in an interview.
Neelendra Singh, 40 years old, is the son of Rajendra Singh and the grandson
of Gopal Singh Visharad, the man who filed the first suit in the legal battle in
1950.
“I plan to represent my father in this case after him but hope the case is
decided within my father’s lifetime,” Neelendra Singh said. He works as an
insurance agent in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
Mohammed Waqar, 35 years old, is the son of Haji Mahboob Ahmad and grandson
of Haji Phenku, one of the original Muslim defendants.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- Mohammed Waqar, left, with his
father.
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Mr. Waqar recently returned to Ayodhya from Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates, where he worked for a multinational company. He says he will take up
the court case when the time comes.
“As a Muslim, I know what masjid means to me,” he said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Shakti Singh, the grandson of Guru Dutt Singh, the Faizabad city
magistrate in 1949, said he hopes to be a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for
Parliament at the next elections, scheduled for 2014.
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- Krishna
Pokharel/The Wall Street Journal
- Shakti Singh.
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If Mr. Singh, 52 years old, runs for office, he said he will campaign to
build a Ram temple at the site: “It’s a responsibility for me to complete the
task that my grandfather started.”
As the battle is picked up by a new generation, we asked Swaminathan
Gurumurthy, the chartered accountant who was involved in a 1990 effort to
negotiate a solution, what he thought Lord Ram would make of the dispute’s
seemingly endless spiral.
“It is very simple: Ram will think, ‘This is the way of the world,’” Mr.
Gurumurthy said. “He couldn’t do much about it. He can’t correct human
nature.”
**
Can Ayodhya again ignite the nation?
Until it is solved one way or the other, the dispute will retain some
potency.
Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad said in an interview that Hindus
could be mobilized to the cause in an instant – then he snapped his fingers on
both hands.
Around Ayodhya, communal tensions still flare from time to time. In October
in neighboring Faizabad, Hindus and Muslims clashed during the annual Hindu
ritual of Dussehra. Two people died, according to the Faizabad district
magistrate. One was Hindu, one was Muslim.
Still, India is a very different country today than it was 20 years ago. It
is living an era of rapid economic expansion, focusing younger Indians in
particular on the pursuit of prosperity rather than historical divisions.
Culturally, the country is less hidebound by its past, too.
“We are all in a hurry, particularly the younger generation,” said Arif
Mohammed Khan, the minister who resigned from Rajiv Gandhi’s government in 1986.
“They want India to transform into America at the earliest.”
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| Click
here for an overview of key players in chapter six. |
And in a nation of 1.2 billion that is about 80% Hindu, the majority has not
consistently run roughshod over Islam or any of India’s other religions – as it
could potentially have done given the country’s feeble law-enforcement apparatus
and Ayodhya’s appeal to Hindu nationalists.
In 1991, the government enacted a law that made it illegal to change the
character of a place of worship to another religion. The act exempted only the
Babri Masjid.
The law was a victory for Akshaya Brahmachari, the sadhu who had opposed the
installation of the Ram idol in the mosque in 1949. He was instrumental in
persuading politicians in New Delhi to bring the legislation. Mr. Brahmachari
died in 2010.
That’s not to say that all India’s citizens have equal access to economic,
educational or political opportunities. But the movement that at one time
aggressively asserted its dominance over a minority community has lost much of
its popular appeal and momentum.
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- Krishna
Pokharel/The Wall Street Journal
- A street leading to a mosque in
Ayodhya.
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“The country has learned so much, it has gone so beyond these emotions that
there will be nothing very serious” whenever the Supreme Court’s verdict over
the site comes, said Zafaryab Jilani, the lead lawyer for Muslims in the court
case. “It will be the country which will win; it will be the country which will
lose, if at all.”
In that, India’s secular nature has, for now, prevailed. That required many
Hindus to reject the inflammatory and divisive nature of the Ayodhya dispute,
either out of fatigue, disillusionment with politicians, or a sense — set deep
in the religion’s spiritual traditions — that it is wrong to destroy another’s
house of worship.
“The soul of India was retrieved by the Hindus who refused to go along with
the desecration of this place of worship that was not in their own community,”
said Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rajiv Gandhi’s special assistant. “For Hindus, all
places of worship are divine.”
**
Every day, a small team of priests at the makeshift temple cares for the
idol of Ram Lalla and other statues that have been added since 1949.
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- Paul Beckett/The
Wall Street Journal
- A replica of Ram Lalla,
dressed.
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The
first priest arrives at around 5:30 a.m. He opens the temple curtain
then chants, “Gods, wake up, wake up!” He rings a small bell and puts the idols
in a sitting position.
He changes their overnight clothes, bathes them with flower perfume,
water and sandalwood, and dresses them. There is clothing of different colors
for each day. He places a tilak, or holy mark, on their foreheads then a silver
crown on their heads before offering them sacred smoke from burning incense
sticks. After, he presents them with a breakfast of “peda,” a sweet made of
milk. Lamps are lit. Hymns are sung.
A few hours later, Mahant Satyendra Das, the chief priest, leaves his
house and is driven in an SUV to the site. He bows at the temple’s entrance and
gently touches the floor of the wooden platform where the idols sit. He takes
some sandalwood, adds a dab of water, and puts a mark on his own
forehead.
He lights incense and waves the stick in a circular motion around the
idols, singing: “From the heart of God is the moon, the sun is from His eyes,
the wind and the life are from His ears and the fire is from His
mouth.”
He chants silently until more food is brought for the deities. Then the
idols have a 90-minute nap.
Shortly after sunset, another priest offers evening food and puts the
deities to sleep. He places them horizontally and removes their crowns. He gives
them cotton pillows to rest on and tucks them in under small blankets.
Then the priest draws the curtain closed.
—The End—
This is disgusting, we need to insure the safety of every citizen and
these guys must be severely punished. Death penalty is not the answer, as we
cannot let them get away easily, and the state should not be in the business of
murdering people. 
