India’s plural soul 

India’s plural soul 

Context

25^th anniversary of Babri Masjid Demolition

Events that shook India’s pluralism

Author begins with the partition of India & Pakistan and the ensuing horror that unveiled itself and then goes on to list out events that shook India’s pluralism

• After that traumatic year of partition, three dates, three events, shook Indian pluralism again
  1. Gandhi’s assassination — January 30, 1948
  2. The Babri Masjid demolition — December 6, 1992, and
  3. The unveiling of V.D. Savarkar’s portrait in Parliament House — February 26, 2003

Defining the acts

• The first of these three saw a believer in the criticality of India’s pluralism being put to death
• The second witnessed a pre-eminent Islamic monument reduced to rubble
• The third valorized (to enhance the status) a man who believed India was meant to be a Hindu Rashtra
• The first was murder, the second vandalism, the third a celebration

Still affecting us

• All three occurrences dented India’s plural soul
• Their “work” is still on. It is still affecting ways of thinking, acting, reacting

Gandhi’s assassination

The assassination was a carefully planned plot by people who owed allegiance to the concept of a Hindu Rashtra

• Aim: Its aim was threefold:
  • punish, by murder, one who believed India to be the home of all the faith traditions in it
  • Reverse Gandhi’s idea of “Ishvar Allah TereNaam”
  • Pronounce the primacy and power of Hinduism in India

It was meant to tell the Muslims of India that they were here by leave of the Hindus and that all talk of Hindu-Muslim unity and equality was sentimental and meaningless

• Impact

Nehru said that evening: “The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.” For India’s Muslims who had said “no” to Pakistan and stayed back in India because they had faith in Gandhi’s India, that darkness was real. Along with the light, the oxygen of confidence in the air fled, too

Babri Masjid Demolition

Babri Masjid, the 16th century mosque was built spitefully, it is said, on the exact spot in Ayodhya, where Rama was born. In fact, the pious say, a temple stood where the mosque came up. The mosque had, over the years, become a contested site, a Hindu v Muslim akhara. And on that day 150000 Hindu karsevaks brought the mosque down

• In the rubble lay all hope for Hindu-Muslim concord. In it lay shattered Muslim trust in India’s secular future. And in it lay tattered, the Constitution’s guarantees about the freedom of religious belief
• India partitioned was now India polarized

Moving over to Parliament

• A decade later, the BJP in power at the Centre, decided that for Savarkar’s fulfilment to be complete, due ceremony was in order. It decided to place in Parliament House’s Central Hall, along with portraits of the Greats of India’s freedom struggle
• Savarkar believed that Hindus and Muslims formed Two Nations. Savarkar’ dream remained un-realised until the unveiling of the portrait
• Impact:The unveiling in Parliament House did three things
  • First, it placed against the Indian Republic a conceptual alternative — Hindu Rashtra
  • Second, it made demolition the exact co-relative of construction
  • Third, it made Veer Savarkar, the precise opposite number of Mahatma Gandhi. And thereby, his peer, alternative and equal. It juxtaposed the Two Nations theorist against the One Nation preceptor

Agenda of Polarization

All of the above three events reveal an underlying agenda of polarization

• The demolition in Ayodhya was the first step. Like a bhumi-puja. The second step is the building of the temple. The third, its consecration. And there will be as many more steps as the rites of polarisation require. The building of a Ram temple at the site of the Masjid is not going to be easy. But keeping the idea of that building alive is all too easy
• Temple building idea is more powerful than temple itself: For polarisers, better than a temple built is a temple that is waiting to be built. It keeps spirits up, tensions high. It keeps terrorists on the other side activated. And it keeps cadres on this side motivated

Spirit is still alive

Author states that despite communal tensions over the years and terrorist events that could have sparked communal tensions, India has remained quite attached to the Gandhian ideas of peaceful co-existence and harmony

Conclusion

The India of Asoka, Akbar, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar is strong but immboilized under the blades of the Two Nations theory. It is for the inheritors of their India to match the date-lines of hate and the fate-lines of death with the life-line that Gandhi realized from the belief that India is One Nation and Ishvar Allah two names, among other ones, for the One