{"id":33459,"date":"2018-10-30T12:27:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T06:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=33459"},"modified":"2018-10-30T12:27:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T06:57:41","slug":"indias-plural-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/indias-plural-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s plural soul\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/lead\/indias-plural-soul\/article21268638.ece\"><strong>India\u2019s plural soul<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>25<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of Babri Masjid Demolition<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Events that shook India\u2019s pluralism<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Author begins with the partition of India &amp; Pakistan and the ensuing horror that unveiled itself and then goes on to list out events that shook India\u2019s pluralism<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>After that traumatic year of partition, three dates, three events, shook Indian pluralism again\n<ol>\n<li>Gandhi\u2019s assassination \u2014 January 30, 1948<\/li>\n<li>The Babri Masjid demolition \u2014 December 6, 1992, and<\/li>\n<li>The unveiling of V.D. Savarkar\u2019s portrait in Parliament House \u2014 February 26, 2003<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Defining the acts<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first of these three saw a believer in the criticality of India\u2019s pluralism being put to death<\/li>\n<li>The second witnessed a pre-eminent Islamic monument reduced to rubble<\/li>\n<li>The third valorized (to enhance the status) a man who believed India was meant to be a Hindu Rashtra<\/li>\n<li>The first was murder, the second vandalism, the third a celebration<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Still affecting us<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All three occurrences dented India\u2019s plural soul<\/li>\n<li>Their \u201cwork\u201d is still on. It is still affecting ways of thinking, acting, reacting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Gandhi\u2019s assassination<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The assassination was a carefully planned plot by people who owed allegiance to the concept of a Hindu Rashtra<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Aim<\/strong>: Its aim was threefold:\n<ul>\n<li>punish, by murder, one who believed India to be the home of all the faith traditions in it<\/li>\n<li>Reverse Gandhi\u2019s idea of \u201cIshvar Allah TereNaam\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Pronounce the primacy and power of Hinduism in India<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Impact<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Nehru said that evening: \u201cThe light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.\u201d For India\u2019s Muslims who had said \u201cno\u201d to Pakistan and stayed back in India because they had faith in Gandhi\u2019s India, that darkness was real. Along with the light, the oxygen of confidence in the air fled, too<\/p>\n<p><strong>Babri Masjid Demolition<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the rubble lay all hope for Hindu-Muslim concord. In it lay shattered Muslim trust in India\u2019s secular future. And in it lay tattered, the Constitution\u2019s guarantees about the freedom of religious belief<\/li>\n<li>India partitioned was now India polarized<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Moving over to Parliament<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A decade later, the BJP in power at the Centre, decided that for Savarkar\u2019s fulfilment to be complete, due ceremony was in order. It decided to place in Parliament House\u2019s Central Hall, along with portraits of the Greats of India\u2019s freedom struggle<\/li>\n<li>Savarkar believed that Hindus and Muslims formed Two Nations. Savarkar\u2019 dream remained un-realised until the unveiling of the portrait<\/li>\n<li><strong>Impact<\/strong>:The unveiling in Parliament House did three things\n<ul>\n<li><strong>First<\/strong>, it placed against the Indian Republic a conceptual alternative \u2014 Hindu Rashtra<\/li>\n<li><strong>Second<\/strong>, it made demolition the exact co-relative of construction<\/li>\n<li><strong>Third<\/strong>, 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<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Agenda of Polarization<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All of the above three events reveal an underlying agenda of polarization<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li><strong>Temple building idea is more powerful than temple itself: <\/strong>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<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Spirit is still alive<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India\u2019s plural soul\u00a0 Context 25th anniversary of Babri Masjid Demolition Events that shook India\u2019s pluralism Author begins with the partition of India &amp; Pakistan and the ensuing horror that unveiled itself and then goes on to list out events that shook India\u2019s pluralism After that traumatic year of partition, three dates, three events, shook Indian&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/indias-plural-soul\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">India\u2019s plural soul\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704738779},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}