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2. Belief and history
2.1 The belief in Ram
The near-certainty that the temple which stood on the
Babri Masjid spot was a celebrated Ram temple, does not
clinch the issue of whether Ram was actually born on that
very spot. We do know that the Hindu culture, even more
than most traditional cultures, has shown a tremendous
capacity of preserving traditions, poetic compositions as
voluminous as the Vedas, and the information contained
therein. It is therefore not at all unthinkable that the
birthplace of a heroic figure like Ram may have been
remembered in an uninterrupted chain of tradition for
several thousands of years. But then that is the maximum
we can say : it is possible.
However, for the political decision of whether to give in
to the Hindu demand concerning Ram's traditional birth
site, it is sufficient that there is a consensus among
those people who worship Ram (the contention that a
number of different temples in Ayodhya all claim to be
the real Janmabhoomi is, upon closer inquiry, simply not
true). When on October 8, 1990 fighting broke out in
Jerusalem over the Dome on the Rock and the Al Aqsa
mosque, absolutely nobody has stood up and questioned the
Muslim claim that the Al-Aqsa mosque was built over the
Prophet's footprint in the rock. No one has demanded a
probe into the myth that the mosque is where Mohammed
landed after a flight through heaven on a winged horse.
Even when most people are convinced of the impossibility
of making a footprint in a rock, or of flying on a horse,
they have all chosen to respect the Muslims' belief. So,
why should Hindus start proving the sacredness of their
sacred places?
The JNU historians have made a lot of the priority of
history over beliefs. They have done this without
making the crucial distinction between a theological
belief of a dogmatic and anti-rational kind, and popular
belief which is neither rational nor its opposite, but
just a cherished convention at a different level of
discourse (the mythical language game)9a. A theological
belief is one that is essential to the defining belief
system of a given religion. In Islam, two such beliefs
are central : the rejection of all gods except Allah, and
the Prophethood of Mohammed. Whoever doubts these,
places himself outside the Muslim fold. In Roman
Catholicism, theological beliefs are declared dogma. The
Council statements that formulate the dogma (and which
are attributed to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who
is also present at the Councils), conclude with the
statement that he who doesn't believe it, anathema sit,
he is banned: non-belief in a dogma places one outside
the Church. Apart from these theological beliefs that
are theologically unimportant or even heterodox :
concerning relics of saints, apparitions of the Virgin
Mary etc.
In Hinduism, no such thing as theological dogma exists.
Even those teachings that indologists consider crucial to
Hinduism, can be freely rejected. Thus, A.K.
Coomaraswamy, as no doubt some Hindus before him,
rejected the common belief in transmigration of
individual souls. Many sections of Hindu society, both
in India and more so overseas, have dropped the caste
system, often considered a defining component of
Hinduism, without being any the less Hindu for it.
The belief that Ram was born at the disputed spot in
Ayodhya is also not a matter of theology. It is not
essential for Ram bhakti, and Ram bhakti in turn is not
essential for being a Hindu. The belief in the
Janmabhoomi is of the order of popular belief, and has
only some practical (pilgrimage) but no theological
implications.
The practical thrust of the entire JNU statement is that
the Hindu belief regarding Ram's birthplace should not be
respected: since you give no scientific proof for Ram's
being born there, you will not get your temple. Instead
you may get a secular national monument, where religious
rituals will be forbidden by law.
If the secularists reject an arrangement that would
accommodate a widespread popular belief, viz. a Ram
Janmabhoomi Mandir, they should have the courage of their
conviction, and take this stand wherever it applies. And
they should keep up their Nehruvian habit of meddling in
Israeli/Palestinian affairs. This means they should go
tell the Muslims of Jerusalem that the historical fact of
the Jewish Temple should have priority over the "myths"
of the Prophet's footprint and of his ride through
heaven. But if they prefer, Muslims' sentiments and
beliefs, then they should have the same respect of Hindu
beliefs surrounding a sacred place. If they fail to show
equal respect to the Muslims of Palestine and to the
Hindus of India, then they discriminate on the basis of
religion. Which no true secularist would ever do.
2.2 Jerusalem and Ayodhya
In the Ayodhya debate, the comparison with the Jerusalem
Temple Mount controversy has been made only sparingly.
And when it was made, it was mostly turned upside down.
It was assumed that in both cases, a mosque is threatened
with a takeover by non-Muslims, and that is the relevant
similarity. Stefan de Girval has put it this way : "(The
Jews) want to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, which was
destroyed by the Romans in the first century AD. But
they face the same problem and dilemma that the Hindus
are facing at the Ram Janmabhoomi site."10
The non-Muslim communities involved in these two temple-
mosque-controversies do indeed have things in common.
They both have voluntarily and unilaterally set up a
secular state. Their creations, upon departure of the
British, were both at the same time partitions into a
secular and an Islamic state. In both cases, the
partition was immediately followed by an invasion from
the Muslim neighbour (here there is a remarkable
difference : Israel gained territory in the ensuing war,
while India lost Azad Kashmir). They both live with a
Muslim minority, which does encounter problems but is
still treated far better than minorities in the
surrounding Muslim countries. On the other hand, after
their creation both Israel and India have had to receive
many refugees, Jewish and Hindu respectively, who had to
flee intense persecution in Muslim countries. Both
communities have been persistently targeted by the same
Muslim-Communist combine : Israel by the Arab-Soviet
alliance, Hindus society by the Leftist and pro-Muslim
Nehruvians and by the China-Pakistan alliance.11
But all that does not make for a strict parallel in the
two controversies. The differences include the
following. In Jewish theology, there is a belief that
only the Messiah, when he comes, should rebuild the
Temple. No such belief is involved in the Ayodhya
controversy. In Jerusalem, the disputed area is a sacred
place to both religions involved; in Ayodhya, the Muslims
have never attached any religious importance to the site
of the Babri Masjid, which was built only to humiliate
the Hindus. In Jerusalem, the Muslims built their mosques
in all innocence on a wasteland, where the Romans had
destroyed the Jewish Second Temple centuries before;
whereas in Ayodhya they most probably destroyed the
temple themselves before building a mosque over it.
But the most important difference is this. In Jerusalem,
a sacred place of a religious community is being used for
regular worship by that community, to the exclusion of
members of the other community, but it is being claimed
by fanatics of this other community; in Ayodhya, exactly
the same situation obtains. However, in Jerusalem the
tenant community is Muslim, in Ayodhya it is non-Muslim.
In Jerusalem, the fanatics who want to grab the other
community's sacred place are non-Muslim, the Faithful of
the Temple Mount, in Ayodhya they are Muslim, the BMAC
and BMMCC.
This important factual contrast is compounded by a
political difference. In Israel, a truly secular
government is proud of Israel's policy since he
liberation of Jerusalem in 1967, which has guaranteed
freedom of worship to Jews, Christians and Muslims in
their respective sacred places, in contrast to the ban on
Christian and Jewish access to the sacred places under
the previous Islamic regime. This secular government has
given the Jewish fanatics no chance to challenge the
status-quo, and is not ready to make any concession to
them, or to force a compromise with them on the tenant
Muslim community.
In India, by contrast, some governments have been
succeeding each other, that have not been all that
secularly impartial in religious controversies, in spite
of their comprising vehemently secularist parties. These
governments have amply lent their ears to the fanatics
who challenge the functional status-quo and intend to
snatch the sacred place from the tenant community. For
clarity's sake, it may be repeated that the tenant
community is, since 1949, the Hindu community. And the
Hindus want to keep the functional status-quo, viz. the
Ram temple remains a Ram temple, even while its
architecture may be changed from a mosque-like domed
structure to a traditional Mandir structure. But instead
of unflinchingly upholding their right to their sacred
place, the government pressurizes them to give in to the
BMAC and BMMCC demands, or at least to accept a mid-way
compromise.
So, the Temple Mount is not a Jewish Ayodhya12
rather a
Muslim Ayodhya. We should of course not take the
comparison too far, for that would only lead into
distortions. Yet, it so happened that there is one more
analogy. In both places the autumn of 1990 has witnessed
a bloodbath among the tenant community, inflicted by
police bullets. In Jerusalem, police killed around
twenty people when, according to the official report,
they were throwing stones at Jews praying at the Wailing
Wall (the only leftover of the Second Temple).13
In
Ayodhya, police killed sixteen, or one hundred and sixty-
eight, or five hundred, or who knows, people who were
unarmed and singing Ram Dhun. And this similarity is
again compounded by a stark difference : the Jerusalem
shooting triggered as much as a UN resolution against the
Israeli government, but the Ayodhya shooting triggered
absolutely nothing as far as the Human Rights
professionals are concerned.
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