Gyanwapi Mosque: Can Law Protect It?

 

Ayodhya judgment is a setback to evidence law

Certainly in matters of freedom of religion, the court should not have any say, but deciding title suit on the basis of faith is a thorny proposition.

The Supreme Court has tried to please everyone in its much awaited judgment on the property dispute in Ayodhya writes Faizan Mustafa and Aymen Mohammed in The Indian Express

The Supreme Court has tried to please everyone in its much awaited judgment on the property dispute in Ayodhya. The worshippers of Lord Ram have been given land for the construction of a temple at the very site where the Babri Masjid stood between 1528 and December 6, 1992.

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The Nirmohi Akhara has welcomed the judgment as it will be given some representation in the trust that would construct the temple. The Sunni Waqf Board too must have the satisfaction that the highest court has accepted their central argument that the Babri Masjid was a Sunni, and not Shia, waqf property, and the same was not constructed after demolishing the Ram temple. Thus, the court has rejected the Hindu right’s narrative on the Babri mosque. This false narrative not only was responsible for galvanising the ordinary Hindus, but also gave some sort of legitimacy to divisive electoral politics. Similarly, Muslim grievances about the trespass in 1949 and the tragic demolition of the mosque in 1992 have been accepted by the court. In fact, the court has accepted that there was an injury caused to them — i.e. violation of their legal right. Accordingly, the court, invoking its extraordinary jurisdiction of doing complete justice, has given them almost double the land in Ayodhya.

The Ayodhya dispute did not begin in 1528 with Babur, the founder of Mughal empire, but in 1886 with litigation in the British courts over a chabutra (courtyard) that was constructed outside the Babri Masjid by one Mahant Raghubar Das in the late 1850s. When the British prevented the construction of a canopy over the chabutra, Das unsuccessfully litigated his cause in three judicial forums. Each time, the courts emphasised status quo — that is, the Muslims would pray inside the Babri Masjid while the Hindus had limited rights to pray at the chabutra. Surprisingly, the apex court has rejected title of Muslims for want of proof of title document. This may have repercussions for several temples and mosques. The court rejected the revenue record and gazetteers as sufficient proof. Even the British grant papers were said to be sufficient only for proving the upkeep of the mosque.

In law, the phrase “status quo” means the situation at the time of the judgment must not be changed. The Babri litigation is a story of changing “status quo”. On the night of December 22-23, 1949, trespassers placed Lord Ram’s idol under the central dome of the Babri Masjid. In a few days after the incident, a new status quo would be sanctified by the local courts: Muslims were not allowed to pray inside the mosque, the idol would not be removed, and that Hindus would have a “limited” right to pray and pujaris would ensure daily bhog. By one act of criminal trespass, a mosque was converted into a temple.

On February 1, 1986, District Judge K M Pandey would order the unlocking of gates that acted as a “barrier” between the idols inside the masjid and the devotees who had come for the darshan. This decision had the blessing of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who in order to mollify the self-anointed regressive Muslim leadership would subsequently introduce the bill to reverse the Shah Bano judgment on February 25, 1986.

The demolition of the mosque on December 6, 1992 was also the destruction of the rule of law. The SC has rightly criticised it and accepted that it was in violation of the “status quo” order passed by it. Within a few hours of the mosque’s demolition, a makeshift temple had come up at the structure’s location. Within a month of the demolition, the Allahabad High Court allowed for darshan at the makeshift temple. In 1994, the Supreme Court, while dealing with the Acquisition of Certain Areas of Ayodhya Act, ordered the protection of the latest “status quo”: No mosque but a makeshift temple and legally protected darshan at the site.

In 2010, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court ruled that the title suit must be decided as a question of joint-ownership of property. Muslims, the deity Ram Lalla and Nirmohi Akhara were to get one-third share of the disputed property. The Supreme Court has overruled this judgment and rightly held that it was not a partition suit.

The judgment will be remembered for the victory of faith over the rule of law as the Supreme Court considered religious beliefs even in deciding a property dispute, and despite conceding that faith cannot confer title, it still went ahead to give property to worshippers on the basis of faith. The court should not have any say in matters of freedom of religion, but deciding title suit on the basis of faith is a thorny proposition. In brief, it is the red letter day for the constitutional right to religion but a setback to property law and a setback to evidence law with differential burden of proof being demanded from different parties.

The Buddha Speaks on Red Herrings and the Babri Masjid. Ep.2 English

The Ram Janambhoomi - Babri Masjid case explained

Prof Faizan Mustafa

Babri Masjid Demolition: Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold

Surely it is not the politicians’ fault is it?

A dream fable from a strangely familiar land where people blame their politicians for their own failures writes Tabish Khair in The Hindu

I dreamt that I woke up in a foreign country with many languages, cultures and religions. It was also a country with a working democratic system and a Parliament full of different parties.

The people of this country, despite wide swathes of illiteracy, mostly participated in the political process, and often held strong views. But they tended to complain endlessly about their representatives. Some of them would aggressively — even violently — endorse one party against the other, but they would also castigate politicians in general.

“If only we had good politicians,” one of them lamented to me. “Yes,” added his friend, who actually supported a party in the Opposition. “All these politicians just play us against each other in order to win. They never think of the people and the country first. Sheer opportunists, all of them. With no moral, no character, nothing but a hunger for power.”

In my dream, I listened to them, and it sounded familiar. I had heard similar sentiments while awake too. But I was curious. I asked them to explain.

Two cults

“Well, you see,” one of them said. “We have various religions, but the major one is known as the cult of stone and the second biggest one is known as the cult of air.”

Ah, I said. That sounded familiar too. “And what do these, er, cultists look like?” I inquired.

“Look like?” he answered. “They look human, like me and him, of course!” He pointed to his friend, who — to my foreign eyes — looked almost like his twin. “My friend belongs to the cult of air: we call them Aerialists. I belong to the cult of stone: they call us Lithicists.”

Ok, I rejoined. “I don’t see any problem yet — let alone a problem your politicians can take advantage of.”

“No, you won’t, you don’t know the place,” the Aerialist responded. “But you see, we had this church in which we worshipped our god who cannot be seen, and the People’s Party of Aerialists claimed that it had been built on the spot where one of their visible gods had been born...”

“Not that you lot were actually using that Aerialist church,” the Lithicist rejoined with a laugh.

“Facts, my friend, facts. You are talking belief; we are talking facts. Your lot broke down our church by sheer force. You broke the law in the process,” the Aerialist responded.

The two friends paused at this point of disagreement and then agreed that, in any case, they did not care this way or that, and the matter would be decided in court before the next election.

“I still do not see how politicians can...,” I began to say, but I was interrupted by the two.

“That’s not the only issue the courts will decide before the next election,” the Lithicist interposed. “You see, the Aerialist Church has its own personal laws.”

“So do other churches here,” the Aerialist broke in.

“But my friend,” the Lithicist continued. “You will agree that your personal laws are a bit harsh on your women: the husbands obviously get more rights than the wives. Why, they even get more wives!”

The Aerialist looked a bit uncomfortable and waved away the issue. “I say, let the courts decide,” he replied. “They will, they will,” his friend laughed.

I was still quite confused in my dream. “Look here, gentlemen,” I objected. “It is not that I am unfamiliar with such controversies, but what I still do not understand is why you seem to be blaming all this on your politicians?”

Both of them replied together: “Because our politicians take advantage of such situations!”

“But how can they?” I asked, bewildered. “You have said that the courts will decide, and you have told me that you have a constitutional democracy and functioning courts in your country. If so, surely, the courts will decide against the conservative Lithicist position in the case of the demolished church and against the conservative Aerialist position in the case of the personal laws. I mean, you have already indicated that, in terms of law and justice, it was wrong to demolish the Aerialist church and that it is wrong of Aerialists to discriminate against women in their personal laws. So, problem solved: your courts will take the right decision before the elections and no politician will be able to use these issues again!”

Accepting court orders

Both the friends laughed incredulously at me.

“That is what you think, do you?” they scoffed. “Well, let me tell you, Mr. Foreigner (or maybe they said Mr. Dreamer), many Lithicists won’t accept a court order in favour of the Aerialist position on the matter of the demolished church, and many Aerialists will not accept a court order against their personal laws. So, do you know what will happen before the election if the courts take the correct decisions in both the cases? Mobs of Lithicists and Aerialists will be out in the streets protesting and smashing windows for different reasons, preventing reasonable voters from voting… The election will be totally polarised. Politicians!”

“Surely it is not the politicians’ fault if so many of you refuse to accept the correct...,” I started objecting, but that is when I woke up.

To Beef or not to Beef - A Personal View on the Beef Crisis in India

 By Girish Menon



Photo courtesy: Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

I come from a Hindu family from Kerala. Our diet used to be pre-dominantly vegetarian by tradition and choice, though some men folk indulged in the pleasures of animal flesh whenever they wished to give themselves 'a treat' (usually accompanied by alcohol). I studied in a Catholic school in Mumbai with UP Brahmins as my teachers of Sanskritised Hindi. My first conflict with beef arose when Mr. Tiwari mentioned in class that Hindus do not eat beef while only a few days earlier my father had cooked some beef at home for the two of us to eat.

Historically, beef eating has been used as a primary ritual in the conversion of a Hindu to Islam. I'm not sure if the early Christian missionaries indulged in similar Hindu iconoclasm? Hence, I can understand why banning beef has become a major issue in the first predominantly upper class Hindu Indian government.

In Britain where animal meat is the staple food of most residents there was recently a great display of revulsion when horse meat was found to enter the food supply. Britons have also been critical of the Koreans who love to eat dog meat. And human meat is still frowned upon. Using the market mantra isn't this totalitarian view depriving lovers of unusual meats a chance to improve their own welfare?

In my view, beef will become the next Babri Masjid of modern India. Its ban will be essential for Hindus to prove that they have exorcised yet another ghost from the past (how many more ghosts do they wish to exorcise?). 

So, what will happen to the Taslima's orphaned cows and to beef lovers like me? The orphaned cows will meet the same fate as the Indian poor - who cares!. As for beef loving Hindus like me, I could get a permit to eat beef for health reasons (the Dubai model). For those who cannot afford the high price of a permit, the Gujarat model on alcohol could be also be successfully replicated. Go to the police station for a portion of beef!

The Dark Night - One Version of how Sri Ram's idols were installed in Babri Masjid in 1949

The secret history of Rama's appearance in Babri Masjid: what happened on the fateful night of December 22-23,1949 in Ayodhya that went on to change India’s polity forever

KRISHNA JHA, DHIRENDRA K JHA 

AYODHYA: THE DARK NIGHT BY KRISHNA JHA AND  DHIRENDRA K JHA HARPERCOLLINS INDIA RS 499; PAGES 232

This is what Awadh Kishore Jha remembers of the night:

That evening there was a glow on the face of Abhiram Das. I was certain that he was up to something, but did not know exactly what it was. For the last few months he had been very busy and of late he had started looking tired. But that evening he seemed to have become rejuvenated. He kept talking to us and had his evening meal there only. However, he did not say anything about the plan. Th e following night, despite Paramhans backing out, Abhiram Das led his small band of intruders, scaled the wall of the Babri Masjid and jumped inside with a loud thud.

The sound of a thud reverberated through the medieval precincts of the Babri Masjid like that of a powerful drum and jolted Muhammad Ismael, the muezzin, out of his deep slumber. He sat up, confused and scared, since the course of events outside the mosque for the last couple of weeks had not been very reassuring. For a few moments, the muezzin waited, standing still in a dark corner of the mosque, studying the shadows the way a child stares at the box-front illustration of a jigsaw puzzle before trying to join the pieces together.

Never before had he seen such a dark cloud hovering over the mosque. He had not felt as frightened even in 1934, when the masjid was attacked and its domes damaged severely, one of them even developing a large hole. The mosque had then been rebuilt and renovated by the government. That time, it had been a mad crowd, enraged by rumours of the slaughter of a cow in the village of Shahjahanpur near Ayodhya on the occasion of Bakr-Id. This time, though the intruders were not as large in number, they looked much more ominous than the crowd fifteen years ago.

As the trespassers walked towards the mosque, the muezzin— short, stout and dark-complexioned, wearing his usual long kurta and a lungi— jumped out of the darkness. Before the adversaries could discover his presence, he dashed straight towards Abhiram Das, the vairagi who was holding the idol in his hands and leading the group of intruders. He grabbed Abhiram Das from behind and almost snatched the idol from him. But the sadhu quickly freed himself and, together with his friends, retaliated fiercely. Heavy blows began raining from all directions.

Soon, the muezzin realized that he was no match for the men and that he alone would not be able to stop them.
Muhammad Ismael then faded back into the darkness as unobtrusively as he had entered. Quietly, he managed to reach the outer courtyard and began running. He ran out of the mosque and kept running without thinking where he was going. Though he stumbled and hurt himself even more, the muezzin was unable to feel the pain that was seeping in through the bruises. Soon, he was soaked in blood that dripped at every move he made. He was too stunned to think of anything but the past, and simply did not know what to do, how to save the masjid, where to run. There was a time when he used to think that the vairagis who had tried to capture the graveyard and who had participated in the navah paath and kirtan thereafter had based their vision on a tragic misreading of history, and that good sense would prevail once the distrust between Hindus and Muslims— which had been heightened during Partition— got healed. That was what he thought during the entire build-up outside the Babri Masjid ever since the beginning of the navah paath on 22 November, and that was why he never really believed the rumour that the real purpose of the entire show in and around the Ramachabutara was to capture the mosque.

Muhammad Ismael had always had cordial relations with the priests of the Ramachabutara. The animosity that history had bequeathed them had never come in the way of their day-to-day interactions and the mutual help they extended to each other. Bhaskar Das— who was a junior priest of the small temple at the Ramachabutara in those days and who later became the mahant of the Nirmohi Akhara— also confirmed this.

Before 22 December 1949, my guru Mahant Baldev Das had assigned my duty at the chabutara. I used to keep my essential clothes and utensils with me there. In the night and during afternoon, I used to sleep inside the Babri Masjid. The muezzin had asked me to remove my belongings during the time of namaz, and the rest of the time the mosque used to be our home.

While the chabutara used to get offerings, enough for the sustenance of the priest there, the muezzin usually always faced a crisis as the contribution from his community for his upkeep was highly irregular. Often, vairagis, particularly the priest at the chabutara, would feed the muezzin. It was like a single community living inside a religious complex. Communalists on both sides differentiated between the two, but, for the muezzin they were all one.

But it was not so once the vairagis entered the mosque that night. The trust that he had placed in them, he now tended to think, had never been anything but his foolish assumption. It had never been there at all. In a moment, the smokescreen of the benevolence of the vairagis had vanished. The muezzin seemed to have experienced an awakening in the middle of that cold night. His new, revised way of thinking told him that the men who had entered the Babri Masjid in the cover of darkness holding the idol of Rama Lalla had no mistaken vision of history. Indeed, these men had no vision of any kind; what they had done was a crime of the first order, and what they were trying to accomplish was simply disastrous.

Despite his waning strength, Muhammad Ismael trudged along for over two hours and stopped only at Paharganj Ghosiana, a village of Ghosi Muslims— a Muslim sub-caste of traditional cattle-rearers— in the outskirts of Faizabad. The residents of this village, in fact, were the first to awaken to the fact that the Babri Masjid had been breached when a frantic ‘Ismael Saheb’ came knocking on their doors at around 2 a.m. on 23 December 1949. Abdur Rahim, a regular at the mosque before it was defiled, had this to say:

They might have killed Ismael saheb. But he somehow managed to flee from the Babri Masjid. He reached our village around 2 a.m. He was badly injured and completely shaken by the developments. Some villagers got up, gave him food and warm clothes. Later, he began working as a muezzin in the village mosque, and sincerely performed his role of cleaning the mosque and sounding azan for prayer five times a day until his death in the early 1980s.

In Paharganj Ghosiana, Muhammad Ismael lived like a hermit. He could neither forget the horror of that night, nor overcome the shock that broke his heart. He was among the few witnesses to one of the most crucial moments in independent India’s history, and the first victim to resist the act. Spending the rest of his life in anonymity, he appeared immersed deep in his own thoughts, mumbling, though rarely, mostly about ‘those days’. Life for the trusting muezzin could never be the same.

Th at was it, then: after over four centuries of being in existence, the Babri Masjid, the three-domed marvel of Ayodhya, had fallen into the hands of a small band of intruders, and Hindu communalists of all shades had conspired to achieve this carefully woven key aspect of the Mahasabha’s Ayodhya strategy. Th e involvement of K.K.K. Nair and Guru Dutt Singh, in particular, proved to be critical. For in those days, district magistrates used to be powerful fi gures in local administration, and city magistrates were among their more formidable administrative adjuncts.

With the two most significant officials in the district administration openly working for the conversion of the mosque into a temple, it was only to be expected that the offi cials under them would help the Hindu Mahasabha in whatever manner they could. Th e government enquiry that followed the surreptitious planting of the idol in the masjid ratifi es this hypothesis. Th ough never made public for many reasons, the enquiry report revealed that the followers of K.K.K. Nair and Guru Dutt Singh used the authority which these two men commanded to persuade the police guarding the mosque to look the other way while Abhiram Das led his band of intruders carrying the idol of Rama.

Th at the policeman guarding the Babri Masjid did play this role in seeing the conspiracy through was also hinted at by Bhaskar Das, the junior priest in the temple of Rama Lalla at the chabutara in 1949:

At that time a guard was posted at the gate [of the Babri Masjid] because the Muslims had complained that the Hindus would try to capture the mosque. Th is complaint had been fi led after the large-scale defi ling of graves in the vicinity of the Babri Masjid. Th e police used to encourage us to capture the mosque and install the idol there …

That being the mood of the police, it would not have been too diffi cult for the Hindu communalists to take the guard into confi dence— and there were various ways to do that— and persuade him to look the other way. On being asked as to what kind of help the guard provided to the intruders, Mahant Bhaskar Das laughed and said, ‘It was all God’s miracle. Till the time He wished to stay at the chabutara, He remained there, and when He decided to shift inside the mosque, He did that.’

Yet the miracle, before it could happen, had to be adjusted with the duty hours of the guard who had been won over. It was for this reason that the idol of Rama had to be smuggled in before twelve in the night on 22 December 1949. For a Muslim guard— Abul Barkat— was to take charge after that. Abul Barkat, in a sense, was himself a victim of the police conspiracy hatched to ensure the success of the Mahasabha’s plan. By the time Barkat resumed his duty at midnight that fateful night, the intruders had already gone inside with the idol of Ram Lalla along with a silver throne for the deity, the photographs of some other deities as well as various materials used for pooja and aarti. By twelve o’clock, the mosque had already been captured and the sole resistance capitulated after being brutally dealt with. For a few hours after capturing the mosque, Abhiram Das and his gang lay low, not doing anything loud enough to make Abul Barkat suspicious. He was totally ignorant of the developments that had taken place behind his back. Recounted Indushekhar Jha:

Abhiram Das sat just beneath the central dome of [the] Babri Masjid fi rmly holding the idol in his hands and we got active. We threw away all the articles [of previous possessors], including their urns, mats as well as clothes and utensils of the muezzin. We then erased many Islamic carvings with the help of a khurpi [a sharpedged instrument generally used for gardening purposes] from the inner and outer walls of the mosque, and scribbled Sita and Rama in saff ron and yellow colours on them.

Around four in the morning, while it was still pitch dark, the intruders, following the script fi nalized in Jambwant Quila the day before, lit the lamp and started doing aarti. Th is must have frightened Abul Barkat who was completely unaware of the developments of the previous night, for it would now be impossible for him to explain as to what he was doing when the vairagis sneaked into the mosque. Dozing off or being away from the spot— even if he was not— while on his job to guard such a sensitive structure was an utmost dereliction of duty. Abul Barkat, therefore, must have been in a fi x, and what he saw inside the mosque must have numbed him to the core. Th is predicament explains not just his inability to do anything that night but also his statement much later.
In the charge sheet fi led on 1 February 1950, based on the FIR registered in the morning of 23 December 1949 against Abhiram Das and others for intruding into the mosque and defi ling it, Abul Barkat was named as one of the nine prosecution witnesses. What he said in his statement to the magistrate elated the Hindu communalists, but any sane person could easily see through it. Justice Deoki Nandan in his ‘Sri Rama Janma Bhumi: Historical and Legal Perspective’ has cited a ‘concise translation’ of Abdul Barkat’s statement:

He [Abul Barkat] was on duty at the Police Outpost Rama Janma Bhumi on the night between December 22nd and 23rd, 1949. While on duty that night, he saw a fl ash of Divine Light inside the Babari Masjid. Gradually that light became golden and in that he saw the fi gure of a very beautiful godlike child of four or fi ve years the like of which he had never before seen in his life. Th e sight sent him into a trance, and when he recovered his senses he found that the lock on the main gate (of the mosque) was lying broken and a huge crowd of Hindus had entered the building and were performing the aarti of the Idol placed on aSinghasan and reciting: Bhaye prakat kripala Deen Dayala [God has manifested himself].

The Hindu Mahasabha and other communal organizations immediately lapped up Abul Barkat’s statement as a proof of the ‘miracle’ that had happened on that fateful night when Lord Rama himself ‘reclaimed’ his ‘original’ place of birth. Decades later, however, even those who had propagated the miracle theory in order to prove their point were found laughing at it. Bhaskar Das, for example, said, ‘What else could Abul Barkat say? When such an incident happened while he was on duty, he had no other option but to say what he was told to say in order to save himself.’

Acharya Satyendra Das, one of the disciples of Abhiram Das who later became the chief priest of Ramajanmabhoomi, was no less straight in his observations:

Abhiram Das and others had taken the idol of Rama Lalla inside the mosque well before twelve o’clock that night when the shift at the gate changed and Abul Barkat resumed his duty. And when after midnight and before dawn the beating of ghanta-gharial began along with the aarti he woke up and saw that scene. In his statement, he said what he saw thereafter.

Abul Barkat could never explain his position. Perhaps the pressure of the district administration that had already gone communal and his own desperation to save his job at any cost never allowed him to come out of the darkness of that night.

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(Krishna Jha is a Delhi-based freelance journalist and biographer of SA Dange, one of the founding fathers of the Indian communist movement. Dhirendra K Jha is a political journalist with Open magazine in Delhi.)

All Indians must have the courage to face up to our past and present

By Anil Dharker

Was V S Naipaul right or was Girish Karnad right? The sound and fury generated by the controversy at Literature Live!, Mumbai’s literary festival, has obscured one important aspect of our national life: we are afraid of our own history.




Let’s recap for a moment how the controversy began. Naipaul was given the Landmark Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival. This aroused Karnad’s ire: the award should not have been given, he said, because Naipaul was anti-Muslim . In his non-fiction books, Naipaul’s stance, according to Karnad, is to depict Indian Muslims as “raiders and marauders” and so, in effect, Naipaul has “criminalised a whole section of the Indian population as rapists and murderers.” “I have Muslim friends and I feel strongly about this,” Karnad added.



I have Muslim friends too, and i feel strongly as well, not about our shared history but about the state of the community in our country today. That feeling has been strong enough for me to be a trustee of Citizens for Justice and Peace, an NGO which (among other things) has taken up multiple cases on behalf of the Muslim victims of the 2002 Gujarat massacre. As a direct result, many people including Maya Kodnani , a former minister in the Modi government and Babu Bajrangi, the Bajrang Dal leader, have been sentenced to long prison terms. My strong feelings, therefore , are not just emotional but take the practical shape of righting today’s wrongs.



But should that blind me to our history? Right from the 12th to the 15th century, Afghan and Central Asian invaders like Mohammad Ghori and Mahmud Ghaznavi came as marauders and plunderers: they came to loot (places like the Somnath temple were immensely rich and obvious targets ), and even to destroy local religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. The sacking and burning in 1193 by the Turk, Bhaktiyar Khilji of the Nalanda library, one of the greatest places of learning, and whose collection of books was so extensive that it took three months to be gutted, is a case in point. Hampi, which is now a Unesco Heritage site, was burned down by the Bahamanis , an act of vandalism which took days. Later, the Mughals led by Babar may have come, not as raiders but as settlers, but they did proselytize. Emperor Aurangzeb’s depredations were extensive and go far beyond the Shivnath temple: when you think that Ahilyabai Holkar rebuilt as many as 350 temples in and near Varanasi, you realize how far-reaching the damage was.

This is a rather jumbled, and hurried look at our history, but it makes the point that in spite of the enlightened rule of emperors like Akbar (notably), Jehangir and Shahjahan, a great deal of the nation’s heritage was wilfully destroyed by Afghan, Turk, Central Asian and Mughal invaders and rulers. You can overstate the case, as Naipaul does, by seeing in the Taj Mahal only the ‘blood and sweat of slave labour’ (you can say that of the pyramids too), but that’s only overstating the case, not making one up. By stating it, you do not become anti-Muslim.



That’s the important point. Girish Karnad , like a lot of secularists who want to see present-day India live in a harmonious blend of communities, bends over backwards to gloss over the negative aspects of Islam in our history, because of the harm this reiteration can cause to present-day Muslims. (In his attack on Naipaul, for example , Karnad said off-handedly , “Oh, I do admit some temples and monuments may have been destroyed by the Mughal".

I belong to that group of secularists too, and i would not be writing this article if it weren’t for the recent controversy. But we need to remind ourselves about something that should be obvious: Yes, it’s true there was a Ram temple where the Babri Masjid stands; yes, it’s true that the temple was demolished and a mosque built on the site-… But it’s also true that over the many years after this happened, not too many people were bothered either about the now-decrepit mosque, nor the once existing temple until L K Advani and the BJP made it an issue to revive its electoral chances. The Babri Masjid demolition and the subsequent riots did not happen because people like Naipaul wrote their versionsof history.



Sadly, the laudable wish to ensure that today’s Muslims are not victimized any more than they are, also prevents secularists from lashing out at the pronouncements and actions of the ultra-orthodox in the community, for example the recent edict banning women from entering the sanctum of Mumbai’s Haji Ali dargah. Our silence only helps those in the minority community who stop it from moving into modernity. It’s something we need to face squarely, as squarely as we need to face our history.