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January     Last updated:January 20 : 7:00 p.m.

Cabbages & Kings
V. P. Bhatia

Intimations of National Sentiment

DESCRIBING the imagined plight of an Indian Muslim in free India in the wake of Babri demolition, a Muslim lady columnist of a local 'international' daily writes: "We have always lived here, it is our country, our home. Why are they after us? What have we done? We have never voted for these Jamaat-e-Islami people who field candidates in every election here. Yes, you do not know that because we have never supported them. They come and they go. We have always cast our vote for the secular parties. And yet nobody is willing to protect us, and we are now being told once again after eight long years where we did not even ask for the reconstruction of the mosque, that the temple will be built. Why? Did we destroy the temple? Did our forefathers? Or did this all happen, if it did, at a time when India was not the India we know, and an entirely different social system governed the world? Why are we paying the price, he asks now with tears in his eyes. I am scared, he says, what will happen to my children?....

" With such disarmingly feigned ignorance, the lady wants to convey the impression that a common Muslim citizen is a poor, harassed, haunted creature in India just now who does not know where to turn for help. For, even the upstart 'sputnik' secular parties whom the Muslim vote banks have propped up because of their ingrained negative mentality and overnight catapulted into power the likes of 'Mullah' Mulayam Singh and 'My' Messiah, Laloo Prasad Yadav are of no use to protect them. But then who has created this position by annual rituals of Babri anniversaries to assert their resolve to frustrate reconstruction of Ram Mandir at any cost? And yet they fear they may be in no position to prevent such reconstruction at the 'disputed' site as the very idea of a 'Kafir' Mandir is an anathema to the mass of Momins, as an assault on their deep-seated attachment to the Babri cult as the emblem of their separatist identity and super-race (imperialist) syndrome.

For, their mind has been so conditioned by the Mullah keepers of their minds and souls and the modern media controllers of information that they think Babar to be their highest avatar and redeemer of Indian Islam, to be clung at all cost for their dear life. So, they are not prepared to believe what almost every Hindu, except those who have their Hindu tails cut like the Fox in the fable, believes. They thus betray the mentality of being at odds with everything Hindu, in the medieval style. In any case, the simple answer to their feigned ignorance has already been given by Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee in Parliament and elsewhere that the construction of Ram Temple is a matter of 'national sentiment' for the Hindus almost for over four centuries, that is ever since Babar's general Mir Baqi erected a makeshift Islamic structure in keeping with the well-established predatory Islamic traditions of desecrating, appropriating (like the Quwwatul Islam Mosque near the Kutab in Delhi) or destroying the old Kafir structures to assert their imperialist contempt for the conquered people.

He has also rightly pointed out that the post-independence history of struggle for recovery of the Temple, from 'planting' of idols to opening of locks to the laying down of Shilanayas under the Congress aegis go to prove that at least two major parties, the Congress and the BJP, agree on the point. It is, therefore, amazing why the Muslim should stick to Babri structure as the symbol of their identity and endanger even their survival for it by stonewalling reconstruction of the Temple in free India, as the lady would have us believe. Obviously, they have been brainwahsed into pretending what they believe in the hearts of their hearts and what even eminent politicians like Sir Sikander Hayat Khan, Premier of Undivided Punjab and historian of pre-Partition era like Prof Sri Ram Sharma, eagerly quoted by Muslim historians like Aziz Ahmed, have accepted. It is indeed a miracle of secularisation of free India that the sentiments of 80 crore people are being rubbished

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In any case, say for argument's sake if there are any doubts about the conversion of Ramjanmabhoomi at Ayodhya, what about the Vishwanath Temple at Kashi and Krishna Janmabhoomi at Mathura whose conversion is as plain as pikestaff to the naked eye-with huge Aurangzebi minarets topping the temple walls or overshadowing them as a symbol of Hindu subjugation? Privately they will feel pride over such vandalism but publicly they will concede not even an inch. I have seen Muslim papers deliberately flaunting pictures of the graft of the Mosque minarets over the Temples walls in Varanasi and usurpation of Krishna Janmabhoomi site at Mathura just to spite the Hindus and boost the Muslim fundamentalist ego. Can there be pace in such circumstances where the outrages of a bygone era are so blatantly paraded fluanted. No wonder, as the lady says, even the Muslim-supported secular parties are of no help to them, for at the mass level almost every common Hindu believes the Ramjanmabhoomi case to be cast-iron and considers the Muslim leadership to be deliberately and obstinately offensive, flaunting anti-Hindu mindset to assert their bygone imperialist glory and super-race complex.

Anyway, this litany about even the secular parties being powerless to satisfy the Muslim ego and inflated security concerns reminds me of four things : Firstly, a similar expression of helplessness by no less a person then Pt. Nehru to protect the Muslims in the wake of the Jabalpur riots of February 1961 which were a sort of reaction to the harrowing tales of butchery of the Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Unmindful of the plight of Hindus in East Pakistan who had been most ignominiously thrown to the wolves after West Pakistan was almost totally cleared of Hindus by most medieval methods except for a

Why even Nehru felt helpless

few pockets in Sind as pocket boroughs of big feudal lords, Pt Nehru described the Jabalpur riots as something which "disgraced and shamed India before the world", a tired old jargon which he often used to express his ignorance of the basic problem. But then he soon realised that such a reaction could not have occurred without widespread resentment and urge for reprisas in the Hindu society, due to the uncontrolled butchery in East Bengal. So then, he also admitted, "But trouble makers (in India) could function with such effect only because the atmosphere was conducive and public sympathy was in their favour." As Dr S. Gopal, the leftist biographer of Nehru says further in this context: "Nehru thought the state and district authorities had been too weak and passive in handling these disturbances on the eve of the Holi (spring festival), instructed all State Governments to deal promptly and firmly with the trouble makers...." (S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru-A Biography, Vol. III, Pp. 172-173, Oxford). So, all this means that there was a widespread, almost national resentment that Nehru's secular Government had washed its hands off its bounden duty to protect the Hindus' kith and kin in East Pakistan so that the Muslims here who pressed for Pakistan and got it by strong arm tactics were widely considered responsible for the Hindus' plight. Thus, even Nehru realised belatedly that there was a widespread social sanction for reprisals.

For, like the current Babri obstinacy, this was no medieval happening but something happening in the living present. Secondly, the cunning Muslim spokepersons forget that a much more outrageous holocaust had happened in Muslim dominated Kashmir two to three years before the Babri demolition-by selective killing of prominent Kashmiri Hindus by the JKLF and other terrorist outfits in the Valley, followed by terrifying calls even from the mosques to the 'Bhats' (Pandits) to leave the valley and leave behind their Bhatnis (womenfolk), resulting in ethnic cleansing of the Valley at gun-point. Moreover, another four years earlier in 1986, large scale desecration and destruction of temples and Pandits' properties took place in Anantnag district when no secularist Hindu or Muslim shed a tear over it. Rather, they blamed the Hindus for running away from the valley to defame Kashmiri Muslims at Jagmohan's behest. As a prominent Kashmir mediaman commented later on, the Babri demolition was no less a result of repetition of Partition scenes in Kashmir despite what India has done for Kashmiri Muslims. Does any secularist, beating his breast over demolition, remember that? No, because Hindus are traditional sufferers and must go on suffering for currying Islamic favours.

Can anyone deny that Kashmir problem is basically a problem of Muslims' refusal to live amicably with the Hindus and that separatism is ingrained in their minds and ethnic cleansing by most brutal methods is an integral part of their culture? Even Kerala's Communist Chief Minister indirectly underlined this problem by reportedly describing the Muslim-majority Malappuram district as 'Mini Pakistan', though later denying the statement. This is what Ambedkar described as Muslim refusal to practise co-existence. That is the ingrained Muslim image in Hindu mind, even when he happens to be a communist VIPs. Thirdly, there has been a continuous reconsolidation of Muslims almost on pro-Pakistani lines after a brief lull in the wake of Partition disturbances. This has been pointed out by Kakasaheb N.V. Gadgil, (father of erstwhile Congress spokesman, V.N. Gadgil), who was a socialist Minister of Jawaharlal Nehru's first cabinet, as expressed in his memoirs Government From Inside, 1968. Says N.V. Gadgil in his book:

Muslims have failed Secularism

"I have already described how systematically Pakistan drove out its Hindus and how they encouraged Muslims to enter and occupy some areas in Assam. (This has now turned into a demographic deluge spreading upto Delhi and Bombay.) The Indian Government took no notice of these. On the other hand, Nehru was greatly annoyed when once Vallabhbhai Patel suggested mutual exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations and a proportional division of land between India and Pakistan. (He demanded one-third of East Pakistan to accommodate flood of Bengali Hindu refugees pushed out from there which made Liaquat Ali Khan rush to Delhi to conclude the Nehru-Liaquat Pact, which proved another Paki ploy to buy time.) But one has to confess such an exchange would have been beneficial in the long run. We are a secular country and our faith in secularism is fundamental, but that too must be tempered by hard realities of the situation. The Indian Muslim remained, on the whole, aloof from the mainstream of Indian life after Partition, but in almost all cities communal Muslim organisations continued their poisonous propaganda. Thousands of Muslims who had gone to Pakistan returned and were given back their properties. The Hindus received no such justice." (Pp. 88-89)

Thus, ironically enough, while Bal Thackeray is deprived of his voting right in free India for combating Islamic aggressiveness, not one Muslim vivisectionist has been disfranchised in free India, though millions of vociferous Pakistani agitators stayed back to carve out more mini-Pakistans. Fourthly, Muslims have totally neglected what Maulana Azad advised them to do-on the basis of the failure of Nehruvian secularism to build up a truly non-communal, welfare state. According to veteran journalist Durga Das, a former editor of the Hindustan Times, who used to meet the Maulana every Sunday morning for news-gathering according to a 'mutual arrangement' in the Maulana's last few years of life. "The Maulana", says Durga Das, "revised his opinion of Nehru in the last two years of his life. Indeed, he went to the extent of expressing regret for being unfair to Patel and asserting that he was sure that the country would have been better off if Patel had been Prime Minister. What motivated this change?

Towards the end of his life, Azad realised that the best protection for the Muslims was the goodwill of the Hindus and a strong Government. He told me he had come to the conclusion that Nehru's policies had weakened the administration and that his economic theories had failed to improve the living conditions of the people, especially the Muslims." (Durga Das, India-From Curzon to Nehru, Collins, 1969, Pp. 377-78) Sadly enough, the Muslim leadership has failed Indian secularism despite 'most-favoured community, treatment, and is resorting to offence as the best defence. They have their claims to special constitutional rights by converting Kashmir into an anti-Hindu, anti-India springboard, harming their own interests no less by converting into a ravaged land, a la Afghanistan. The reason is not far to seek. The real Pakistanis have been left behind. They gloat over the plight of Hindus in Kashmir and their top leaders like the 'Shahi Imam' of Jama Masjid openly declare it to be an Islamic land over which India has no moral or even legal right. The result is more sufferings for all.