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December     Last updated: December 23 : 7:00 p.m.

Ram Mandir is nation's agenda

T. Mani Chowdary

It is astounding how people could be worked up about the Babri structure that was pulled down in Ayodhya in 1992. First of all, Babar was not an Indian. He was an alien invader. Secondly, in the year the General built the mosque, the Muslim population of the city could not have been more than a few hundreds, while the Hindu population would have been tens of thousands. Leaving aside whether the Muslim place of worship was constructed on the very site where there was a Hindu temple by pulling it down, was it necessary that the mosque should be very near to the place which is believed by millions of Hindus to be the birth place of their most venerated God Rama? Could it not have been a few furlongs away from the Hindus sacred place? The fact that it was built on the site or adjacent to the site believed to be Sri Rama's birth place is to assert the Muslim arrogance of their conquest of Hindus. How can a monument to the humiliation of Hindus constructed by an alien invader be tolerated by the people of this country? When they are not ruled by such conquerors? It is a historical fact that various Hindu organisations in Ayodhya have been repeatedly rising in revolt against Muslim powers to re-possess the site sacred to the Hindus. Also since 1947 there had been no worship or prayers of Muslims at the “mosque”. It is arrogance and fundamentalism and intolerance to question the belief of the Hindus that Lord Sri Rama was born at a particular site.

Hindus do not question the virgin birth of Jesus of prophet Mohammed going to heaven on a white steed from Al-Aksa-mosque. The Hindus' faith and belief about Rama's birth place cannot be less respectable than the faith of the followers of other religions. No law can establish the facts believed in by the Christians, Muslims and the Hindus. Let us be very clear about it. Objective writers of history and the chroniclers of Muslim invaders of India have recorded the fact of tens of thousands of Hindu temples having been razed to the ground and in those very places or just by their side mosques were built by using the bricks and stones and other materials of the razed temples. The stones with images of the Hindu gods have been used as steps on which the Muslims going to the mosques would be trampling. At many a place even today such desecration can be clearly seen.

Independent India has removed the statues of so many British generals and viceroys and even Queen Victoria because they are symbols of India's humiliation at the hands of the alien invaders. Many countries around the world have, after gaining independence from their colonial masters have removed the statues of the conquerers; have renamed their countries and their towns after their own historical persons and places and this is still going on. People who had been wronged like the Blacks and the native Indians in United States and Central American Republics and the aborginals of Australia are asking not only for apologies from the conquerors and colonists but are demanding reparations. The Japanese emperor aplogized to the Koreans; the Federal Republic of Germany not only apologized but paid reparations to Israel for the inhumanity it inflicted upon the Jews of Germany; the Black majority government in South Africa has constituted a Truth and Reconciliation commission (TRC) before which if the White conquerors confess their crimes and inhuman treatment of the black natives for hundreds of years, they would be pardoned. It is natural that when the oppressed and the wronged people come into their own, become independent they would wage a struggle for righting the historic wrongs. It is stubbornness and arrogance and intolerance of the former ruling classes and communities not to acknowldge their guilt.

On the other hand, if they go on persisting in the belief that they did no wrong, the wronged people will not be forgiving until the symbols of the worst humiliation on their country and their faith are got rid of Rama, Shiva and Krishna, the most venerated gods of the Hindus irrespective of one’s cast and region. In the very places of temples for these gods had come up mosques. How would the Muslims like that by the side of Al-aksa-mosque or the mosques in Mecca or Madina, the British conquerors had built churches? Wisdom and prudence require that the Muslims who have chosen to live in this country after getting it partitioned for creating an Islamic homeland for them should amicably settle the issue. If they persist in their stubbornness not to acknowledge that this is an independent country, that it is not an Islamic republic, that its people had been subjected to the worst humiliation for over 800 years, then there would be perpetual disharmony and suspicions about the true mind of the Muslim residents of this country. History and religion are very powerful in moulding the psyche of people.

It is for this that independent India restored Somnath, the shrine for Shiva in the first few years of independence itself. Somnath was three times razed to the ground by Muslim invaders. The so called secularists in the Congress and the perpetually anti-Indian political multi-national communists and other parties are doing a great disservice to the Muslim residents of India in stridently and repeatedly including them to separatism, fundamentalism and in supporting their stubbornness not to compromise on Ayodhya and the two other sacred Hindu sites. It is these who are more culpable than the Muslims themselves. As long as the Rama mandir is not built in Ayodhya the Hindu mind and Hindu people cannot be expected to be at peace. The Rama Mandir in Ayodhya is a national agenda. If Moslims in India agitate for the safety and sanctity of Al-Aksa in distant Israel, can't they understand why the Hindus are agitated about Ram Mandir in Ayodhya? History will condemn all those who are unwisely stocking the indefensible arrogance, stubborness in the remnants of those who have perpetrated inhuman crimes against the people of this country for centuries.