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December     Last updated: December 30 : 7:00 p.m.

Cabbages & Kings
V. P. Bhatia

Secularists fanning of the Babri frenzy

Even Madhu Limaye flayed Marxist hostorians' negationist twistory

“What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer,” says the famous English prose-writer and epigrammist, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in one of his great essays ‘Of Truth’. Pilate was, of course, the Roman judge who ordered crucifixion of Jesus Christ without hearing the case properly. He could perhaps be an apt reminder of the Supreme Court’s constitutional bench refusing to answer a pointed query in the Presidential Reference of early 1993, asking it to adjudicate whether a Ram Temple stood on the site of the demolished Babri structure.

The apex court refused to decide, virtually ruling it as a political issue and reducing the case to a property suit, to be decided by the lower courts which had already failed to do so for about 40 years. Anyway, the same is no less the case with our Babri-Secularist axis raising the Cain and beating their breasts over the demolition at least on every so-called anniversary in a bid to cover up the gaping holes in their case or forgetting that the great leftist historians of the ICHR, serving as the intellectual wing of the so-called Babri Masjid Committee ran away from the dialogue with the VHP historians during the Chandra Shekhar regime in 1990-91, sensing their case to be too weak.

That ended the reconciliation effort, making even the Supreme Court wonder later, why such an attempt at Hindu-Muslim reconciliation could not be made outside the Court, despite even Hindu lawyers pleading the Babri case before it. So, now again in a bid to inflame the Islamic passions as a part of their periodical charade to coverup truth, defame the Hindus, browbeat the BJP and put its allies on the defensive to create political instability, they are trying the old British strategem of setting Muslims against Hindus, a task in so faithfully taken over by the Nehruvian Congress and its Leftist retainers after the British departure. However, their confusion has become worse confounded with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's repeat assertion, first made to the media and then in the Lok Sabha, that “construction of Ram Temple is a matter of national sentiment” and that it will be done with Supreme Court's consent if possible or Hindu-Muslim agreement if necessary.

This stunning re-assertion came to them as a double bolt from the blue as it frustrated their strategy of putting Shri Vajpayee on the defensive and make him recant or at least modify his earlier statement so as to make them howl all the more. However, their new refrain now is that Shri Vajpayee has exposed himself as a Hindu zealot and fundamentalist and that the mukhauta (mask) of a ‘moderate’ image has fallen after all. So now, the usually de-Hinduised secularist press and political class, seething with impotent anger, are declaring that he is no longer a ‘moderate’ in their lexicon, that he has been cast out from the liberal fraternity and that the certificate of liberalism so graciously awarded to him by the de-nationalised Left-Libber lobby stands withdrawn. Their chagrin and the orchestrated anger, however, stems from the fact that he has refused to fall in their trap to deprive the BJP of its cardinal Ram Mandir issue which has in fact catapulted it into the position of No. 1 Political Party of India by articulating the deep-seated, 450 year old national urge of restoration of the forcibly seized Ramjanmabhoomi site to them. Not all their subterfuges for snatching that issue have succeeded so far.

So now the frustrated lot say that the certificate of liberalism awarded to Shri Vajpayee stands cancelled and withdrawn. He is now dupped to be as ‘hawkish’ as Shri L.K. Advani.

Presumptuous Secularists withdraw certificate of ‘Liberalism’ from Shri Vajpayee

This reminds me of a comic serial now being shown on the SABe TV channel, entitled Office-Office. Though it is now a great strain to see all my favourite comic fair or even the News and Discussion programmes on various TV channels, I make it a point to see this accidentally discovered serial (Office Office) on the woes of an Indian citizen in dealing with the bureaucratic clerkdom in our octopean administrative network. Three of the episodes which I have already seen have dealt with the criminal callousness, lethargy, tortuous delays and corruption in the rationing department, pass-port office and a bank, virtually bringing the harassed (citizen, played by the inimitable Pankaj Kapur in all the episode) to tears.

The situations are hilarious but very touching and realistic no doubt, as in a comedic play, that is thoughtful comedy on the faults and foibles of society, of which as Aristotle said, the only punishment is laughter or ridicule, while in a tragedy, it is death and destruction. It is an apt picture of the inhuman ways of Indian clerkdom where speed money is demanded at every stop and yet things never get done in time despite extortions.

TV Serial on Excesses of Clerkdom

Anyway, the latest I saw last Tuesday (8 p.m.) was about the chain of woes of a citizen going to a university office for getting a duplicate copy of his B.Sc. certificate. The departmental head demands Rs 50,000 for it to which the citizen protests.

Approach to lesser fry proves useless, as they are all part of a corrupt syndicate of five functionaries (who figure in all the previous serials also) including their boss all of whom tell him that they would declare his degree to be fake if he doesn't cough up fifty thousand. To soften him further after initial obstinacy, he is assured that he could get even an M.Sc. certificate if he pays another fifty thousand. So he brightens up, pays Rs one lakh, gets the required copy of his genuine B.Sc. plus a fake M.Sc. certificate at a fake convocation and returns home.

So like this bogus syndicate, we have a bogus Left-Libber Syndicate in our political and intellectual life, which has arrogated to itself the authority of awarding or withdrawing certificates of moderation, liberalism, progressiveism, secularism etc. etc. to any person they fancy and woe to him who refuses to toe their line. However, this presumptuous gang arrogating to itself the power of branding nationalists as communalists and Islamic barbarians as secularists, a game which has been going on for nearly five decades, has been shattered and put out of business by the Hindutva Parivar, riding on the Ram Temple wave and occupying the centre-stage in our national life. However, the die-hards of the media and the discredited secularist elite feeding fat on the pro-Pakistani vote-bank, still keep imagining themselves as the repository of all power and wisdom, as they threaten to withdraw the certificate of Liberalism from Shri Vajpayee.

They still imagine that they have the power-strings in their hands, though the political equations have changed drastically, because of the exposure of their total bankruptcy and utter collapse of the fake platform on which they have stood so far. Hence their periodical fireworks against the basic issue on which the BJP has come to power and the bid to snatch it by hook or crook despite repeated rebuffs. Worse still, their great hopes built on the possible defection of the BJP allies in the NDA too have fallen flat to their great discomfiture. For, despite their ritual protests, the allies too know what has brought them to power via the BJP. So, they stay put for sheer self-survival despite ritual noises to impress the no less frustrated Islamic votebank. Interestingly, Mamata Didi demands ban on parties which appeal in the name of religion and then rushes to an Iftar Party in Calcutta to consult an Imam about what to do next. Obviously, it is the secularist bands which have exploited religion the most for real or imagined self-survival. No wonder, the ‘Shahi Imam’ of Delhi's Shahjahani Mosque considers himself the High Priest of the Secular State, letting off anti-India tirades at Jumma prayers.

* * *

“What affinity, what loyalty can Indian Muslims have with Babur? How can Babur be equated with Ram?” asks Sushri Uma Bharati rather innocently in a recent interview with Zee News channel. The answer was given, among others, by Dr B.R. Ambedkar long ago, in the context of the somersault of the Ali Brothers vis-a-vis Mahatma Gandhi, especially the younger Maulana, Muhammad Ali soon after the Khilafat fiasco and the Kohat riots in 1924 when he asserted that “Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and fallen (fasiq and fajir) Mussalman to be better than Mahatma Gandhi.” Ambedkar who was to record his considered thoughts about Islam, especially Indian Islam, in his book Thoughts on Pakistan, published in 1941, came to the firm conclusion that Muslims cannot co-exist with Non-Muslims, and recorded the above statement of the Maulana who was once a great votary of the Mahatma, ‘with much relish’, to fortify his argument about the impossibility of Islamic reconciliation with a non-Islamic state which for them is ever and anon a Darul Harab to be fought and finished as such to the bitter end.

Will the Babris restore at least Mathura and Kashi shrines to the Hindus as there is no doubt about their desecration and conversion?

The Maulana's statement about Gandhi was in fact made not once but twice.The first one, rather more elaborate, being: “However pure Mr. Gandhi's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of my religion inferior to any Mussalman though he be without character.” The latest variation of this jehadist spirit is “Once a mosque, always a mosque” even though it be converted from a temple, an assertion which even the Supreme Court has rejected in the above mentioned Presidential Reference Case. The Babris are however puffed up by a fake academic victory conferred on them by the Left-Libber gangs, particularly the de-nationalised media and the Left-Aligarhian negationist nexus of the erstwhile custodians ICHR who have overturned all established facts of centuries old Islamic vandalism, and summarily dismissed over 450-year old Hindu aspiration, determination and repeated attempts to recover the Babri site as the usurped Ramjanmabhoomi.

This reminds me of what even the late Socialist leader, Shri Madhu Limaye conceded in the wake of Shri L.K. Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990 in a series of articles. Limaye admitted the genuineness of the case and the bloody character of the long history of Islamic invasions and vandalism, though he said, it was better now to arrive at a reconciliation and forget it. It is scandalous how the record of Islamic desecrations, conversion and destruction of the Kafir lands the Marxist historians have sought to deny or sweep under the carpet or even obliterate, though even the earlier Muslim, British or Hindu historians have firmly established their veracity. They would deny what even Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, the Prime Minister of United Punjab, once admitted in the Punjab Assembly itself. Advising Muslims to concede Shahid Ganj Mosque site to the Sikhs gracefully, he had said in 1937 that otherwise the Hindus’ claim over to 200 to 300 converted shrines all over North India, including the Dargah of Ajmer Sharif, could be revived. Which was but an endorsement of the later assertion of internationally renowned scholars like Nirad C. Chaudhuri and V.S. Naipaul, that the Muslim era was an unmitigated era of destructive vandalism, leaving no Hindu temple intact in North India.

It is for this reason that the Hindu society broke completely with Muslims when the Islamic military terror was lifted in the 18th and 19th centuries, said Nirad Chaudhuri. Meanwhile, a Chicago-based Pakistani historian, Prof Aziz Ahmad has conceded Prof Sri Ram Sharma's researched conclusion that Mir Baqi built the Babri Masjid on the Janmabhoomi site after destruction of the old Rama temple. To quate him: “More expressive of religious zeal was the iconoclasm of Babur under whose orders Mir Baqi destroyed the temple consecrated to Rama in his birth-place at Ayodhya and built a mosque on its site.” Prof Ahmad also says that it was Hindu-Muslim ‘divided co-existence’ that led to divided India and Pakistan, in his book Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, (Oxford). Says Madhu Limaye in this context of universal Islamic (and Christian) vandalism in a number of countries, finally ending in India in its most virulent form: “Now coming to India we find that many of the Turkish Muslim invaders, from Mohamed of Ghazni on, were fanatics.

They prided themselves on being bootsikans (Idol-breakers) and considered idol worship a ‘foul and pernicious practice.’ Whatever the revisionist Marxist historians may say, they were inspired by religious zeal and considered destruction of viharas and temples of idolators Buddhists and Hindus a meritorious act. I will cite here the contemporary evidence from Al Beruni which illustrates the point: ‘A famous idol of theirs was that of Multan, dedicated to the sun, and, therefore, called Aditya. when Mohamed Ibn Alkasim Ibn Almunabhbih conquered Multan, he inquired how the town had become so very flourishing and so many treasures had been accumulated; he then found out that this idol was the cause, for there came pilgrims from all sides to visit it.

therefore, he thought it best to have the idol where it was, but he hung a piece of cow's-flesh on its neck by way of mockery. On the same place a mosque was built. when the Karmatians occupied Multan, Jalam Ibn Shaiban, the usurper, broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests. He made his mansion, which was a castle built of brick on an elevated place, the mosque instead of the old mosque, which he ordered to be shut from hatred against anything that had been done under the dynasty of the Caliphs of the house of ‘Umayyad’. when afterwards the blessed Prince Mohamed swept away their rule from those countries, he again made the old mosque the place of Friday-worship, and the second mosque was left to decay. At present it is only a barn-floor, where bunches of Hinna (Lawsonia inermis) are bound together. ‘The image (Somnath) was destroyed by Prince Mohamed—may God be merciful to him—AH 416.

He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghazni, with all its covering and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze, that had been brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somnath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghazni, on which people rub their feet to clean them.’ “I need not narrate the subsequent story of devastation wrought by the fanatic Muslim Sultans of foreign origin. I recently went through a second time A. Fuhrer's The Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in the North-western Provinces and Oudh, and I found it depressing reading. But there were bright spots where the author mentions the Madan Mohan temple ‘built under Akbar's protection.’ Akbar believed in universal harmony, a doctrine consistent with the ancient Indian tradition of religious toleration. The famous temples of Brindaban belong to the happy period inaugurated by Akbar. Unfortunately the era of universal harmony ended with the defeat of Dara Shikoh and Shahjahan's captivity.

Mathura and Varanasi became the chief targets of the usurper emperor, Mathura's most famous temple ‘dedicated to Keswavadeva, was destroyed in 1661 AD, during the reign of the iconoclastic Aurangzeb. The masjid erected on its ruins is a building of little architectural value.’ The same archaeologist wrote that under the bigoted emperor the decline of the famous holy place Banaras (Varanasi) ‘reached the depth of its ignominy. At the command of that harsh bigot its principal temples were laid in ruins and masjids constructed from their materials reared on their half-destroyed foundations’. (vide ‘Religious Intolerance and Destruction of Religious Shrines in History’ in Decline of Political System by Madhu Limaye, Wheeler Publishing, Allahabad, 1992, Pp.210-211). The Babri Zealots generally argue that there is no written record of conversion of Ramjanmabhoomi. Then, will they at least return the Mathura and Kashi sites to the Hindus, about which there is not the least such doubt?