The Ayodhya Temple-Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources c19: Chap. 14: Opening Out Historical Wounds?
The Ayodhya Temple-Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources c19
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Chap. 14: Opening Out Historical Wounds?
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History is not, cannot be, and must not be a record of goody-goody things: it is bound to be a record of things good, bad, and indifferent. Trouble starts when a section of people begin to identify themselves with idealize tyrants, ghāzī-s, and suchlike to the entire neglect and sometimes to the wholesale condemation of those who strained every nerve to achieve national integration or defend national honour. Today every 'secularist' is out to whitewash the anti-Hindu image of Aurangzībs and Ṭīpū-s and consign Sulṭān Zaynu 'l-'Ābidīn of Kashmir (1420-1470), Sulṭān Ibrāhīm 'Ādil Shāh II of Bījāpur (1580-1627), emperor Jalālu 'd-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar (1556-1605) in his later phases, and Prince Dārā Shukoh (d. 1659) to the folds of oblivion. Europe has had its share of religious tyrants, but nobody holds a brief for them excepting the negationists for the Nazis, with the result that today there is hardly any animosity between the Catholics and Protestants, between religious and scientific establishments. They do not go about finding fault with history. They take lesson from history and live in peace.
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In fact, it is never too late to mend, and right the wrong done to a nation and continuing to prove an eyesore to it. The Osmanli Turks converted Constantinople's great Cathedral of Santa Sophia into a mosque named Apa Suphiạ in 1453. The Cathedral had been the centre of the Greek Orthodox Church for nine hundred years and the greatest achievement of Byzantine art. Kamāl Atāturk took the earliest opportunity to right the historical wrong by converting the mosque into a museum of Byzȧntine glory.
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Likewise, when, after the Napoleonic wars, the Czarist Russia occupied Poland, they built a Greek Orthodox Church in the heart of Roman Catholic Warsaw. But, on regaining its freedom after World War I, Poland promptly demolished the Russian Church. Arnold J. Toynbee drew pointed attention to this fact in his Azad Memorial Lectures in New Delhi in 1950 and remarked that Muslim monuments still standing on hoary holy Hindu sites could only excerbate Hindu-Muslim feelings.
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The medieval Muslim rulers hit Hindus upon every nerve centre, so that it is difficult to decide from where to begin the tale of their suffering. As the Urdu poet says:
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*Ek do zakhm nahīṅ sārā jigar hai chhalanī*
*Dard bechārā parīshāñ hai kahāñ se uṭṭhe*
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Tr.: 'The question is not of one wound or two, the whole heart has become a sieve, so that pain is at a loss from where to arise.' Writes the German historian Wilhelm von Pochhammer, in his classic *India's Road to Nationhood*: 'The immense and uncontrollable blood-baths, the brutality with which civilian populations were massacred and women and girls were dragged into "harems" which to the Hindus appeared as no better than brothels, the introduction of a slave trade in which thousands of people including children were sold; all these generated a hatred for foreigners, the like of which had never been felt by Indians before. The hatred was increased by the shameless way in which the foreigners destroyed holy places after having first defiled them in the most senseless way.'¹ As indicated at the very outset of this work, such desecrations and destructions took place by tens of thousands. With a view just not to opening out all these historical wounds, the Hindus demand a symbolical restoration of only three of them. 'Is that too much to ask?', queries Mr. M.V.Kamath. He continues: 'Is it too much to ask of the Syed Shahabuddins and the Shahi Imams to show some respect for the wounded sensibilities of Hindus? Has grace been lost for ever from the Muslim ethos? Why should it always have to be Hindus who must give in?'¹ Mr. Kamath also observes: 'Muslim leaders want Hindus to forget the past in the grand gesture of reconciliation, as if it is the duty of the victims to show magnanimity and forgiveness. There is not a word or whisper from Muslim leaders by way of apology to what their ancestors did to the Hindus in the past, only a show of arrogance and defiance'.²
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¹ Wilhelm von Pochhammer, *India's Road to Nationhood*, p. 276
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¹ M.V.Kamath, 'Mandir-Masjid Dispute: Not Merely a Question of Law', the *Pioneer*, October 25, 1991
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² Loc. cit.
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It has also to be borne in mind that the Hindus' claim upon the Bābarī mosque deserves to be understood by the Muslims on the pattern of the Prophet's claim upon the Ka'bah. According to the Qur'ān, the Ka'bah is as old as at least Abraham and Ishmael, who built or rebuilt it as the house of Allāh.³ Abraham preceded the Prophet by some 2700 years. The Prophet's taking forcible possession of the Ka'bah is sought to be justified on the plea that it was originally the house of Allāh, not of idols. Likewise, the Hindus believe that the Bābarī mosque was originally a house of idols of Rāma, Sītā, and suchlike for less then half a millennium. Hence, they argue, it belongs to them and should be restored to them. Therefore, it does not lie in the mouth of the followers of the Prophet to find fault with the Hindus' claim over the Bābarī mosque.
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³ Q., Al-Baqarah (2) 127