BABARI MASJID
Texts Silent on Ayodhya Site
Rabisankar Banerjee, Reader in Sanskrit, Jadavpur University, Calcutta
The extant editions of Valmiki Ramayana have not given the slightest hint about the exact position in the city of Ayodhya where Rama was born. Nor do other court epics like Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa, Bhatti's Ravanavadha, Kumaradasa's Janakiharana and Dhananjaya's Raghavapandaviya contain any hint as to the exact location of the birthplace of Rama. Bhasa, an ancient Indian playwright, wrote two plays on the Ramayana tale - Abhiseka and Pratima; Bhavabhuti added two more, Mahabiracarita and Uttaracarita. Another playwright, Jayadeva, wrote Prasannara- ghava at a later date. All these authors are silent on the question of the exact location of Rama's birth in Ayodhya.
The great Valmiki and all these later poets and playwrights have in fact given the airy nothing of the Ramayana a habitation and a name to the effect that the saga of Ramayana occurred in a city called Ayodhya. But none of them seem to be interested in pinpointing the exact location of Rama's birthplace. The entire tale of the Ramayana as adumbrated in the extant Sanskrit Ramayana did not attain its present final shape even at the time of Banabhatta, the author of Harsacarita. The date of Bana is a settled fact as he is referred to in Hiuen Tsang's report on Emperor Harsha's regime in India in the middle of 700 A.D.
In the Harsacarita, Bana has noted the names of great poets and the salient features of their poems, but he has omitted Valmiki. This is significant. Bana has adopted the simple style of prose in both Harsacarita and Kadambari, especially in conversations. He has also referred to various characters in the Ramayana. But he omitted the great Valmiki's name because the Ramayana was yet to attain a final form and Valmiki as an epic poet did not have as much of an impact on Bana as Vyasa, the author of Mahabharata, and this is why the name of Vyasa appears as number one in the list.
Anandavardhana (900 A.D.) the most prominent literary critic in India at the time, cited both Ramayana and Mahabharata as two glaring examples of poetry par excellence which he calls Dhvani Kavya. Anandavardhana has given a soul-stirring exposition of the Mahabharata and mentioned Santa. But he has not explained how pathos (Karuna) forms the inner meaning of the other epic, Ramayana. Nor has any follower of Anandavardhana at a later period like Kuntaka or Bhoja given an exposition of the import of the Ramayana.
All this goes to prove that Ramayana in its present form did not attain prominence as a cohesive epic poem in the days of Anandavardhana. Kalhana starts his tales of the kings of Kashmir in Rajatarangini with King Gonanda who was contemporaneous with Yudhisthira. Kalhana relates the story of King Avantivaraman who passed away while listening to the Bhagavadgita. This shows that the Mahabharata together with the Bhagavadgita eclipsed the Ramayana. The Ramayana tale was a popular folk tale just like the folk tale of King Udayana and Vasavadatta which was presented in the form of several dramas at various points of time. The village folk, as Kalidasa observed in Maghaduta, were aware of these folk tales. BJP has now discovered a place which it has identified as the spot where Ram was born. The Middle Ages saw the advent of Tulsidas who wrote anecdote after anecdote in Ramacaritamanasa, but did not bother about the exact location of Rama's birthplace. No BJP leader has yet given a cogent argument to substantiate the contention that the mosque built by Babar stands on the very spot where Rama was born.
Valmiki's great epic seems to have failed as a poem par excellence, since its readers in UP and Bihar try to single out a spot as Rama's place of birth and try to erect a temple there even by committing murderous assault on those who oppose their idea.
Vijay Sanghvi on Babari Masjid Issue in the Parliament
The BJP leader had found Narasimha Rao the best P.M. since Lal Bahadur Shastri and the BJP chief L.K Advani had even travelled to America to sing paeans for Rao and his government's economic liberalization programme. This honeymoon lasted till the BJP found it necessary to consolidate its own political base and enlarge its geographical reach to other states so that it can realize its dream of ruling from New Delhi. Its belief that the Ram Janmabhoomi temple controversy had contributed to its sudden rise from two members in the 8th Lok Sabha to 70 in the 9th and 117 in the 10th Lok Sabha. Hence it decided to exploit the same card again in July 1992 when it refused to bow to the Supreme Court and wanted to hold the kar seva for construction of a temple on the controversial site in Ayodhya. That ended the honeymoon between the Narasimha Rao government and the BJP which had functioned for almost a year as the royal opposition. Its political compulsion for growth was to name the Rao government as its main enemy. Though the Rao government survived the scare as demolition of the disputed structure of the Babari Masjid was still not on the BJP agenda, its ordeal had begun then with an end to politics of consensus.
The fifth session of this Lok Sabha became really stormy because of the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya not by design but by conspiracy of vandals who had assembled for a religious ceremony organized by the BJP and its front organizations. The traumatic shock and consequent riots in different parts of the country as well as dismissal of the BJP governments in four states were the issues that had dominated 18. sittings in the fifth session.
(Source: The Hindustan Times, 10 March, 1996)
