There surely are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ordinary Hindus ... who have felt a deep sense of hurt at Muslim atrocities against their ancestors down the centuries and have never been reconciled to that fact.
Irrespective of what the BJP, the RSS, the VHP or the SS have said in the matter of the demolition of the Babari Masjid (and they have said a lot, often in an apologetic manner) that structure was a standing insult to the sensibilities of Hindus. It should have been relocated a long time ago. It should not have been built in Ayodhya in the first place. Ayodhya is holy for Hindus, whether one accepts it as a fact that Sri Ram was born there or whether a temple once existed as has been argued, on the Janmabhoomni site. Islam simply had no business to set up shop in Ayodhya any more than Hindus can claim a secular right to build a temple in Mecca or Medina. May it be remembered - forget Ayodhya for the nonce - that a mosque was built in Banaras and in Mathura, both cities considered holy by Hindus under the most insulting conditions; in Banaras idols of gods were strewn for the Muslim faithful to tread upon.
All this is recorded history. To tell Hindus that all that was for their own secular good and that they should forget the past is to add to insult injury. What was involved in Ayodhya was not politics; it was a self- respect movement. Mr. Ganguli concedes that "one reason why the medieval rulers attacked places of worship was political - to show that they were masters of the land and to eliminate the possibility of the shrines acting places of congregation of their opponents. "The building of a mosque in Ayodhya, Mr. Ganguli surely will concede, was not for any spiritual reasons but for simply assertng Islamic hegemony.
Mr. Ganguli dismisses as "hype" the alleged BJP claim that there is a "Hindu resurgence". According to him the "Ramjanmabhoomi movement is essentially political (and) there is nothing spiritual about it". I see nothing wrong with that why shouldn't it be political, pray? The building of the mosque in Ayodhya was essentially a political move - on Mr. Ganguli's own admission - and there was nothing spiritual about it. All that the people who demolished the mosque did was to 'reassert their self-respect which had been besmirched by a thoughtless Islamic ruler. Had a Shiv linga been installed in a Shiv Temple in Mecca next to the Kaaba, five hundred 'years ago in plain opposition to the sentiments of the people and was demolished in 1992, how would Mr. Ganguli have reacted to it?
To say that anyone who supports the demolition of the Babari Masjid has "vindicated at one stroke the sectarian fanaticism of Jinnah which led to the vivisection of India" is so far-fetched a comparison as to evoke laughter. The tragedy of India is that its intellectuals have so far lost their sense of identity that they do not even recognise their degenerate faces in the mirror. If one asserts one's self-respect, one becomes communal! Why, one would like to know, doesn't anyone ask of the Muslim leadership that it face up to past atrocities and show some signs of atonement? A magnanimous Muslim leadership would have tried to understand the deep wounds in the Hindu psyche and sought to assuage it by voluntarily giving up all claims to the Janmabhoomi site and - if nobility and magnanimity were not under such discount - even volunteered to build a Ram Mandir where the Babari Masjid stood, at its own cost. Think what that would have done to cement Hindu-Muslim relationship. The Muslim leadership, however, sought, under prodding from Hindu, BJP-baiting "secularists" to take a confrontationist stand. It paid for the folly.
Every now and then the names of Akbar or some other Muslim ruler is thrown in our face to "prove" that all Muslim rulers were benevolent and Hindu-loving. I quote from a chapter on "The Hindus under Islamic Rule" in Wilhem von Pochhammer's fascinating book "India's Road to Nationhood". Pochhammer is not Toynbee, but he is a German scholar who had made deep study of Indian history. He writes: "The first reaction of the Hindus to the occupation of North India by conquerors professing Islam was one of great horror in the face of cruelties they had never before experienced. The immense and uncontrollable bloodbaths, the brutality with which civilian populations were massacred and women and girls dragged into "harems" which to the Hindus appeared as no better than brothels, the introduction of 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 first having defiled them in the most senseless way ... If success was obtained in preserving Hindu culture in the hell of the first few centuries, the credit undoubtedly goes to the Brahmins ...
The evil that Muslim rulers did has lived after them. The past can be forgotten if Muslims today dissociate themselves from their ancestors and truly live as "rice and dal in a kichdi" (the phrase is Mr. Ganguli's) instead of fighting Hindus with their hurt psyches at every step, assuming a posture of injured innocence, that is least convincing. Mr. Ganguli plainly lies when he says that "the targeting of mosques is similarly meant to tell the Muslims that to live in peace in India they must pay the price for the sins of their ancestors. It is like the wolf in Aesop's fables telling the lamb that if it did not muddy the waters, its parents did". This is a despicable analogy. In the first place Mr. Ganguli gives the impression that "mosques" (in the plural) have been "targeted" (mark the use of the provocative word) conveying the impression that hundreds and thousands of mosques are due to be levelled down. That is a cheap shot. Yes, the VHP has asked for three - just three, out of over 3,000 recorded temples destroyed and built-over with mosques - sites to be handed over to it. Will any Muslim holy man or objective judge, despite the fact that the temples in Mathura and Banaras were desecrated?
The argument is that the sins of one's ancestors should not be visited on those living today. The analogy, again, is wrong and totally misleading, and a willingly and diabolically presented. It is not still too late for the Muslim community to show a magnanimity that transcends the past and promises hope for the future. Sins were in the past committed and there is no reason why they should not be rectified. It is well to remember that the Pope went all the way to Paris and to apologise to the French Protestants for the St. Bartholomew Dat Massacre perpetrated some 500 years ago. Mr. Ganguli should pull up the Pope for this Christian behaviour. The apology was made on August 24, 1997.
The worst enemies of Muslims are not the BJP, the RSS, the VHP or the SS, but men like Amulya Ganguli who are afraid to face the truth. Hindus are not revanchists or fascists. They would cheerfully forgive the past even if they can't forget it, but not when the Gangulis of this country keep insulting them and rub salt in their wounds. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 11 November, 1997)
