Your
Lordships Have Turned Upon A Community In A Daze
Saeed Naqvi
Your Lordships have turned upon a community
in a daze. Altaf Hussain Hali’s verse comes to mind:
“Kisi bekus ko ai bedad gar mara to kya
mara?
Jo khud hi mar raha ho usko gar mara to
kya mara?”
(What valour is there in turning upon
the meek?
Or those who are by themselves running
out of life?)
Your mediation effort has provided
oxygen to those who are now, quite justifiably, picking holes in what you have
delivered as a judgement. This is more grist to the Mill of those in pursuit of
the Hindu Rashtra by 2025, centenary of the RSS. By way of digression, let’s reflect
on the following:
“Beautiful Aheliya, who had turned to
stone because of a curse, came back to her gorgeous self when, you, O’Lord,
touched the stone; you transformed one from the animal kingdom into your most
trusted, Hanuman; you humanized a demon. When will you ever bestow your boon on
me?” The one seeking a boon from Rama is Abdul Rahim Khan e-Khana (1556-1627),
one of Moghul Emperor Akbar’s most powerful courtiers and contemporary of
Tulsidas, author of Ramayana. What is more, this shloka by Rahim is in
Sanskrit. The two were in correspondence on subjects of common interest,
including a poetic metre, much favoured by Tulsi ––
Barvai
chhand.
How would Rahim, a remarkable poet in
Awadhi and Sanskrit, have regarded what their Lordships dished out on Ayodhya?
Indeed, what would have been the reaction of my mother, who accompanied me to
Ayodhya in 1989 to watch the Shilanyas or brick laying ceremony ordered by
Rajiv Gandhi? She found Ayodhya a temple-town where a mosque on the ground
claimed by Hindus as the birth place of Rama was an “incongruity”.
According to her, a Muslim could spread
out his prayer-mat in the direction of Mecca anywhere and say his “namaz”. A
Hindu consecrates his “idol”, which then lives in the temple eternally. Muslims
must withdraw from the “masjid e fitna”, or a mosque of conflict. Likewise, the
Gyanvapi mosque in Kashi and Shahi Idgah in Mathura.
If any Muslim accompanied me to
Varanasi, he would require minimal sensitivity to see that the Gyanvapi masjid
insults the Hindu. It sits on the shoulder of one of Hinduism’s three most
important shrines – Kashi Vishwanath Mandir.
The temple lights must have cast a spell
on Urdu’s finest poet, Mirza Ghalib. He wrote his longest poem “Chiragh e
dair”, “Mandir ka diya”, or the Lamp in the Temple. He wrote:
“Ibadat khana e naqoosian ast
Hama na kaabay e Hindostan ast”
(This is the place of worship for those
who make music from conch shells
This, truly is the Kaaba of Hindustan)
No description of Kashi Viswanath would
be complete without the strains of Bismillah Khan’s Shehnai. The first Independence
Day celebrations in 1947 at the Red Fort would certainly have been incomplete
without the strains of Kafi from the very same Shehnai.
Against the backdrop of so much cultural
commerce and adoration for the land, its civilization one learnt to discard the
warts of history. Yes, mosques in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura would hurt Hindus
in perpetuity, some of us have long believed. But it is extremely difficult for
a community, sliding down a slope of status reversal to check its trajectory
and scream: “We want to be generous; gift those three to the Hindus.” But they
can be guided by deft messaging and an open minded leadership, not middlemen
hawking religion.
At this stage, I hope I will be forgiven
if I break a confidence. Sri Sri Ravishankar of the Art of Living, led the trio
appointed by the Supreme Court to explore possible mediation between the
parties to the Ayodhya dispute. He is someone I have known. I shared with him
my sense of how Muslims feel.
First, the anti-Muslim slant on most
channels pushes the community into their laagar, not the best corner from where
to consider compromises. The post 9/11 Islamophobia provides a canopy under
which regional anti Muslim bias finds oxygen.
Secondly, there is no uniform profile of
an Indian Muslim – Mapilla in Kerala, Labbai in Tamil Nadu, Bengali Muslims
would have a response on Ayodhya many shades different from the Muslims impaled
in the cow belt. But, even so, if the self-appointed leaders of Muslims can somehow
be circumvented, there may be traction for new ideas. Some well-meaning friends
discussed an audacious idea: supposing a comprehensive opinion poll was
undertaken to gauge what compromise formula would be acceptable to all sides,
Muslims particularly.
Muslims have learnt the hard way that,
by digging their heels in for the mosque, they have provided the exact foil for
Hindutva to catapult itself into the stratosphere. Each time the known pro
mosque enthusiasts raise their voices, the media finds just the decibel level to
help harden the saffron that much more.
The trick of casting Muslims as the foil
for saffronizing the atmosphere has advanced Hindutva to a stunning 353 seats
in a Lok Sabha of 543. So successful has the strategy been in the context of
Ayodhya that the BJP would have to be as inept as the Congress not to pitch its
Hindutva even higher.
The march towards Hindu Rashtra has quickened
but sensible folk have not given up. They are still talking of compromises. The
ailing cleric, Saiyid Kalbe Sadiq has repeatedly said, “Muslims should gift the
land for the temple even if they win the case.” This mood of generosity and
compromise would have been encapsulated for the opinion poll on which my friend,
pollster Ranjit Chib had already started working. Unavoidable constraints came
in the way.
Your Lordships have frozen the spirit of
generosity which was stirring in Muslim enclaves. You have commanded them to
acquiesce not urged them to give. People were working towards a happier
conclusion. What was so sacrosanct about the deadline for the judgement? Was it
choreographed to coincide with the Kartarpur corridor event? A little more time
would have gone a long way towards making the right kind of history.
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