10-15-2003, 02:13 AM
Our Ayodhya, and Ram's
Indian Express
October 14, 2003
The mandir-masjid issue has led to Islamic and Hindu extremists
feeding on each other. And endangering India
RADHA KUMAR
[url="http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=33358"]http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.ph...ontent_id=33358[/url]
I generally don't write about domestic policy issues because I work
on foreign policy, but the Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute is fast
becoming a national security concern for India, and therefore a
concern for all the countries that seek to deepen their engagement
with India. It has also affected India's relations with Muslim
countries adversely, to an extent the Indian government is yet to
take on board.
Since the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the temple
movement has progressively polarised Hindus and Muslims and has
inadvertently become a spark for Muslim terrorism in India. The Hindu-
Muslim riots that followed the mosque's destruction were a turning
point for criminal trader and mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim, who
engineered the Bombay blasts of 1993 in retaliation. Today Ibrahim,
who has sanctuary in Pakistan, is a major financier of jihad in
India.
Though at first sight the Bombay blasts appeared to be a one-off, we
have found that they were instead the first salvo in a mounting war.
Bombay has suffered regular terrorist attacks since 1993, which have
multiplied following the Gujarat riots of 2001. Those riots too were
set off by an Ayodhya-related destruction â the burning alive of a
carriage-load of temple activists by a small group of angry Muslims.
The retaliatory riots that ensued in Gujarat, in which upwards of
2,000 Muslims were killed, sent shock waves through Muslim countries
worldwide. The impact was greatest in West Asia, whose Muslim states
had generally been sympathetic towards India, especially over
Kashmir. Antipathy towards India has become so deep in West Asia that
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is considering admitting
Russia as a member, but is resolute in refusing India's longstanding
application.
The Gujarat riots were also a shot in the arm for groups such as the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, whose leader Hafeez Sayeed lost little time in
calling on all Muslims to launch a jihad on all Hindus. Prior to the
riots, the Lashkar was composed predominantly of Punjabi Pakistanis â
it was unable to recruit non-Pakistanis, even in Kashmir. The latest
terrorist attacks in Bombay, however, indicate the Lashkar and
similar jihadi groups have begun to find recruits within India.
This is not to say that the temple movement is the root cause of
Muslim terrorism in India â nor, for that matter, are the Gujarat
riots. If there is one root cause, which many would debate, it is
surely the failure of India's elites, both Hindu and Muslim, to
integrate their communities or offer them hope of betterment and
justice.
This failure is glaringly obvious when the Gujarat government points
to the scandalous record of the Congress in the 1984 Hindu-Sikh riots
as justification for its own unlawful acts 18 years later.
A less glaring but equally obvious failure is when some human rights
campaigners accuse temple activists of deliberately setting fire to
their own brethren in order to provoke riots. Is there no limit to
the evil we are prone to imagine?
India appears to have become so inured to communal brutality that its
response to it is more and more tepid. Thus we hear the ruling
party's spokesman accuse the Central Bureau of Investigation of
being ``politically motivated'' when it presents evidence that
several ministers of the present government stood and watched the
mosque being destroyed â some even celebrated.
Couldn't M. Venkaiah Naidu have, instead, praised his party in
government for letting justice take its course? And why, when Murli
Manohar Joshi so creditably resigned as minister for human resource
development upon the court's ruling that charges be framed against
him, did the Prime Minister persuade him to withdraw his resignation?
With the temple activists demanding that the government enact
legislation for a Ram temple to be built on the Babri Masjid site,
the Ayodhya dispute is once again set to become violent. As a result
many Indians now feel Hindu and Muslim leaders should arrive at a
settlement that will allow the temple to be built, with provision for
a new mosque nearby.
But such a solution will not settle the problem â indeed, the danger
is it might exacerbate it. Muslim radicals will see the solution as
further evidence of Hindu fiat, and more of them will turn to
violence in revenge. And Hindu radicals will take it as an invitation
to force similar solutions for Kashi, Mathura and a long list of
other contentious Hindu-Muslim sites, to which Muslim radicals will
again respond with terrorism. In other words, terrorism will increase
rather than decrease.
The tragedy of it all is that there is a way out of the problem if
India's leadership were willing to espouse it. The Archaeological
Survey of India's excavations show a prior structure existed under
the site and have turned up artefacts that go back 1,000 years. Why
not continue the excavations with the goal of turning the site into a
public monument of the richness of India's history, warts and all?
One part of the site could preserve the ruins of the Babri Masjid as
an object lesson in what happens when India's different religious
groups seek to forcefully impose their demands rather than negotiate
them peacefully, while maintaining the Ram lalla shrine as it is.
Another part of the site could display the different levels of
excavation and their finds in situ, as a type of physical history
lesson that we still don't have in this country whose archaeology is
so great.
A solution of this kind would rescue the Ram of Tulsidas, Valmiki and
Gandhi from the degradation the temple activists have inflicted upon
him. Most important of all, it could pave the way for Indians to say
that they will never again turn to violence as a way of settling
religious disputes, nor to revenge as a substitute for justice.
That in turn could pave the way for seeking a collective solution to
the disputes in Mathura and Kashi, two tinderboxes waiting to be lit.
India is on the threshold of a bright future. Isn't it time to say
goodbye to the iniquities of the past, both real and imagined?
The author is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, New York
Indian Express
October 14, 2003
The mandir-masjid issue has led to Islamic and Hindu extremists
feeding on each other. And endangering India
RADHA KUMAR
[url="http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=33358"]http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.ph...ontent_id=33358[/url]
I generally don't write about domestic policy issues because I work
on foreign policy, but the Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute is fast
becoming a national security concern for India, and therefore a
concern for all the countries that seek to deepen their engagement
with India. It has also affected India's relations with Muslim
countries adversely, to an extent the Indian government is yet to
take on board.
Since the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the temple
movement has progressively polarised Hindus and Muslims and has
inadvertently become a spark for Muslim terrorism in India. The Hindu-
Muslim riots that followed the mosque's destruction were a turning
point for criminal trader and mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim, who
engineered the Bombay blasts of 1993 in retaliation. Today Ibrahim,
who has sanctuary in Pakistan, is a major financier of jihad in
India.
Though at first sight the Bombay blasts appeared to be a one-off, we
have found that they were instead the first salvo in a mounting war.
Bombay has suffered regular terrorist attacks since 1993, which have
multiplied following the Gujarat riots of 2001. Those riots too were
set off by an Ayodhya-related destruction â the burning alive of a
carriage-load of temple activists by a small group of angry Muslims.
The retaliatory riots that ensued in Gujarat, in which upwards of
2,000 Muslims were killed, sent shock waves through Muslim countries
worldwide. The impact was greatest in West Asia, whose Muslim states
had generally been sympathetic towards India, especially over
Kashmir. Antipathy towards India has become so deep in West Asia that
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is considering admitting
Russia as a member, but is resolute in refusing India's longstanding
application.
The Gujarat riots were also a shot in the arm for groups such as the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, whose leader Hafeez Sayeed lost little time in
calling on all Muslims to launch a jihad on all Hindus. Prior to the
riots, the Lashkar was composed predominantly of Punjabi Pakistanis â
it was unable to recruit non-Pakistanis, even in Kashmir. The latest
terrorist attacks in Bombay, however, indicate the Lashkar and
similar jihadi groups have begun to find recruits within India.
This is not to say that the temple movement is the root cause of
Muslim terrorism in India â nor, for that matter, are the Gujarat
riots. If there is one root cause, which many would debate, it is
surely the failure of India's elites, both Hindu and Muslim, to
integrate their communities or offer them hope of betterment and
justice.
This failure is glaringly obvious when the Gujarat government points
to the scandalous record of the Congress in the 1984 Hindu-Sikh riots
as justification for its own unlawful acts 18 years later.
A less glaring but equally obvious failure is when some human rights
campaigners accuse temple activists of deliberately setting fire to
their own brethren in order to provoke riots. Is there no limit to
the evil we are prone to imagine?
India appears to have become so inured to communal brutality that its
response to it is more and more tepid. Thus we hear the ruling
party's spokesman accuse the Central Bureau of Investigation of
being ``politically motivated'' when it presents evidence that
several ministers of the present government stood and watched the
mosque being destroyed â some even celebrated.
Couldn't M. Venkaiah Naidu have, instead, praised his party in
government for letting justice take its course? And why, when Murli
Manohar Joshi so creditably resigned as minister for human resource
development upon the court's ruling that charges be framed against
him, did the Prime Minister persuade him to withdraw his resignation?
With the temple activists demanding that the government enact
legislation for a Ram temple to be built on the Babri Masjid site,
the Ayodhya dispute is once again set to become violent. As a result
many Indians now feel Hindu and Muslim leaders should arrive at a
settlement that will allow the temple to be built, with provision for
a new mosque nearby.
But such a solution will not settle the problem â indeed, the danger
is it might exacerbate it. Muslim radicals will see the solution as
further evidence of Hindu fiat, and more of them will turn to
violence in revenge. And Hindu radicals will take it as an invitation
to force similar solutions for Kashi, Mathura and a long list of
other contentious Hindu-Muslim sites, to which Muslim radicals will
again respond with terrorism. In other words, terrorism will increase
rather than decrease.
The tragedy of it all is that there is a way out of the problem if
India's leadership were willing to espouse it. The Archaeological
Survey of India's excavations show a prior structure existed under
the site and have turned up artefacts that go back 1,000 years. Why
not continue the excavations with the goal of turning the site into a
public monument of the richness of India's history, warts and all?
One part of the site could preserve the ruins of the Babri Masjid as
an object lesson in what happens when India's different religious
groups seek to forcefully impose their demands rather than negotiate
them peacefully, while maintaining the Ram lalla shrine as it is.
Another part of the site could display the different levels of
excavation and their finds in situ, as a type of physical history
lesson that we still don't have in this country whose archaeology is
so great.
A solution of this kind would rescue the Ram of Tulsidas, Valmiki and
Gandhi from the degradation the temple activists have inflicted upon
him. Most important of all, it could pave the way for Indians to say
that they will never again turn to violence as a way of settling
religious disputes, nor to revenge as a substitute for justice.
That in turn could pave the way for seeking a collective solution to
the disputes in Mathura and Kashi, two tinderboxes waiting to be lit.
India is on the threshold of a bright future. Isn't it time to say
goodbye to the iniquities of the past, both real and imagined?
The author is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, New York