Godhra – Some Questions
--Rajesh -- Wembly

On the 27th of February 2002, a murderous mob of Muslims attacked the Sabarmati express in Godhra, killed Hindu Karsevaks by burning them alive. As pointed out by Rajeev Srinivasan in www.rediff.com, Godhra happens to the birthplace of Aurangzeb, one of the most fanatic Muslim rulers India has ever seen. Did Aurangzeb laugh in his grave?

Indian mainstream media said that a bunch of ‘miscreants’ murdered the Hindus returning from Ayodhya. Did anyone of us actually think that the neo-nazis or ‘Klu Klux Klan’ killed these Hindus? What was the need for concealing the identity of the killers? Our prime minister directed VHP to curb their activities directed towards constructing Ram temple at Ayodhya. Why? Was it the ‘provocation’ for the Muslims, as claimed by the Indian mainstream media? In independent India, worshipping lord Rama is a provocation for violence?

Riots followed, Gujarat burnt for a few days, about 500 Muslims were killed, and some of them were burnt alive. Indian media did not conceal the identity of the killers this time. Whole world knew that the killers were Hindus. Why this double standard?

‘Genocide in the land of Gandhi’ – writes Anjali Modi in ‘The Hindu’ (should this newspaper be renamed ‘The Anti-Hindu’?), dated March 10th 2002. In a large column, she tries to establish that the killings of Muslims in Gujarat would have happened anyway, Godhra or no Godhra. Her reason is that the state government and the central government were just looking for a convenient moment – they wanted to get rid of the Muslim population in Gujarat anyway, since this population would never become their vote bank. So, it was state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, according to Ms. Modi. To prove her point she attributes many statements to many unnamed sources. In the same page, in a much smaller column, she tries to establish that the Godhra carnage was most probably just an accident, without any long-term planning. She says that in a communally sensitive town like Godhra, assembling a violent mob of 2000 with petrol-acid bomb-sword-sticks in the early morning would not take much time at all. She also says that the carnages like burning Sabarmati express (at this point, we should all sing Kavi Pradeeps “De di haame azadi bina kharag bina dhal, Sabarmati ke sant tune kar diya kamal…”) could be triggered by fairly small altercations, or just by the very passing of ‘Karsevaks’ through the area! Does she really believe all that she wrote? Or, is it because she may be a salaried employee of ‘The Anti-Hindu’ with a boss who would fume if she tried to write otherwise? Why this chicanery? Is it a strategy to achieve a mythical Hindu-Muslim unity? If so, this strategy has failed miserably since the days of ‘Khilafat agitation’. OK, let’s believe her for a moment – strictly for arguments sake – that the carnage in Godhra was triggered by some petty altercations and by the news that Karsevaks are passing. What does it say about the Muslims – would they burn innocent men-women-children alive just because of some petty altercations or just because these people were chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’?

Everyone condemned the retaliation. Was it uncivilized? Yes. It was ugly, brutal, and savage, to say the least. Was it unexpected? Well, if the Muslims and ‘secularists’ thought that the Hindus wouldn’t retaliate, they better read the Indian history of the last thousand years. Hindus don’t take things lying down – that’s a Buddhist ideology, not for the Hindus. If the Hindus had not retaliated in the last thousand years, our society wouldn’t have been here now.

Why was the retaliation so uncivilized? Well, let’s face the facts – India is witnessing civil war, and civil war is no tea party, it’s a business of brutality. The seed of this civil war was sown when the first batch of Muslim invaders were able to enter Afghanistan. Except for the years of British rule, when the British were effectively able to disarm the peasants, India has been witnessing Hindu-Muslim war for the last thousand years. Before the British came, it was a war in every part of the country, albeit in different degrees. When the British rule was consolidated, it had lessened. After independence, this war is scattered, but not stopped by any means. The blood-soaked partition of the country has not lessened this war. Wars are not civilized and nice negotiations - they are brutal. No matter how much the ‘secular-progressive-liberal’ intelligentsia wants us to forget the history of the last thousand years, history is history. Neither do the Muslims want to forget the days of their barbaric rule over the Hindus (this barbarism is, of course, sanctioned in their religion), nor do the Hindus forget the history of nation-wide Islamic vandalism and all the humiliation associated with it. The extent of this war may vary, the contour may vary – it may be the Indian army versus the Jehadis in Kashmir instead of rampaging mob in the Ahmedabad streets, but the fact remains – this is a war. For the Hindus, either we win this war, or we are no more. The moderate Muslims may help us, but waiting for a group of moderate Muslims may not be all that prudent an idea – we cannot lower our guard. Our prime minister rightly said that this violence is a shame on the nation – he was right – he perhaps knows in his heart that such shameful violent acts are going to happen again and again till such time the violent ideology of Islam is alive.

Godhra is linked to Ayodhya – no matter whoever says otherwise. Will the massacre of the Hindus in Godhra stop the ‘Ramjanambhoomi’ movement? Let us keep in mind that the Somnath temple was destroyed many times – but Hindus rebuilt it every time – the last time it was Sardar Ballabhbhai Patel who took the initiative. Mulayam Singh’s police killed more than 2500 Hindus on the day of ‘Shilanyash’ – that did not stop the movement; it went on to become the biggest mass movement independent India has ever seen. This writer’s father, in the course of a discussion with this writer, asked whether building Ram temple in Ayodhya is the biggest priority for the nation. Relevant question, no doubt, but is there a correct answer to this? It’s a pluralistic society, a democratic one at that. People would have different priorities, and that’s a fact of life. Many columnists are busy pointing out that the support for ‘Ram temple movement’ is fading away – Mr. Dilip D’Souza did that in www.rediff.com. They cite their experiences gathered by interacting with many Hindus. Many of such Hindus are working very hard to earn their daily living, and it’s reasonable on their part if they do not want riots – they may not mind giving up the cause of Ram temple if that helps in maintaining the fragile peace. It’s a fact that the whole of Hindu society has never been united for any particular cause – for that matter, it’s difficult to find such all-encompassing unity for any particular cause in the societies that are not theocratic ones. Pakistani society is very united when it comes to Kashmir – theirs is a theocratic society. There are Hindus, who, even when a supporter of ‘Hindutva’, are not bothered much about Ram temple. All of these do not neutralize the fact that a very large number of Hindus want Ram temple to be built in Ayodhya, and many of them do not mind taking a lot of trouble for this, including losing their lives.

Are the people agitating for Ram temple in Ayodhya fanatic, and ‘Hindu Fundamentalists’? Recently, a reputed market research organization, ORG-MARG conducted a survey asking people whether they support building a Ram temple at the disputed site. An overwhelming 78 % said that they do! Considering that Hindus are about 85% of Indian population, what does it say about Hindu consensus on Ram temple issue? Are all these people ‘fundamentalists’, ‘fanatics’, and ‘fascists’? Almost the whole of Indian intelligentsia is against the Hindus who agitate for Ram temple in Ayodhya. Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Swadhvi Ritamvara, Ashok Singhal, and Mahant Ramchandra Paramhans – all of them are ridiculed by the Indian media and ‘secular’ politicians – some of them are regularly appearing before the Liberhans commission. It appears that the ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, and ‘secularist’ Indian intelligentsia and politicians are missing one point – this movement for ‘Ramjanambhoomi’ did not start at the top – people who demolished the Babri Masjid didn’t quite care for the order from top leaders of Sangh Parivar. How many Karsevaks are there in India – millions? Would the Liberhans commission be able to try all of them?

What is the future of BJP, the party that came to power largely because of their association with the Ram temple movement? Can they permanently put this issue at the backburner? Hindus are very persistent temple builders – as pointed out by Koenraad Elst in www.voi.org, and BJP needs to keep this in mind. BJP or no BJP, UP election or not, friendly government at the center or not, Hindus will not be cowed down. People who expect the Hindus to give up on this count need to understand something – Ram is one of the most revered heroes of the Hindus, and Hindus are too conscious about their history to forget and give up Ramjanambhoomi. Sitaram Goel and other Hindu scholars have compiled a list of over 2000 mosques all over India that were built after demolishing temples. Hindus are not asking for all these to be returned to them. They had originally asked for the return of their holy places in Ayodhya, Varanasi, and Mathura. It was Advani who played an important role in persuading the VHP to give up the claim for Varanasi and Mathura, and ask for only Ayodhya. The mosque in Ayodhya had been a functional temple definitely since 1949. There are indications that even before 1949, this mosque was not being used for regularly held prayers by the Muslims of Ayodhya. This mosque stood more as a symbol of humiliation for the Hindus than being a holy place for the Muslims. There are strong evidences that a temple was demolished and mosque was built on that, using construction material from the temple ruins. On the top of all these, VHP gave written offer of relocating the mosque at their cost. How much more compromise are the Hindus expected to make? Why cannot the Muslims make some compromise on this one occasion? How much Hindu goodwill they stand to gain from this one compromise?

Babar was the first Mughal Ghazi to rape India – it’s immaterial whether he himself or his deputy Mir Baqi, on Babar’s orders, destroyed the temple at Ayodhya. Babar was from the Ferghana valley-Samarkhand region of present-day Uzbekistan. History may truly be an old cunning man with an everlasting memory and a chuckle – only a few months back the ruling Islamic establishment of Uzbekistan was fearing a huge thrust from Taliban – the fanatic upholders of the ‘Great’ religion of Islam!

Will the court verdict go against the Hindus? It may. Will the Hindus drop their agitation then? VHP might, but the countless ordinary Hindus who are not necessarily card-carrying cadre of VHP, may not. Babri Masjid was the only known mosque in the whole world, in the vicinity of which the Hindus had been going to pray to their dear ‘Ramlala’. The Islamic invaders, upon forcefully taking over a temple, would first slaughter a cow there or kill a Brahmin – both the acts would automatically render the place unsuitable for the Hindus for the purpose of worship, unless proper ‘Shuddhi’ is done. No ‘Shuddhi’ was possible when Babri Masjid was there, but the Hindus would still go there, generations after generations, and pray to ‘Ramlala’ near the mosque. What prompted the Hindus to make compromise on this seemingly unsurpassable rule? What does it say about the Hindu attachment to Ramchandra? What role did the Bhajan ‘Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram…’ play in the Indian freedom struggle?

If the court verdict goes against the Ram temple, would the Indian state apply its full force against the Hindus agitating for Ram temple? How many Hindus can the Indian state kill? According to the estimate of Prof. K. S. Lal, between 1000 AD and 1512 AD, the population of India had decreased by 80 million! After the army of the Bahmani Sultan sacked Hampy, the capital of the Vijaynagar empire, the whole population was decimated, a large region was entirely depopulated. Millions of Hindus died during partition of the country. Hindus are still alive and a force that is going through a revival, though often chaotic and slow in nature. Is the Indian state powerful and brutal enough to decimate the Hindu attachment to Ram forever? The more pertinent question: would anything be left of India, as we know her, after Ram is permanently driven out of this country? Can India survive her detachment from Ram?

If the court verdict goes for the Ram temple, will the Muslims agree with it peacefully? If the Shahbano case was any indication, they will not take this one peacefully either. The theocratic ideology of Islam does not recognize court, constitution, nation-state, or democracy. Autocratic rulers rule every Islamic state (Turkey cannot be considered one), and democracy is undermined. Syed Sahabuddin and other Muslim leaders are saying that the court verdict would be final – it’s disgusting to see their selective respect for the rule of law – did the Muslims respect rule of law during Shahbano case?

Can court decide on the matter of faith? Can court decide whether Ram was born in the disputed site? Does the court have methods of accounting for the collective memory of the Hindus who have since millennia attached Ayodhya to their most-revered hero? Why did the Calcutta high court not admit the ‘Quran petition’ filed by Chandmal Chopra and Harishchandra Chakravarti? The petitioners had quoted verses from Quran to prove that Quran promotes violence against people of other religions, as pointed out by Sitaram Goel in www.voi.org. Any other book will be banned for this offence. Then why not ban Quran? Also, did Babar destroy the temple after taking courts consent? Wasn’t he himself the court?

The ‘Secularist’ media-politician-intellectual groups and the Islamic fundamentalists ask Hindus to prove that Ram was born in the disputed site. Koenraad Elst asked a pertinent question on this in www.voi.org: Why don’t they ask the PLO and Fatah to prove that Muhammad (PBUH) actually descended from Heaven on a winged horse at the site of now Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem? The whole Arab world is fighting Israel for decades now, and all the peace efforts failed at the ultimate sticking point – control of Jerusalem. Jews wouldn’t let the control of ‘Temple Mount’ go to Arab hand, and the Muslims wouldn’t accept Israeli administration in the area where Al-Aqsa mosque is situated (only the Western wall of the Jewish temple is still standing, otherwise ‘Temple Mount’ complex is actually the mosque itself).

After the recent riots in Gujarat, many columnists condemned the retaliation, with noble intentions, as this writer would like to believe. Many of them compared February 27th with September 11th, and lamented that while America was able to control the few incidents of violent retaliation in their country, India couldn’t. These columnists ignored one basic fact. America is now a largely stable society. 500 years ago, an entirely different set of people lived in America, with their own culture, their society, their trees, their mountains, their ocean, and their numerous gods. Then came the invaders – the businessmen, the venomous evangelists, the ruthless generals with their superior arms, and numerous other people in search of greener pastures. What happened after that is history. However, the history before this 500 years, and people who built this history is almost completely erased. The violent conflict between the Native Americans and the European settlers was resolved entirely in favour of the invaders, within a few hundred years. Europeans built an entirely new country, with massive industries, unprecedented military power, never-seen-before infrastructure, and empire-like transnational corporations. At the turn of 21st century, 97% of America’s old growth forests are gone. Native Americans are still there in America, but only a couple of millions of them. They live in reservations, in abject poverty. They haven’t converted to Christianity yet, and there religious rituals are banned long back after these were termed ‘Ghost dance’. Native Americans are defeated people. The substance abuse rate and suicide rate among them are very high and it may not be long before they are extinct in the present-day USA. It’s important to remember that there is no stalemate here; the war was won entirely by the settlers. This is not the scenario in India. Hindus have been constantly attacked since the last thousand years, their temples were destroyed, their people converted, their agrarian fields burnt, their women raped, their literature destroyed, their Brahmins beheaded, their cows slaughtered, and their civilization thrashed. But, we are not over – we are alive. Islam, Christianity, European colonialism, and Communism have bruised us, but haven’t been able to kill us. It’s a civilizational conflict, and it has been a stalemate so far. If the barbarians win, India will not be there. If we win decisively, India will see tranquility again. Retaliation, how much ever undesirable, will be there in this war. Black hills area in South Dakota was a sacred place for the Sioux Indians of the area. They considered it the abode of their gods, just as we consider Kailash Mountain the abode of Shiva. Black hills is now a premier tourist attraction. In Mt. Rushmore, giant faces of Washington-Jefferson-Theodore Roosevelt-Lincoln have been carved out of hill. Apart from other entertainment facilities, there is even a casino in one of the small towns of this region. The last Sioux firebrand leader ‘Crazy Horse’ died fighting the white settlers perhaps more than a century back. Amarnath caves or Thirumala hills are still holy places for the Hindus, and not tourist spots for rich American or European tourists. This, precisely, is the difference between present-day America and India. When Amarnath cave becomes tourist spot, India will not be there, there will be smaller states that will continuously fight each other, much like present-day Arabian Peninsula, or pre-second world war Europe. After September 11th, for a couple of months, Americans were terrorized by the prospects of Anthrax infection. The forefathers of the present-day Americans perpetrated the oldest instance of bio-terrorism that is recorded in the history. Bed sheets were taken from the beds of the small pox infected white soldiers. These were then distributed among the Native American POWs. The Native Americans were then allowed to go back to their villages, which ultimately caused villages after villages being completely decimated by the deadly disease. It’s a well-known historical fact that disease born by the Europeans killed a large number of Native Americans, while the superior arms destroyed the others. In the present-day Mexico, the Mexican government, though helped by the American government, is unable to put down the Zapatista rebels. Zapatista rebels are Chantal Indians who live in the densely forested province of Chiapas. Unlike many other historical armed struggles, they fight for a genuine representative democracy in their country. They are getting stronger day-by-day, and many people have started to believe that Indians of America are staging a slow but decisive comeback. Will the soul of ‘Crazy Horse’ have the last laugh then? History is very powerful, far more than we can even imagine, and Native Americans might as well claim their country back. Similarly, Ram temple in the land of Ram may not be a distant dream at all. After all, though for the westernized Hindus like this writer or for the infamous secularist-Muslim-Christian-Communist nexus of India, Ram may be a disputed character. However, for the silent majority of Hindus, Ramayana is no epic; it’s their blood. Ram is in their collective memory, and Hindus did not lose their memory.