Ayodhya Bhumi Puja and Death of ‘Mughal Man’s Burden’

The Bhumi Pujan for the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya has happened. The construction of a manginifcient temple to Lord Ram at his birthplace has finally begun. It has attracted lot of attention all over. it is unsurprising given the long dispute that raged between Hindus and Muslims. There was historically a Ram Temple sacred to Hindus when in 1528, Babur destroyed the temple and constructed a mosque. Hindus never gave up and tried to re-occupy their holy space. The Supreme Court judgment on November 9, 2019 handing the side to the Hindus made possible for the construction of the temple to begin. Yet there are some who wonder the hype over the event. There are many who believe that hype over one temple is unnecessary. Yet, these arguments stem from ignorance and deracination and perhaps a combination of both. They simply fail to gauge the significance of this event. Towards locating the significance of August 5, 2020, one needs to look at the works of couple of writers and their views over the Hindu mobilization that led to the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992.

To the establishment historians of the past schooled in the left-liberal traditions, Indian history was to be imagined as per their desires and not what happened in the course of the 1000 odd years of Islamic invasion and rule. To them, India’s best interest supposedly laid in wilful denial of the Islamic hoary past. It is a different matter rather than India’s interest, it was their interest that was best served through this point of view. They imposed a narrative of any Hindu reaction to an Islamic high-handedness through a prism of communal wantonness. To them, the act of Babri Masjid was akin to breaking of the back of secularism that India was supposed to have been a follower of.

Secularism in the point of view of left liberal ecosystem was fashioned through the eyes of the Western society albeit selective. The secularism essentially applied to Hindus who were expected to abandon their traditional way of living in favour deracinated modernity. Implied was an attempt to break the links between a modern Hindu and his or her past creating virtually a new set of people schooled in left liberal thought pandering to Abrahamic expansionary vision. Furthermore, in the left-liberal vision, whatever they profess seem to become axiomatic truths any deviation of which has to be dismissed a communal. The post “Imagined History of Left and Sitaram Goel” discussed these issues at some length.  Sitaram Goel sought to engage in a debate with the so-called mainstream historians yet all he received was brickbats and contemptuous dismissal.

The leftist attempts at dominating the discourse entails professing of one version of history. Any alternative explanations are dismissed forthwith. Yet with reality, there are many competing explanations. The left has sought to wash away those explanations. India has faced the onslaught of Islamic invasion right from 9^th century or so. The destruction they have heaped upon is preserved through oral history and folklore. The left however seeks to dismiss the same as figment of imagination. The destruction of Ram temple at Ayodhya was not a figment of imagination as the left made us believe but an event that created cataclysm.

To the left, however, Islamic invasions produced a new culture syncretic and integrated and enhanced the Indian mind and history. This is often at odds with recorded oral history and historical events passed through generations. Sir VS Naipaul once called the leftist version of Islamic invasion as something of Muslims came to India as tourists in a boat, saw and went back. This would have been charitable had some recent events not demonstrated going even further. Hardly few days back an Islamic historian went to describe Rakhi and Raksha Bandhan having begun by Mughals in ostensibly an attempt to improve Hindu Muslim relations. Somebody pointed out that crackers during Diwali were a contribution of Mughal culture. Biryani seemed to have been an invention of Mughals without whom Indian cuisine would have resembled something of pre-historic ages. In short, if the leftist version carried the day, anything and everything in India was a contribution of the Islamic rule from cuisine to monuments to architecture to science to culture to festivals and such like.

Yet, as indicated above, this was totally at odds with the reality. Contrary to the Muslims as tourists story, the story was very different. There were attacks on Hindu institutions and culture. People were killed or converted at gunpoint literally to speak. Temples were not allowed to function. The very reality of Delhi not having a functioning temple constructed before 1940 speaks testimony to the impact on the Hindu psyche. Yet there are diminishing returns to fostering a narrative flying at odds with folklore and oral history.

Ayodhya was never uncontested. Through the centuries the Hindus had contested the possession and as even the Supreme Court judgment refers to, the Hindus continue to worship from the railings even when they were not allowed entry into the inner courtyard. The Ayodhya movement thus became the symbol of resistance to the leftist version of history. It did not arise in a vacuum. It was a wilful denial of any alternative version of Islamic invasion and seeking to portray the same as something extraordinary. If Karl Marx or Rudyard Kipling had their White Man’s Burden justifying the European colonial rule in Asia, Africa and America, to the Indian leftists, there was a Mughal Man’s Burden that justified the Islamic conquest of India.

Their grouse against Ayodhya movement further was fuelled by the increasing participation of the subaltern communities which was the biggest hurdle in dividing the Hindus.  In fact, an article in The Hindu expresses concern over such things. This was evident as some Hindu conservative leaders had opposed the Bhumi Pujan today ostensibly on the grounds of inauspicious dates. In the subaltern practices these do not occupy such significance thus validation of subaltern in the Hindu social structure.  Therefore the significance of August 5 Bhumi Pujan lies in the nail it hammers in the coffin of the left-liberal ecosystem that has propounded a certain theory of Hinduism. The history of the Hindu people as passed on through generations has won over the top down narrative imposed by the left justifying the Mughal Man’s Burden. For this reason alone, August 5 merits a celebration.