INDIA - BEYOND RAM AND BABAR

INDIA –BEYOND RAM AND BABAR

India has come of age. It has outlived the contentious Ayodhya issue and in the process become more resistant and immune to big internal troubles, leading to a more matured and civilized nationhood.

The destruction of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya on 6th December, 1992 by Hindu karsevaks continues to sharply divide India on ideological and communal lines. However its force and intensity are fastly subsiding and it is highly improbable that issues of such types will gain popular support ever again in India.

The movement which surrounded the issue of the liberation of Lord Rama’s birth place (Shri Ram janm bhoomi) was essentially political in character. But it went way beyond politics owing to the emotiveness of the issue which is linked to the devotion of millions and millions of Hindus to Lord Rama. The destruction of Babri structure was much more than what it looked like. It essentially was a litmus test for the ardently secular India to protect its tolerance and multiculturalism from the onslaught of fundamentalist. And it was a test which they failed. Congress Government at the centre could not save the ill-fated Babri mosque which symbolized the victory of opportunism over sanity. Indeed it was a black day in the history of independent India.

But the entire issue doesn’t merely point to the simplistic tussle between the multicultural India and the forces of opportunism. It also needs to address the core issue of relationships between religious communities and the way politics influences religion in India. In the eyes of many, the demolition of the mosque was the general outburst of the common Hindus against the policy of appeasement practiced by the successive Congress Governments over the decades. Certain sections of intellectuals allege that the Government, over the decades had been practising the policies of regressive secularism, which was moulded and rechristened as pseudo secularism for the first time by the main driver of the Ayodhya movement Mr. L.K. Advani.

A point in case is the infamous Shah Bano episode. In the mid 1980s, a landmark judgement given by the honorable Supreme court in favour of divorced Muslim women, which would have helped solve certain social evils in the Muslim community, was overnight reversed by the then Congress Government headed by the late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, just to appease fundamentalist sections in the Muslim community. This move of the Government unnerved the liberals and the seculars and brought many fence sitters to the Hindutva fold. Arguably this event was instrumental in the grand success of a massive anti-secular, pro-Hindutva movement in large parts of Northen and Western India, in the early 1990s, culminating in the destruction of Babri mosque, which was a symbolic victory of Hindutva over secularism.

But what is most heartening, is that over the last few years we have seen India move ahead of Mandir and Masjid. In spite of repeated attempts by the hard-line sections of Sangh parivar, all attempts to revive the Ayodhya issue or rake up the issues of Kashi and Mathura have failed miserably. This all shows a sense of maturity which is developing in the Indian people and its political culture. several reasons can be attributed to the evolution of India from a medievalistic mindset to a much more modern and progressive thinking. The rise of the civil society and the intellectual class, increasing judicial activism, more accountability required from the politicians now, and the most important the serious drubbing which the saffron chauvinists received in the elections which immediately succeeded the demolition have proved conclusively that communal politics cannot be made to dominate the culture of this country, whose foundations are embedded in deep liberalism and which has a very enlightened heritage.

This doesn’t mean that BJP is completely unwelcome.As the representative of the right wing nationalism, it has an important role to play in the national political system. As a moderate Hindu minded party, it can voice its concerns, if in opposition and frame policies, if in power, through democratic and peaceful means, which do not infringe on the basic fundamental secular character of this country.

The people of India have seen massive social and political upheavals in the past which has shown a new path and led to growth and evolution. This all has made the country stronger and its future brighter.

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