Ayodhya and After

439 Pages·2017·1.78 MB·English

Ayodhya and After:
Issues before Hindu Society

Koenraad Elst
(1991)

Voice of India
New Delhi
CONTENTS

Introduction
Chapter 1: Summary of the Historical Question
Chapter 2: Belief and History
Chapter 3: Righting the Wrongs of History
Chapter 4: Ram Janmabhoomi and the Courts
Chapter 5: Ram Janmabhoomi Politics
Chapter 6: Communalists and their Communities
Chapter 7: Press Reporting on Ayodhya
Chapter 8: The Misuse of History
Chapter 9: Secularism and India’s Integrity
Chapter 10: Secularism As it Is
Chapter 11: The Riots
Chapter 12: Book Banning
Chapter 13: Facing the Truth the Only Solution
Chapter 14: Hindu Fascism
Chapter 15: The Hindu Movement
Glossary
Appendix I: Girilal Jain on Hindu Rashtra
Appendix II: Ram Swarup on Indian Secularism
Notes
Introduction
I am not a Hindu. And I am certainly not a Muslim. So,
when I started writing my earlier book „Ram Janmabhoomi vs.
Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu-Muslim Conflict‟, in the
spring of 1990, I was an outsider to this conflict between
Hindus and Muslims. But as I ventured deeper into the unique
configuration of forces now existing in India, I saw that this
was not a conflict between just any two communities. It is not
just a struggle between one self-interest and another self-
interest. It is a struggle between very unequal contenders, with
unequal motives for waging this struggle at all.
On the one hand, there is the society that has continued the
age-old civilization of this country. It has been badly bruised
by centuries of foreign rule and oppression, with the moral
losses more serious than the territorial and cultural ones; it
suffers of self-forgetfulness and lack of self-respect. But it is
still far better off than most of the cultures that have been
overrun by the Muslim conquerors or the European
colonizers. It has a real chance of coming through.
On the other hand, there is a community which is allowed
to function within this larger society, but which has the roots
of its separate identity outside this society's age-old
civilization. These people's ancestors were in many cases
pulled out of Hindu society and made members of the Muslim
community under duress. Now, they would automatically
evolve back into Hindu society, were it not for some
politicians and theologians who instill a separate communal
identity in them.
The Ayodhya movement, which wants to reintegrate the
sacred place of Ram Janmabhoomi into the living Hindu
tradition by building a Mandir on it, is at the same time an
invitation to the Muslim Indians to reintegrate themselves into
the society and the culture from which their ancestors were cut
off by fanatical rulers and their thought police, the
theologians. It is thus an exercise in national integration.
The struggle of Hindu society is not primarily with the
Muslim community. The most important opponents of Hindu
society today are not the Islamic communal leaders, but the
interiorized colonial rulers of India, the alternated English-
educated and mostly Left-leaning elite that noisily advertises
its secularism. It is these people who impose anti-Hindu
policies on Hindu society, and who keep Hinduism down and
prevent it from proudly raising its head after a thousand years
of oppression. The worst torment for Hindu society today is
not the arrogant and often violent agitation from certain
minority groups, nor the handful of privileges which the non-
Hindu communities are getting. The worst problem is this
mental slavery, this sense of inferiority which Leftist
intellectuals, through their power positions in education and
the media, and their direct influence on the public and
political arena, keep on inflicting on the Hindu mind.
These Leftist intellectuals work in a strange collusion with
the Islamic fanatics. Normally, the atheist Left should be the
sharpest opponent of religious obscurantism and dogmatic
adherence to anti-universalist belief systems like Islam. But in
India, the two work happily together for the destruction of
their common enemy: Hindu Dharma. Of course, the Leftists
are mistaken if they think they can use the Muslims for their
own ends. It is a one-way collaboration, and increasingly so, as
the Left is put on the defensive while Islam is still on the
offensive. So far, the Left has rendered some fine intellectual
services to the cause of Islam. It has strongly supported the
movement for the Partition of India on the basis of the Islamic
Two-Nation Theory. After Partition, it has used its increasing
hold on the entire intellectual and educational scene in India to
paralyze all criticism of the historical record and ideological
character of Islam.
Then again, the impression that this westernized elite is
merely being used for Islamic communal designs, may be
superficial. This elite itself is quite confident that it is in no
way threatened by Islamic self-assertion. And rightfully so:
Islam cannot seriously challenge modernity once it has really
taken off and shaped the polity (as it has in India, far more
than in the Shah's Iran). While Islamic resurgence may pose a
physical threat to Hindu society, the deeper challenge and the
sharpest disdain are coming from the Left-leaning westernized
(short: Nehruvian) establishment.
So, one of the first tasks in the awakening of Hindu society
is to scrutinize and expose the Nehruvian establishment, its
political and, more fundamentally, its intellectual dimensions.
Today, that is becoming easy. When in the fifties people like
Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel were waging an intellectual
struggle against Communism, they were up against a dense
fog of widespread fascination with this intrusive ideology. But
in the nineties the sky is clearing up, and we witness the swan
song of the once so arrogant Leftist intellectuals even in their
last strongholds. It is a foregone conclusion that their empire is
nearing its end; it is just a matter of not letting their exit drag
on for longer than necessary, and being prepared to fill the
vacuum.
At the intellectual level, Hindus will soon be able to breathe
freely. They will be able to rediscover and reformulate the
numerous valuable expressions of the one Sanatana Dharma.
They will be able to affirm the unity and integrity of this
Sanatan Dharma, without being falsely accused of assimilative
communalism when they restate the scientific fact that
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are full members of the one
Hindu commonwealth of schools and sects. They will be able
to reaffirm the unity and integrity of Hindu society, and to
debunk the casteist and regionalist separatisms that have been
fostered by its enemies and equipped with a pseudo- historical
basis. They will be able to put the evils of Hindu society into the
correct historical perspective on the basis of the real facts, and
judge them by universal standards rather than by the hostile
ad hoc standards that have been applied to Hindu society by
its enemies.
Equipped with a renewed self-awareness, Hindus will be
able to face the challenge posed by the increasingly militant
Muslim world. So far, with the help of the leftists, Islam has
been able to impose a kind of Emergency on India. During
Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule, everyone was perfectly free
to sing the praise of Nehru's daughter, but criticizing her was
a dangerous thing to do. All the Indian intellectuals refer with
indignation to this episode (during which the Constitution
was amended to make India a secular socialist republic).
Similarly, it is allowed to eulogize Islam as a religion of peace
and brotherhood, but scrutinizing Islamic history and
doctrine, or merely asking some critical questions, is quite out
of bounds. Books that do these things have a good chance of
getting banned, with the tacit or explicit approval of the
secularists, and newspaper editors have interiorized this bank
on critical writings about Islam. At the intellectual level it is
very easy to put Islam on the defensive and cool down its
arrogance, just by doing those very things which this
Emergency wants to prevent. If Hindus take cognizance of the
real texts of Islam, the real doctrines they embody, the real
story of the Prophet's mission and career, and the real story of
the application of these doctrines in the Islamic conquest of
India, then they will soon shed their habit of eulogizing this
imperialist ideology. If moreover they apply the precise
psychological categories, which Hindu tradition has
developed, to understand the quality of consciousness that has
generated the central texts and doctrines of Islam, they will
soon be cured of their mental subservience to Islam.
It is my conviction that Islam will not last very much
longer. In the confrontation with the rational spirit, which was
present in Hindu thought since millennia, but which has been
brought centre-stage in modern culture and education by the
West, the dogmas of Islam cannot survive. The universalist
attitude of science revolts against the belief that one man could
get a special message from none less than the Creator of the
Universe, while others are excluded from any such direct
contact. The critical attitude of science rejects the demand that
we accept Mohammed's claim to prophethood without
verification. Islam has no satisfying reply to this challenge of
science and rationality.
Moreover, the present upsurge in Islamic activism, no
matter how threatening it may look, will not be able to deliver
the goods. It may mobilize popular aggression against the
non-Muslims of the world, but when it comes to running a
country, it will note fare better than Communism. Of course, it
has more roots in the soul of the people. But it is faced with
material needs and popular attitudes and expectations that
modernity has spread to all the countries of the world. Even
Islamic rulers, even in a dictatorship, somehow have to please
their people. To do this, they need the material products of
modernity, if only because in the overpopulated countries of
today, a modern infrastructure is indispensable to feed the
people (we needn't even mention the fondness of Islamic as
much as Kafir rulers for modern weaponry). So, they cannot
avoid bringing in modern technology, therefore modern
science, therefore modern thinking. While modern thinking is
certainly not the final word in the progress of humanity, it is
quite sufficient to undermine the exclusivist beliefs central to
Islam.
With that, we have only demonstrated the weakness of
Islam. It cannot possibly win against the culture of rationality
and humanism. However, it can hold out for some time and
still gain a lot in numbers and power. How fast it will crumble,
depends partly on the emergence of people, especially born
Muslims, who go in and actively criticize Islam in forums with
Muslims audiences. It also depends on the frankness and
serenity with which non-Muslims who are in regular contact
with Muslims, such as the Hindus, express their skepsis
regarding the central claims of Islam, and the logic and
humanity with which they present alternative views.
Confronting Islam with rational criticism will constitute a
turning-point, very delicate but inevitable. But it is the positive
attraction of superior (i.e. more rational and humanist)
thought and culture that will be the single most important
factor in the inescapable decline of Islam.
The Hindu reply to Islam should consist mostly in a
positive attitude of understanding, rooted in Hindu
humanism and springing from the knowledge of the soul
which Hindu tradition has been cultivating since ages. It
should, for instance, make a careful distinction between the
two cultural components of the present Islamic upsurge: one is
the self-assertion against the imposition of the spiritually
impoverished (secularized), reductionist culture of the West,
which is a stand Hindus may share; the other is the fanatical
imposition of the Islamic belief system. The Hindu should
understand the mental and the social processes that tie people
to such irrational belief systems, and maintain in his attitude
and judgment a scrupulous distinction between the human
beings that have been caught in this belief system, and the
Islamic belief system itself. This will be easier, more credible
and less hostile, if he takes an equally sobre look at the state of
his own culture, dropping both the self- depreciation and the
compensatory self-glorification so prevalent in contemporary
Hindu rhetoric.
This critique of Islam, it should be clearly understood, is a
critique of a belief system and its concomitant code of
behaviour, and not an attack on a community of people. It is
also not a goal in itself. At the political level, it is merely a
practical diagnosis of an acute problem: the cause of the
persistent communal tension in India is Islam. After all, any
two communities, religious or other, can pick a quarrel, but it
remains occasional; while the tension between Muslims and all
other religious is chronic and systematic. At the intellectual
level, the critique of Islam is merely an exercise or case study
in the pathology of religion, as part of a general exploration
and mapping of man's religious history, which in turn is part
of the groundwork for the integral human education in the
global civilization of tomorrow. I for one have no intention of
spending my life crusading against Islam or any other. It is
just that we have to free ourselves from illusions about certain
intrusive and pretentious belief systems, and once that is done,
we can concentrate on more positive dimensions of social and
spiritual life.
The same thing counts for the critique of the contentions
put forward by the secularists. It is thoughts, not people, that
are the problem. However, people who have been practising
slander with so much gusto and self-righteousness will only
understand if the proper name-tags are attached to the
criticism of their thought. I have dealt with them at rather
great length in this volume, and I have not spared them. They
pretend to be the champions of modernity, rationality and
democracy, and that makes their distortions and their anti-
democratic and even totalitarian stand on important issues all
the more unacceptable. They have to be exposed, and I have
made my contribution to the discharge of this fairly
unpleasant job. I wish and intend it to be the last time that I
have to go after them. Once Hindu society has shaken off these
Hindu-baiting leeches, i.e. when it is no longer under their
mental spell, it can concentrate on developing and actualizing
the treasures it has to offer to mankind, and achieving genuine
national integration.
Actually, this national integration that every talking body in
India talks about is a very natural condition and needs no
achieving. Rather, it requires dropping a few things. It requires
dropping the anti-Hindu separatist doctrines that have largely
been created for the purposes of several imperialisms, and are
now being kept afloat with a lot of distortive intellectual and
propagandistic effort. Just drop this effort, and this country
will naturally find back its unity.
Koenraad Elst
Delhi
5 February 1991
1. Summary of the Historical Question

1.1 Before the Masjid, the Mandir
The historical starting point of the Ram Janmabhoomi issue
is the contention that the Babri Masjid structure in Ayodhya
was built after the forcible demolition of a Hindu temple on
the same spot by Muslim soldiers. In the first part of my book
„Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu-
Muslim conflict‟,1 I have dealt extensively with the arguments
given pro and contra this contention. The case can be
summarized as follows.
There is archaeological evidence that a temple, or at the
very least a building with pillars, has stood on the Babri
Masjid spot since the eleventh century. Of course, because of
the structure standing there, the archaeological search has
been far from exhaustive, but at least of the existence of this
11th century building we can be certain.2
When the building was destroyed, we do not know
precisely; there are no descriptions of the event extent
anywhere. Mohammed Ghori's armies arrived there in 1194,
and they may have destroyed it. It may have been rebuilt
afterwards, or it may only have been destroyed by later
Muslim rulers of the area. So it is possible that when Mir Baqi,
Babar's lieutenant, arrived there in 1528, he found a heap of
rubble, or an already aging mosque, rather than a magnificent
Hindu temple.
However, it is very unlikely that the place was not
functioning as a Hindu place of worship just before the Babri
Masjid was built. As is well known, fourteen pillar-stones with
Hindu temple ornamentation have been used in the
construction of the Babri Masjid. Considering the quantity of
bricks employed in the building, one cannot say that these
fourteen pillar- stones were used merely to economize on
bricks: quantitatively, they simply didn't make a difference.