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Ayodhya: it's about power, not faith

Last year, some of India's soi-disant 'secularists' had a field day wringing their hands and beating their breasts on the fifth anniversary of the incident in Ayodhya. Now that December 6th is upon us again, I would like to analyse the construction and destruction of the disputed edifice ('mosque' or 'structure' depending on your political inclination) from a global perspective.

One of the articles of faith in the 'secularist' response to the incident has been that it was an unprecedented, heinous act. In the words of one such specimen, it was an attempt to erase all traces of a small, minority religion. This is hilarious -- I do believe the 'secularists' exaggerate wildly. Yes, it was a regrettable act, admittedly, to destroy the edifice; however, similar acts have been committed elsewhere throughout history -- it is not so unique.

The fact of the matter is that religious edifices are located based on two principles: first, that there are places of innate spiritual power; second, that taking over the sacred sites of a vanquished religion is an emphatic declaration of victory by a conquering religion. My belief is that the second imperative, that of usurping another's holy site, has often taken priority.

It is true that there are places around the world that have obvious spiritual power: Ayers Rock in Australia, the Black Hills of the Dakotas in the US, Stonehenge, Mt. Fuji, Jerusalem, Benares, Sabarimala, Machhu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes, and others -- points of singular merit that have been sites of religious ceremonies for centuries or even millennia.

Newer religions, when they are on the ascendant, attempt to appropriate these sites of power from the older religions that they are trying to supplant. Thus, many of these spiritual sites have changed hands many times in the past.

It is also true that expropriating the symbols and edifices of an older religion is a particularly effective way that a conquering religion has of emphasising its political and temporal power. The implication of course is that the conquering religion is so powerful that it would, with impunity, desecrate the sacred objects of the older religion.

This is often also part of the propaganda for conversion -- to encourage the masses to abandon the older religion and accept the conquering one. For, must it not be true that the superior temporal and political power of the conquering religion flows from some superior spiritual power? That is, clearly the gods (or One True God) of the conquering religion must be superior to those of the older religion.

This sort of usurping of symbols and edifices is a common practice, particularly among the Semitic religions (Islam and Christianity most successfully). For instance, the old Druidic rites (from the pre-Christian religion of Europe) of the celebration of the Winter Solstice were absorbed into Christianity as Christmas.

Similarly, the place where Jesus Christ was crucified was not known, because at the time of his death, Christianity was an oppressed, struggling, small sect. In the 4th century CE, after the Byzantine Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity -- in other words after Christianity had gained political power -- the Emperor's mother had a dream wherein she allegedly divined the location of Christ's crucifixion. Thereupon, the Greek temple to Athena that stood at that spot was promptly pulled down. It was definitely symbolic of the eclipse of the Greek religion.

When medieval Muslims captured Jerusalem, they built mosques atop some of the most holy sites of the Jews -- for instance, the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. As a result, two of Islam's major shrines (the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock) were built atop the ruins of the Temple Mount, where the Jewish First and Second Temples used to stand -- this is the holiest site for Jews. For centuries, non-Muslims (including Jews) were forbidden from visiting that site.

After Jews gained political power through the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem, they partly reconstructed the Jewish place of worship; today both Jews and Muslims worship at the Mount. While the Muslims protest about this, Israel's physical control of the area suggests that what the Jews want will prevail. In fact, the views of militant Jews are beginning to gain ground: they wish to eject Muslims altogether from the site and build a Third Temple.

Another example of the change of hands is the Cordoba Mosque in Spain. After Muslim Moors established their rule over Spain in 711 CE, they built a mosque over what had been a Catholic basilica. Muslims were ejected in 1236 CE by Christians, who reconsecrated the mosque as a church, destroying Islamic arches and columns and replacing them with Gothic architecture in 1384 CE. Muslims could not object, having lost political power. There are similar instances in Seville and other places in Spain.

Based on these examples, I would contend that especially for Semitic religions, it has been standard practice for holy sites to change ownership depending on who was currently in power.

The Indic religions typically did not follow this mechanism of physical expropriation of the holy sites of their rivals through conquest. Often, they coexisted, more or less, as Hindu-Buddhist practices have coexisted all over Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand -- as sister religions, there seems to have been relatively little animosity. It is almost certain, for instance, that the shrine at Sabarimala was a Hindu site, then a Buddhist site, and then once more a Hindu shrine.

Hinduism, in general, appears to have followed a mechanism of embrace-and-absorb. In Octavio Paz's rather infelicitous phrase, Hinduism acts as an "enormous metaphysical boa-constrictor" in terms of absorbing into its corpus different beliefs. As an example, consider the religion of the Oriya tribals that was absorbed into mainstream Hinduism, and the tribal deity installed as Lord Jagannath of Puri.

There is no credible historical evidence of the physical destruction of Buddhist or Jain shrines by Hindus (self-proclaimed 'secularists' are forever claiming that this happened, even through pretty much all their allegations has been discredited and refuted). For instance, they allege that some Hindu temples stand on former Buddhist sites. It is likely that the shrines were used in mixed fashion -- Hindu and Buddhist -- for some time. It is also possible that pre-Buddhist Hindu shrines were converted to Buddhist sites when Buddhism was on the ascendant, and then reverted to Hinduism later. It is lost in the mists of time whether such takeovers by Buddhists were peaceful.

It is, however, a good question as to what later happened to the Buddhists and Jains, who were certainly dominant in South India around the beginning of the Christian Era. My belief is that the Reformation (the creation of Buddhism and Jainism circa 500 BCE) was largely negated a thousand years later by the Counter-Reformation (Sri Sankara and the Bhakti saints circa 800 CE), so that the Buddha and Mahavira were absorbed, as it were, into the Hindu pantheon. The destruction of the great viharas (eg Nalanda and Takshashila) by invading Muslims was the coup de grace in the extinction of Buddhism in India.

This is not to say that Indic religions were infinitely more compassionate than the Semitic religions. In fact, I am aware of strong circumstantial evidence in Kerala for the possibly forcible conversion of Buddhists into Hindus: for instance, the famous Kannagi/Devi temple at Kodungallur, which by reliable accounts used to be a Buddhist nunnery. Also, the legend of Mahabali -- and his descent into the underworld due to the machinations of Vamana -- is a thinly-disguised retelling of a tale of a conquest by caste-minded Hindus disrupting an egalitarian Buddhist society.

But my argument is not intended to prove the superiority of any religion. It is merely intended to puncture the illogical 'secularist' stance. The standard 'secularist' argument goes something like this: "Hindus took over Buddhist sites; so Muslims were right to take over a Hindu site at Ayodhya". In fact, this argument actually supports my contention. Thus, if Hindus took over Buddhist sites when powerful, and Muslims took over Hindu sites when powerful -- and as per the 'secularists' this is just fine -- then said specimens should not be surprised if Hindus take over Muslim sites when they gain power.

What I am trying to establish here is that the capturing and later liberation of holy sites is simply business as usual in the clash of civilisations: unfortunately, might-is-right is the watchword here. 'Secularists', kindly come off your sanctimonious high horses and take note.

All this brings us to the sorry history of Ayodhya and other disputed sites in India. It is quite clear, from their own records, that the Muslim conquerors viewed it as their explicit duty to destroy the holy sites of Buddhism and Hinduism. For example, it is recorded that when a Hindu temple was destroyed and a mosque built atop it, the idol would be buried under the entryway of the mosque. The intent was that every visitor to the mosque would step on the erstwhile object of worship, thus completing the utter humiliation of the idol-worshippers.

Therefore, religious one-up-manship was clearly practised by Muslims. For instance, some Muslim mosques in Benares -- then as now one of the nerve-centers of Hinduism -- were quite obviously built atop the still-standing walls of Hindu temples. According to Diana Eck in Benaras, City of Light (Penguin India), one of the Muslim conquerors of Benares also attempted to rename the place as Islamabad.

Taking historical precedents into account, it would stand to reason that when Hindus gained power, they would attempt to re-appropriate their alienated holy sites. This is precisely what has happened in the case of Ayodhya. In fact, this self-assertion by Hindus should have been anticipated by the government and also by Muslim leaders as an inevitable course of events.

From the point of view of the Muslims, the old mosque in Ayodhya has no great importance. It is not one of the holy sites of Islam -- it is a mosque with no particular historical or religious importance whatsoever. Whereas for Hindus, it is indeed one of their holiest sites -- the putative birthplace of one of the important deities in Hinduism.

To put this in perspective, it is similar to the issue of the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the only difference being that Al Aqsa is an important, holy site for Muslims, the point from where the Prophet Muhammed is believed to have ascended to heaven; and the Temple Mount is the holiest site for Jews. Whereas Ayodhya's Babri Masjid has no religious significance for Muslims, while the Ram Janmabhoomi is a major holy site for Hindus.

The historical precedent, then, is that Christians and Jews have reclaimed their holy sites that were captured by Muslims; thus the Hindu demand for the same. However, I believe that it was most unfortunate that they chose to do this through unilaterally destroying the Muslim edifice on the spot. It would have been much better to arrive at a negotiated, mutually acceptable solution to the problem.

I am not sure what that solution might have been; perhaps it would have been a division of the site into Hindu and Muslim shrines, with both groups worshipping peacefully. It would also have been a magnificent gesture on the part of Muslims to offer, in the name of religious harmony, to relocate the mosque. After all, the physical spot where a mosque stands is not sacrosanct, as we have seen in the case of the Cordoba Mosque. Or in the case of mosques in Pakistan, where they were relocated for example to widen roads.

I believe a solution would have been possible if moderate Hindus and moderate Muslims (yes, such do exist in both communities), impelled by reason and live-and-let-live, had gotten together to discuss this in amicable fashion. Alas, this did not happen.

And for that, I blame the 'secularists' of India. They committed two sins: one, they rejected outright any possibility that Hindus might have legitimate and reasonable desires for redress against real or imaginary historical wrongs; two, they encouraged extremist elements among the Muslims by supporting even the most obscurantist and fundamentalist of their views as part of a general policy of vote-bank appeasement.

Thus the moderate Hindus and moderate Muslims were both rendered irrelevant, and the extremists of both religions were given free rein. This was the fault of the 'secularist' dogma, which continues to believe that religion, and Hinduism in particular, needs to be oppressed. So long as 'secularists' have a leading voice in politics, there will be more Ayodhyas. They are the problem, not the solution, for they, hoodwinked by nihilist Stalinist theology, do not understand the importance of religion. "Opiate of the masses" it may be, but faith is one of the greatest of motivators. And faith and power are inextricably entwined.

Fortunately, there are still enough sensible Hindus and Muslims in India, who can sit across a table and discuss each others' fears: Muslim fears of being rendered second-class citizens in their own country, and Hindu paranoia about being an embattled minority in that giant Islamic crescent stretching from West Africa to Indonesia.

This initiative has to come from the moderates, and should exclude the 'secularists' altogether -- they are too fundamentalist in the "courage of their own utterly wrong convictions" as Frontline commented in a different context. Ayodhya doesn't have to be India's future -- but both Hindus and Muslims will have to practice the art of making strategic concessions if the fundamentalists of all stripes are not to continue to make a mess of things.

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Rajeev Srinivasan