Arun Shourie
For a year and a half you keep issuing statements to the press, and writing ostensibly scholarly articles, and holding forth in interviews that the Babri Mosque was not, most definitely not, built by demolishing or even on a site of a temple. Documents of the other side are sent to you. You are nominated by the All India Babri Mosque Action Committee as an expert who will give his assessment of them. A meeting is scheduled. Before that you meet the then Director General of Archeology who had supervised the excavations at the site. The day the meeting is to begin the newspapers carry yet another categorical statement from "intellectuals", again asserting the line convenient to the AIBMAC. You, of course, are among them.
The meeting commences. on point after point, on document after document, your response is that you have not studied the evidence, that, therefore, you require time to visit it. You are not a field archeologist, you say, and will, therefore, nominate another person, and he too will naturally require time. The person happens to be present. You are informed that the person has not only studied the evidence, he has met and discussed the matter with the Director General, Dr B B Lal, under whose supervising the excavations had been conducted in 1975. others too are named whom he has met for the purpose. But that was in another capacity, you say, now you will need time.
On behalf of the Government, the officer present says that the records of the excavation, maps, four types of narrative accounts, photographs, are available, that Dr Lal has agreed so that they can be inspected the very next day. No, we will need time, you say.
You are on to a new tack. But why has Dr Lal not stated a definite conclusion? In fact it turns out that he has: a video cassette of the interview he gave to the BBC is produced. Can't see it now as there is no VCP, we will need time, you say.
The next day you don't even turn up for the meeting. An expert of the AIBMAC, a Marxist, an intellectual whose name appears invariably in the statements propagandising the AIBMAC point of view.
I summarize; but the account applies more or less to the four professional "experts" who appeared as the AIBMAC's nominees in the meeting on January 24, 1991. The other "experts" of the AIBMAC were just its own office bearers. They went one better. They denied the contents. Indeed they denied the very existence of books written not just by Islamic historians and authors, the photocopies of the relevant pages from which had all been supplied weeks earlier, but they also denied the knowledge of even standard works like the Encyclopedia Britannica. That done, the next day they did not turn up either.
THE ISSUES SPECIFIED
The one thing on which Chandra Shekar's government can claim to have catalysed progress is the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. This was done in two ways: by getting the two sides to begin talking to each other, and by pin-pointing the issue. The issue Chandra Shekar emphasised was: Was the mosque built by demolishing a Hindu temple or structure?
And in this, Chandra Shekar was adhering to what had been stated categorically by Shri Syed Shahbuddin: "I say that if it is proved that the Babri Masjid has been built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on its place, then such a mosque built on such a usurped land deserves to be destroyed. No theologian or Alim can give a fatwa to hold Namaz on it." And this view, in turn, reflects the classical expositions of the law. For instance, the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri categorically states: "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house (or land) and build a mosque or even a Jama Masjid on it, then Namaz in such a mosque will be against the Shariat." In consultation with the two sides, therefore, Chandra Shekar made the issue specific. Each side agreed to submit evidence on this specific issue.
THE AIBMAC EVIDENCE
I was appalled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance which flowed from them. I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the AIBMAC and the intellectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks, pages from the book of some chap, to the effect that Ram was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt. Or an article by someone based, he says, on what he has learnt from one dancer in Sri Lanka, and setting out a folk story, knowledge of which he himself says is confined to a small part of a small district in that country, to the effect that Sita was Ram's sister whom he married, etc.
It was not just that so much of the rest was as tertiary as can be -- articles after articles by sundry journalists which set out no evidence -- it was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers selective court judgment underlying it, some merely the plaints, i.e. the assertions of the parties that happen at the moment to be convenient. And it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the AIBMAC but of the VHP!
They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1934. They show that it had been in utter neglect: the relevant authority testifying at one point to the person-in-charge being an opium addict, to his being thoroughly unfit to look after even the structure. They show different groups or sects of Muslims fighting each other for acquiring the property, and with the descendants of Mir Baqi, the commander who built the structure. They show that the lands, etc., which were given to them by the British were given not so that they may maintain the structure through the proceeds but so that they may maintain themselves, and that they were given these for services, political and military, they had rendered to the British.
It was evident too that it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the structure was a waqf, as was being maintained now. It was not even listed in the lists of either the Shia or Sunni Waqf Boards, as the law required all waqf properties to be. While the AIBMAC has striven now to rule out of court British gazetteers -- as these, after meticulous examination of written and other evidence, record unambiguously that the mosque was built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi temple -- the rulings and judgments filed by the AIBMAC rely on, reproduce at length and accept the gazetteers on the very point of the issue, indeed, they explicitly decree that the gazetteers are admissible as evidence.
They show the Hindus waging an unremitting struggle to regain this place, held, the documents say, "most sacred" by them. They show them continuing to worship the ground inspite of the mosque having been super imposed on it. They show them constructing structures and temples on the peripheral spots when they are debarred from the main one. They show the current suit being filed well past the time limit allowed by our laws.
On regarding the papers, the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government, etc., by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.
THE VHP DOCUMENTS
In complete contrast, the VHP documents are pertinent to the point, and have not as yet been shown to be deficient in any way. They contain the unambiguous statement of Islamic historians, of Muslim narrators, of the grand-daughter of Aurangzeb, to the effect that the mosque was built by demolishing the Ram temple. They contain accounts of European travelers as well as official publications of the British period -- the gazetteers of 1854, 1877, 1881, 1892, 1905; the Settlement Report of 1880; the Surveyor's Report of 1838; the Archeological Survey Reports of 1891 and 1934 -- all of them reaffirming what the Muslim historians had stated: that the mosque was built by destroying the temple, that some of the pillars are in the mosque still, that the Hindus continue to revere the spot and struggle unremittingly to reacquire it.
They contain revenue records of a hundred years and more, which list the site as "Janmasthan" and specify it to be the property of the mahants. They also show how attempts have been made to erase things from these records and superimpose convenient nomenclatures on them -- crude and unsuccessful attempts, for while the forgers have been able to get at the records in some offices they have not been able to get at them in all the offices!
Most important of all, they contain accounts of the archeological excavations which were conducted at the site from 1975 to 1980. These are conclusive: the bases and the pillars, the stone of which the pillars are made, everything coheres. And everything answers the issue the government and the two sides had specified in the affirmative, and unambiguously so.
"CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT"
"But where is a contemporary account of the temple being destroyed?" At first it was, "Show us any document." When the gazetteers were produced, it was, "But the British wrote only to divide and rule." (Why, then, do you keep producing judgments of British Magistrates, pray?) "Show us some non-British document, some pre-British document." Now that these too are at hand, the demand is for contemporary account. This when it is well-known that in the contemporary account of the period -- Babar's own memoir -- the pages from the time he reaches Ayodhya, 2nd April 1528 to 18th September 1528 are missing lost, it is hypothesised, in a storm or in the vicissitudes which Humayan's library suffered during his exile.
It is not just that this latest demand is an after thought. It is that in the face of what exists at the site to this day -- the pillars, etc. -- and in the face of archeological findings, and what has been the universal practice as well as the fundamental faith of Islamic evangelists and conquerors such accounts are not necessary. But there is even more conclusive consideration. Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Mosque. Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque - the case is made?
This entry for 2nd September 1669, for instance, is as contemporary an account as any can ask for: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras." The entry for January 1670 set out the fact for the great temple at Mathura: "In this month of Ramzan, the religious minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished. A grand mosque was built on its site at vast expenditure. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the Mosque of Begum Sahib in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad." The entry for 1st January 1705 says: "The Emperor summoning Muhammed Khalid and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchetmen, ordered them to demolish the temple at Pandarpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done."
If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur, and a host of other places, settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the "experts" and "intellectuals" will immediately ask for something else.
HISTORICITY
"But there is no proof that Ram himself existed; nor are any of the other facts about him proven."
The four Gospels themselves, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the last hundred years, differ on fact after fact about Jesus - from the names of his ancestors to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Quran repudiates even the most basic facts about Jesus Christ - it emphatically denounces the notion that he was the Son of God, it repudiates the notion of his virgin birth, it insists that he was not the one who was crucified but a look alike, thereby putting the question of resurrection out altogether. And which member of the AIBMAC will say that the Quran is not an authentic recounting of the facts? Does that mean that every single church rests on myth?
Nor is the historicity of the Prophet the distinguishing feature about him. Every ordinary person living today is historically verifiable after all. The unique feature about the Prophet is that Allah chose him to transmit the Quran, but it would be absurd to ask anyone to prove the fact of Allah having chosen him. It is a matter of faith.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Quran itself is a matter of faith. What we have read, and revere, is the reproduction of the original which lies in heaven inscribed on tablets of gold. And it is the contents of that original which Allah transmitted through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet. Heave, the original on tablets of gold, Allah's decision, Gabriel -- do we prove these?
They, too, are matters of faith. And every mosque is a celebration of those separate foci of faith.
Specific mosques are even more so. The great Al-Aqsa mosque marks the print which the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse which had carried him on his journey. The winged horse, the imprint of one particular foot -- in regard to these would we entertain a demand for "proof"? The Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir enshrines what we revere as the hair of the Prophet. Would we think of proving the matter?
And yet that is what we are insisting the devotees of Ram do.
CONCLUSION
The Muslim laity have been badly misled, and now been badly let down by those who set themselves up as their guardians and sole spokesmen. First, they created the scare that were any reasonable solution to be accepted on this matter, Islam would be endangered. Now they have failed to substantiate their rhetoric. Now that they seem to be finding excuses to withdraw from examining the evidence, we are liable to be plunged back into the vicious politics of manipulating politicians by tempting them with promises of delivering banks of votes -- that is, the precise politics which has fermented the current reaction.
We can stem the relapse. As the "experts" have withdrawn, each of us should secure the documents submitted by the two sides and examine them in the minutest detail. Once we do so it will be that much more difficult for propagandists to thwart this singular effort to introduce reason and reasonableness into the problem.
(Reproduced from his column "As I see it.")
Showing posts with label babri masjid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label babri masjid. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Futility of Dialogue with Babari Committee
The Futility of Dialogue with Babari Committee
Arun Shourie
For a year and a half you keep issuing statements to the press, and writing ostensibly scholarly articles, and holding forth in interviews that the Babri Mosque was not, most definitely not, built by demolishing or even on a site of a temple. Documents of the other side are sent to you. You are nominated by the All India Babri Mosque Action Committee as an expert who will give his assessment of them. A meeting is scheduled. Before that you meet the then Director General of Archeology who had supervised the excavations at the site. The day the meeting is to begin the newspapers carry yet another categorical statement from "intellectuals", again asserting the line convenient to the AIBMAC. You, of course, are among them.
The meeting commences. on point after point, on document after document, your response is that you have not studied the evidence, that, therefore, you require time to visit it. You are not a field archeologist, you say, and will, therefore, nominate another person, and he too will naturally require time. The person happens to be present. You are informed that the person has not only studied the evidence, he has met and discussed the matter with the Director General, Dr B B Lal, under whose supervising the excavations had been conducted in 1975. others too are named whom he has met for the purpose. But that was in another capacity, you say, now you will need time.
On behalf of the Government, the officer present says that the records of the excavation, maps, four types of narrative accounts, photographs, are available, that Dr Lal has agreed so that they can be inspected the very next day. No, we will need time, you say.
You are on to a new tack. But why has Dr Lal not stated a definite conclusion? In fact it turns out that he has: a video cassette of the interview he gave to the BBC is produced. Can't see it now as there is no VCP, we will need time, you say.
The next day you don't even turn up for the meeting. An expert of the AIBMAC, a Marxist, an intellectual whose name appears invariably in the statements propagandising the AIBMAC point of view.
I summarize; but the account applies more or less to the four professional "experts" who appeared as the AIBMAC's nominees in the meeting on January 24, 1991. The other "experts" of the AIBMAC were just its own office bearers. They went one better. They denied the contents. Indeed they denied the very existence of books written not just by Islamic historians and authors, the photocopies of the relevant pages from which had all been supplied weeks earlier, but they also denied the knowledge of even standard works like the Encyclopedia Britannica. That done, the next day they did not turn up either.
THE ISSUES SPECIFIED
The one thing on which Chandra Shekar's government can claim to have catalysed progress is the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. This was done in two ways: by getting the two sides to begin talking to each other, and by pin-pointing the issue. The issue Chandra Shekar emphasised was: Was the mosque built by demolishing a Hindu temple or structure?
And in this, Chandra Shekar was adhering to what had been stated categorically by Shri Syed Shahbuddin: "I say that if it is proved that the Babri Masjid has been built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on its place, then such a mosque built on such a usurped land deserves to be destroyed. No theologian or Alim can give a fatwa to hold Namaz on it." And this view, in turn, reflects the classical expositions of the law. For instance, the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri categorically states: "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house (or land) and build a mosque or even a Jama Masjid on it, then Namaz in such a mosque will be against the Shariat." In consultation with the two sides, therefore, Chandra Shekar made the issue specific. Each side agreed to submit evidence on this specific issue.
THE AIBMAC EVIDENCE
I was appalled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance which flowed from them. I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the AIBMAC and the intellectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks, pages from the book of some chap, to the effect that Ram was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt. Or an article by someone based, he says, on what he has learnt from one dancer in Sri Lanka, and setting out a folk story, knowledge of which he himself says is confined to a small part of a small district in that country, to the effect that Sita was Ram's sister whom he married, etc.
It was not just that so much of the rest was as tertiary as can be -- articles after articles by sundry journalists which set out no evidence -- it was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers selective court judgment underlying it, some merely the plaints, i.e. the assertions of the parties that happen at the moment to be convenient. And it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the AIBMAC but of the VHP!
They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1934. They show that it had been in utter neglect: the relevant authority testifying at one point to the person-in-charge being an opium addict, to his being thoroughly unfit to look after even the structure. They show different groups or sects of Muslims fighting each other for acquiring the property, and with the descendants of Mir Baqi, the commander who built the structure. They show that the lands, etc., which were given to them by the British were given not so that they may maintain the structure through the proceeds but so that they may maintain themselves, and that they were given these for services, political and military, they had rendered to the British.
It was evident too that it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the structure was a waqf, as was being maintained now. It was not even listed in the lists of either the Shia or Sunni Waqf Boards, as the law required all waqf properties to be. While the AIBMAC has striven now to rule out of court British gazetteers -- as these, after meticulous examination of written and other evidence, record unambiguously that the mosque was built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi temple -- the rulings and judgments filed by the AIBMAC rely on, reproduce at length and accept the gazetteers on the very point of the issue, indeed, they explicitly decree that the gazetteers are admissible as evidence.
They show the Hindus waging an unremitting struggle to regain this place, held, the documents say, "most sacred" by them. They show them continuing to worship the ground inspite of the mosque having been super imposed on it. They show them constructing structures and temples on the peripheral spots when they are debarred from the main one. They show the current suit being filed well past the time limit allowed by our laws.
On regarding the papers, the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government, etc., by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.
THE VHP DOCUMENTS
In complete contrast, the VHP documents are pertinent to the point, and have not as yet been shown to be deficient in any way. They contain the unambiguous statement of Islamic historians, of Muslim narrators, of the grand-daughter of Aurangzeb, to the effect that the mosque was built by demolishing the Ram temple. They contain accounts of European travelers as well as official publications of the British period -- the gazetteers of 1854, 1877, 1881, 1892, 1905; the Settlement Report of 1880; the Surveyor's Report of 1838; the Archeological Survey Reports of 1891 and 1934 -- all of them reaffirming what the Muslim historians had stated: that the mosque was built by destroying the temple, that some of the pillars are in the mosque still, that the Hindus continue to revere the spot and struggle unremittingly to reacquire it.
They contain revenue records of a hundred years and more, which list the site as "Janmasthan" and specify it to be the property of the mahants. They also show how attempts have been made to erase things from these records and superimpose convenient nomenclatures on them -- crude and unsuccessful attempts, for while the forgers have been able to get at the records in some offices they have not been able to get at them in all the offices!
Most important of all, they contain accounts of the archeological excavations which were conducted at the site from 1975 to 1980. These are conclusive: the bases and the pillars, the stone of which the pillars are made, everything coheres. And everything answers the issue the government and the two sides had specified in the affirmative, and unambiguously so.
"CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT"
"But where is a contemporary account of the temple being destroyed?" At first it was, "Show us any document." When the gazetteers were produced, it was, "But the British wrote only to divide and rule." (Why, then, do you keep producing judgments of British Magistrates, pray?) "Show us some non-British document, some pre-British document." Now that these too are at hand, the demand is for contemporary account. This when it is well-known that in the contemporary account of the period -- Babar's own memoir -- the pages from the time he reaches Ayodhya, 2nd April 1528 to 18th September 1528 are missing lost, it is hypothesised, in a storm or in the vicissitudes which Humayan's library suffered during his exile.
It is not just that this latest demand is an after thought. It is that in the face of what exists at the site to this day -- the pillars, etc. -- and in the face of archeological findings, and what has been the universal practice as well as the fundamental faith of Islamic evangelists and conquerors such accounts are not necessary. But there is even more conclusive consideration. Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Mosque. Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque - the case is made?
This entry for 2nd September 1669, for instance, is as contemporary an account as any can ask for: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras." The entry for January 1670 set out the fact for the great temple at Mathura: "In this month of Ramzan, the religious minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished. A grand mosque was built on its site at vast expenditure. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the Mosque of Begum Sahib in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad." The entry for 1st January 1705 says: "The Emperor summoning Muhammed Khalid and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchetmen, ordered them to demolish the temple at Pandarpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done."
If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur, and a host of other places, settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the "experts" and "intellectuals" will immediately ask for something else.
HISTORICITY
"But there is no proof that Ram himself existed; nor are any of the other facts about him proven."
The four Gospels themselves, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the last hundred years, differ on fact after fact about Jesus - from the names of his ancestors to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Quran repudiates even the most basic facts about Jesus Christ - it emphatically denounces the notion that he was the Son of God, it repudiates the notion of his virgin birth, it insists that he was not the one who was crucified but a look alike, thereby putting the question of resurrection out altogether. And which member of the AIBMAC will say that the Quran is not an authentic recounting of the facts? Does that mean that every single church rests on myth?
Nor is the historicity of the Prophet the distinguishing feature about him. Every ordinary person living today is historically verifiable after all. The unique feature about the Prophet is that Allah chose him to transmit the Quran, but it would be absurd to ask anyone to prove the fact of Allah having chosen him. It is a matter of faith.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Quran itself is a matter of faith. What we have read, and revere, is the reproduction of the original which lies in heaven inscribed on tablets of gold. And it is the contents of that original which Allah transmitted through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet. Heave, the original on tablets of gold, Allah's decision, Gabriel -- do we prove these?
They, too, are matters of faith. And every mosque is a celebration of those separate foci of faith.
Specific mosques are even more so. The great Al-Aqsa mosque marks the print which the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse which had carried him on his journey. The winged horse, the imprint of one particular foot -- in regard to these would we entertain a demand for "proof"? The Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir enshrines what we revere as the hair of the Prophet. Would we think of proving the matter?
And yet that is what we are insisting the devotees of Ram do.
CONCLUSION
The Muslim laity have been badly misled, and now been badly let down by those who set themselves up as their guardians and sole spokesmen. First, they created the scare that were any reasonable solution to be accepted on this matter, Islam would be endangered. Now they have failed to substantiate their rhetoric. Now that they seem to be finding excuses to withdraw from examining the evidence, we are liable to be plunged back into the vicious politics of manipulating politicians by tempting them with promises of delivering banks of votes -- that is, the precise politics which has fermented the current reaction.
We can stem the relapse. As the "experts" have withdrawn, each of us should secure the documents submitted by the two sides and examine them in the minutest detail. Once we do so it will be that much more difficult for propagandists to thwart this singular effort to introduce reason and reasonableness into the problem.
(Reproduced from his column "As I see it.")
Arun Shourie
For a year and a half you keep issuing statements to the press, and writing ostensibly scholarly articles, and holding forth in interviews that the Babri Mosque was not, most definitely not, built by demolishing or even on a site of a temple. Documents of the other side are sent to you. You are nominated by the All India Babri Mosque Action Committee as an expert who will give his assessment of them. A meeting is scheduled. Before that you meet the then Director General of Archeology who had supervised the excavations at the site. The day the meeting is to begin the newspapers carry yet another categorical statement from "intellectuals", again asserting the line convenient to the AIBMAC. You, of course, are among them.
The meeting commences. on point after point, on document after document, your response is that you have not studied the evidence, that, therefore, you require time to visit it. You are not a field archeologist, you say, and will, therefore, nominate another person, and he too will naturally require time. The person happens to be present. You are informed that the person has not only studied the evidence, he has met and discussed the matter with the Director General, Dr B B Lal, under whose supervising the excavations had been conducted in 1975. others too are named whom he has met for the purpose. But that was in another capacity, you say, now you will need time.
On behalf of the Government, the officer present says that the records of the excavation, maps, four types of narrative accounts, photographs, are available, that Dr Lal has agreed so that they can be inspected the very next day. No, we will need time, you say.
You are on to a new tack. But why has Dr Lal not stated a definite conclusion? In fact it turns out that he has: a video cassette of the interview he gave to the BBC is produced. Can't see it now as there is no VCP, we will need time, you say.
The next day you don't even turn up for the meeting. An expert of the AIBMAC, a Marxist, an intellectual whose name appears invariably in the statements propagandising the AIBMAC point of view.
I summarize; but the account applies more or less to the four professional "experts" who appeared as the AIBMAC's nominees in the meeting on January 24, 1991. The other "experts" of the AIBMAC were just its own office bearers. They went one better. They denied the contents. Indeed they denied the very existence of books written not just by Islamic historians and authors, the photocopies of the relevant pages from which had all been supplied weeks earlier, but they also denied the knowledge of even standard works like the Encyclopedia Britannica. That done, the next day they did not turn up either.
THE ISSUES SPECIFIED
The one thing on which Chandra Shekar's government can claim to have catalysed progress is the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. This was done in two ways: by getting the two sides to begin talking to each other, and by pin-pointing the issue. The issue Chandra Shekar emphasised was: Was the mosque built by demolishing a Hindu temple or structure?
And in this, Chandra Shekar was adhering to what had been stated categorically by Shri Syed Shahbuddin: "I say that if it is proved that the Babri Masjid has been built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on its place, then such a mosque built on such a usurped land deserves to be destroyed. No theologian or Alim can give a fatwa to hold Namaz on it." And this view, in turn, reflects the classical expositions of the law. For instance, the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri categorically states: "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house (or land) and build a mosque or even a Jama Masjid on it, then Namaz in such a mosque will be against the Shariat." In consultation with the two sides, therefore, Chandra Shekar made the issue specific. Each side agreed to submit evidence on this specific issue.
THE AIBMAC EVIDENCE
I was appalled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance which flowed from them. I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the AIBMAC and the intellectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks, pages from the book of some chap, to the effect that Ram was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt. Or an article by someone based, he says, on what he has learnt from one dancer in Sri Lanka, and setting out a folk story, knowledge of which he himself says is confined to a small part of a small district in that country, to the effect that Sita was Ram's sister whom he married, etc.
It was not just that so much of the rest was as tertiary as can be -- articles after articles by sundry journalists which set out no evidence -- it was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers selective court judgment underlying it, some merely the plaints, i.e. the assertions of the parties that happen at the moment to be convenient. And it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the AIBMAC but of the VHP!
They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1934. They show that it had been in utter neglect: the relevant authority testifying at one point to the person-in-charge being an opium addict, to his being thoroughly unfit to look after even the structure. They show different groups or sects of Muslims fighting each other for acquiring the property, and with the descendants of Mir Baqi, the commander who built the structure. They show that the lands, etc., which were given to them by the British were given not so that they may maintain the structure through the proceeds but so that they may maintain themselves, and that they were given these for services, political and military, they had rendered to the British.
It was evident too that it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the structure was a waqf, as was being maintained now. It was not even listed in the lists of either the Shia or Sunni Waqf Boards, as the law required all waqf properties to be. While the AIBMAC has striven now to rule out of court British gazetteers -- as these, after meticulous examination of written and other evidence, record unambiguously that the mosque was built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi temple -- the rulings and judgments filed by the AIBMAC rely on, reproduce at length and accept the gazetteers on the very point of the issue, indeed, they explicitly decree that the gazetteers are admissible as evidence.
They show the Hindus waging an unremitting struggle to regain this place, held, the documents say, "most sacred" by them. They show them continuing to worship the ground inspite of the mosque having been super imposed on it. They show them constructing structures and temples on the peripheral spots when they are debarred from the main one. They show the current suit being filed well past the time limit allowed by our laws.
On regarding the papers, the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government, etc., by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.
THE VHP DOCUMENTS
In complete contrast, the VHP documents are pertinent to the point, and have not as yet been shown to be deficient in any way. They contain the unambiguous statement of Islamic historians, of Muslim narrators, of the grand-daughter of Aurangzeb, to the effect that the mosque was built by demolishing the Ram temple. They contain accounts of European travelers as well as official publications of the British period -- the gazetteers of 1854, 1877, 1881, 1892, 1905; the Settlement Report of 1880; the Surveyor's Report of 1838; the Archeological Survey Reports of 1891 and 1934 -- all of them reaffirming what the Muslim historians had stated: that the mosque was built by destroying the temple, that some of the pillars are in the mosque still, that the Hindus continue to revere the spot and struggle unremittingly to reacquire it.
They contain revenue records of a hundred years and more, which list the site as "Janmasthan" and specify it to be the property of the mahants. They also show how attempts have been made to erase things from these records and superimpose convenient nomenclatures on them -- crude and unsuccessful attempts, for while the forgers have been able to get at the records in some offices they have not been able to get at them in all the offices!
Most important of all, they contain accounts of the archeological excavations which were conducted at the site from 1975 to 1980. These are conclusive: the bases and the pillars, the stone of which the pillars are made, everything coheres. And everything answers the issue the government and the two sides had specified in the affirmative, and unambiguously so.
"CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT"
"But where is a contemporary account of the temple being destroyed?" At first it was, "Show us any document." When the gazetteers were produced, it was, "But the British wrote only to divide and rule." (Why, then, do you keep producing judgments of British Magistrates, pray?) "Show us some non-British document, some pre-British document." Now that these too are at hand, the demand is for contemporary account. This when it is well-known that in the contemporary account of the period -- Babar's own memoir -- the pages from the time he reaches Ayodhya, 2nd April 1528 to 18th September 1528 are missing lost, it is hypothesised, in a storm or in the vicissitudes which Humayan's library suffered during his exile.
It is not just that this latest demand is an after thought. It is that in the face of what exists at the site to this day -- the pillars, etc. -- and in the face of archeological findings, and what has been the universal practice as well as the fundamental faith of Islamic evangelists and conquerors such accounts are not necessary. But there is even more conclusive consideration. Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Mosque. Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque - the case is made?
This entry for 2nd September 1669, for instance, is as contemporary an account as any can ask for: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras." The entry for January 1670 set out the fact for the great temple at Mathura: "In this month of Ramzan, the religious minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished. A grand mosque was built on its site at vast expenditure. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the Mosque of Begum Sahib in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad." The entry for 1st January 1705 says: "The Emperor summoning Muhammed Khalid and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchetmen, ordered them to demolish the temple at Pandarpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done."
If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur, and a host of other places, settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the "experts" and "intellectuals" will immediately ask for something else.
HISTORICITY
"But there is no proof that Ram himself existed; nor are any of the other facts about him proven."
The four Gospels themselves, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the last hundred years, differ on fact after fact about Jesus - from the names of his ancestors to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Quran repudiates even the most basic facts about Jesus Christ - it emphatically denounces the notion that he was the Son of God, it repudiates the notion of his virgin birth, it insists that he was not the one who was crucified but a look alike, thereby putting the question of resurrection out altogether. And which member of the AIBMAC will say that the Quran is not an authentic recounting of the facts? Does that mean that every single church rests on myth?
Nor is the historicity of the Prophet the distinguishing feature about him. Every ordinary person living today is historically verifiable after all. The unique feature about the Prophet is that Allah chose him to transmit the Quran, but it would be absurd to ask anyone to prove the fact of Allah having chosen him. It is a matter of faith.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Quran itself is a matter of faith. What we have read, and revere, is the reproduction of the original which lies in heaven inscribed on tablets of gold. And it is the contents of that original which Allah transmitted through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet. Heave, the original on tablets of gold, Allah's decision, Gabriel -- do we prove these?
They, too, are matters of faith. And every mosque is a celebration of those separate foci of faith.
Specific mosques are even more so. The great Al-Aqsa mosque marks the print which the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse which had carried him on his journey. The winged horse, the imprint of one particular foot -- in regard to these would we entertain a demand for "proof"? The Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir enshrines what we revere as the hair of the Prophet. Would we think of proving the matter?
And yet that is what we are insisting the devotees of Ram do.
CONCLUSION
The Muslim laity have been badly misled, and now been badly let down by those who set themselves up as their guardians and sole spokesmen. First, they created the scare that were any reasonable solution to be accepted on this matter, Islam would be endangered. Now they have failed to substantiate their rhetoric. Now that they seem to be finding excuses to withdraw from examining the evidence, we are liable to be plunged back into the vicious politics of manipulating politicians by tempting them with promises of delivering banks of votes -- that is, the precise politics which has fermented the current reaction.
We can stem the relapse. As the "experts" have withdrawn, each of us should secure the documents submitted by the two sides and examine them in the minutest detail. Once we do so it will be that much more difficult for propagandists to thwart this singular effort to introduce reason and reasonableness into the problem.
(Reproduced from his column "As I see it.")
The Futility of Dialogue with Babari Committee
The Futility of Dialogue with Babari Committee
Arun Shourie
For a year and a half you keep issuing statements to the press, and writing ostensibly scholarly articles, and holding forth in interviews that the Babri Mosque was not, most definitely not, built by demolishing or even on a site of a temple. Documents of the other side are sent to you. You are nominated by the All India Babri Mosque Action Committee as an expert who will give his assessment of them. A meeting is scheduled. Before that you meet the then Director General of Archeology who had supervised the excavations at the site. The day the meeting is to begin the newspapers carry yet another categorical statement from "intellectuals", again asserting the line convenient to the AIBMAC. You, of course, are among them.
The meeting commences. on point after point, on document after document, your response is that you have not studied the evidence, that, therefore, you require time to visit it. You are not a field archeologist, you say, and will, therefore, nominate another person, and he too will naturally require time. The person happens to be present. You are informed that the person has not only studied the evidence, he has met and discussed the matter with the Director General, Dr B B Lal, under whose supervising the excavations had been conducted in 1975. others too are named whom he has met for the purpose. But that was in another capacity, you say, now you will need time.
On behalf of the Government, the officer present says that the records of the excavation, maps, four types of narrative accounts, photographs, are available, that Dr Lal has agreed so that they can be inspected the very next day. No, we will need time, you say.
You are on to a new tack. But why has Dr Lal not stated a definite conclusion? In fact it turns out that he has: a video cassette of the interview he gave to the BBC is produced. Can't see it now as there is no VCP, we will need time, you say.
The next day you don't even turn up for the meeting. An expert of the AIBMAC, a Marxist, an intellectual whose name appears invariably in the statements propagandising the AIBMAC point of view.
I summarize; but the account applies more or less to the four professional "experts" who appeared as the AIBMAC's nominees in the meeting on January 24, 1991. The other "experts" of the AIBMAC were just its own office bearers. They went one better. They denied the contents. Indeed they denied the very existence of books written not just by Islamic historians and authors, the photocopies of the relevant pages from which had all been supplied weeks earlier, but they also denied the knowledge of even standard works like the Encyclopedia Britannica. That done, the next day they did not turn up either.
THE ISSUES SPECIFIED
The one thing on which Chandra Shekar's government can claim to have catalysed progress is the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. This was done in two ways: by getting the two sides to begin talking to each other, and by pin-pointing the issue. The issue Chandra Shekar emphasised was: Was the mosque built by demolishing a Hindu temple or structure?
And in this, Chandra Shekar was adhering to what had been stated categorically by Shri Syed Shahbuddin: "I say that if it is proved that the Babri Masjid has been built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on its place, then such a mosque built on such a usurped land deserves to be destroyed. No theologian or Alim can give a fatwa to hold Namaz on it." And this view, in turn, reflects the classical expositions of the law. For instance, the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri categorically states: "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house (or land) and build a mosque or even a Jama Masjid on it, then Namaz in such a mosque will be against the Shariat." In consultation with the two sides, therefore, Chandra Shekar made the issue specific. Each side agreed to submit evidence on this specific issue.
THE AIBMAC EVIDENCE
I was appalled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance which flowed from them. I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the AIBMAC and the intellectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks, pages from the book of some chap, to the effect that Ram was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt. Or an article by someone based, he says, on what he has learnt from one dancer in Sri Lanka, and setting out a folk story, knowledge of which he himself says is confined to a small part of a small district in that country, to the effect that Sita was Ram's sister whom he married, etc.
It was not just that so much of the rest was as tertiary as can be -- articles after articles by sundry journalists which set out no evidence -- it was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers selective court judgment underlying it, some merely the plaints, i.e. the assertions of the parties that happen at the moment to be convenient. And it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the AIBMAC but of the VHP!
They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1934. They show that it had been in utter neglect: the relevant authority testifying at one point to the person-in-charge being an opium addict, to his being thoroughly unfit to look after even the structure. They show different groups or sects of Muslims fighting each other for acquiring the property, and with the descendants of Mir Baqi, the commander who built the structure. They show that the lands, etc., which were given to them by the British were given not so that they may maintain the structure through the proceeds but so that they may maintain themselves, and that they were given these for services, political and military, they had rendered to the British.
It was evident too that it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the structure was a waqf, as was being maintained now. It was not even listed in the lists of either the Shia or Sunni Waqf Boards, as the law required all waqf properties to be. While the AIBMAC has striven now to rule out of court British gazetteers -- as these, after meticulous examination of written and other evidence, record unambiguously that the mosque was built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi temple -- the rulings and judgments filed by the AIBMAC rely on, reproduce at length and accept the gazetteers on the very point of the issue, indeed, they explicitly decree that the gazetteers are admissible as evidence.
They show the Hindus waging an unremitting struggle to regain this place, held, the documents say, "most sacred" by them. They show them continuing to worship the ground inspite of the mosque having been super imposed on it. They show them constructing structures and temples on the peripheral spots when they are debarred from the main one. They show the current suit being filed well past the time limit allowed by our laws.
On regarding the papers, the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government, etc., by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.
THE VHP DOCUMENTS
In complete contrast, the VHP documents are pertinent to the point, and have not as yet been shown to be deficient in any way. They contain the unambiguous statement of Islamic historians, of Muslim narrators, of the grand-daughter of Aurangzeb, to the effect that the mosque was built by demolishing the Ram temple. They contain accounts of European travelers as well as official publications of the British period -- the gazetteers of 1854, 1877, 1881, 1892, 1905; the Settlement Report of 1880; the Surveyor's Report of 1838; the Archeological Survey Reports of 1891 and 1934 -- all of them reaffirming what the Muslim historians had stated: that the mosque was built by destroying the temple, that some of the pillars are in the mosque still, that the Hindus continue to revere the spot and struggle unremittingly to reacquire it.
They contain revenue records of a hundred years and more, which list the site as "Janmasthan" and specify it to be the property of the mahants. They also show how attempts have been made to erase things from these records and superimpose convenient nomenclatures on them -- crude and unsuccessful attempts, for while the forgers have been able to get at the records in some offices they have not been able to get at them in all the offices!
Most important of all, they contain accounts of the archeological excavations which were conducted at the site from 1975 to 1980. These are conclusive: the bases and the pillars, the stone of which the pillars are made, everything coheres. And everything answers the issue the government and the two sides had specified in the affirmative, and unambiguously so.
"CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT"
"But where is a contemporary account of the temple being destroyed?" At first it was, "Show us any document." When the gazetteers were produced, it was, "But the British wrote only to divide and rule." (Why, then, do you keep producing judgments of British Magistrates, pray?) "Show us some non-British document, some pre-British document." Now that these too are at hand, the demand is for contemporary account. This when it is well-known that in the contemporary account of the period -- Babar's own memoir -- the pages from the time he reaches Ayodhya, 2nd April 1528 to 18th September 1528 are missing lost, it is hypothesised, in a storm or in the vicissitudes which Humayan's library suffered during his exile.
It is not just that this latest demand is an after thought. It is that in the face of what exists at the site to this day -- the pillars, etc. -- and in the face of archeological findings, and what has been the universal practice as well as the fundamental faith of Islamic evangelists and conquerors such accounts are not necessary. But there is even more conclusive consideration. Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Mosque. Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque - the case is made?
This entry for 2nd September 1669, for instance, is as contemporary an account as any can ask for: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras." The entry for January 1670 set out the fact for the great temple at Mathura: "In this month of Ramzan, the religious minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished. A grand mosque was built on its site at vast expenditure. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the Mosque of Begum Sahib in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad." The entry for 1st January 1705 says: "The Emperor summoning Muhammed Khalid and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchetmen, ordered them to demolish the temple at Pandarpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done."
If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur, and a host of other places, settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the "experts" and "intellectuals" will immediately ask for something else.
HISTORICITY
"But there is no proof that Ram himself existed; nor are any of the other facts about him proven."
The four Gospels themselves, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the last hundred years, differ on fact after fact about Jesus - from the names of his ancestors to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Quran repudiates even the most basic facts about Jesus Christ - it emphatically denounces the notion that he was the Son of God, it repudiates the notion of his virgin birth, it insists that he was not the one who was crucified but a look alike, thereby putting the question of resurrection out altogether. And which member of the AIBMAC will say that the Quran is not an authentic recounting of the facts? Does that mean that every single church rests on myth?
Nor is the historicity of the Prophet the distinguishing feature about him. Every ordinary person living today is historically verifiable after all. The unique feature about the Prophet is that Allah chose him to transmit the Quran, but it would be absurd to ask anyone to prove the fact of Allah having chosen him. It is a matter of faith.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Quran itself is a matter of faith. What we have read, and revere, is the reproduction of the original which lies in heaven inscribed on tablets of gold. And it is the contents of that original which Allah transmitted through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet. Heave, the original on tablets of gold, Allah's decision, Gabriel -- do we prove these?
They, too, are matters of faith. And every mosque is a celebration of those separate foci of faith.
Specific mosques are even more so. The great Al-Aqsa mosque marks the print which the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse which had carried him on his journey. The winged horse, the imprint of one particular foot -- in regard to these would we entertain a demand for "proof"? The Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir enshrines what we revere as the hair of the Prophet. Would we think of proving the matter?
And yet that is what we are insisting the devotees of Ram do.
CONCLUSION
The Muslim laity have been badly misled, and now been badly let down by those who set themselves up as their guardians and sole spokesmen. First, they created the scare that were any reasonable solution to be accepted on this matter, Islam would be endangered. Now they have failed to substantiate their rhetoric. Now that they seem to be finding excuses to withdraw from examining the evidence, we are liable to be plunged back into the vicious politics of manipulating politicians by tempting them with promises of delivering banks of votes -- that is, the precise politics which has fermented the current reaction.
We can stem the relapse. As the "experts" have withdrawn, each of us should secure the documents submitted by the two sides and examine them in the minutest detail. Once we do so it will be that much more difficult for propagandists to thwart this singular effort to introduce reason and reasonableness into the problem.
(Reproduced from his column "As I see it.")
Arun Shourie
For a year and a half you keep issuing statements to the press, and writing ostensibly scholarly articles, and holding forth in interviews that the Babri Mosque was not, most definitely not, built by demolishing or even on a site of a temple. Documents of the other side are sent to you. You are nominated by the All India Babri Mosque Action Committee as an expert who will give his assessment of them. A meeting is scheduled. Before that you meet the then Director General of Archeology who had supervised the excavations at the site. The day the meeting is to begin the newspapers carry yet another categorical statement from "intellectuals", again asserting the line convenient to the AIBMAC. You, of course, are among them.
The meeting commences. on point after point, on document after document, your response is that you have not studied the evidence, that, therefore, you require time to visit it. You are not a field archeologist, you say, and will, therefore, nominate another person, and he too will naturally require time. The person happens to be present. You are informed that the person has not only studied the evidence, he has met and discussed the matter with the Director General, Dr B B Lal, under whose supervising the excavations had been conducted in 1975. others too are named whom he has met for the purpose. But that was in another capacity, you say, now you will need time.
On behalf of the Government, the officer present says that the records of the excavation, maps, four types of narrative accounts, photographs, are available, that Dr Lal has agreed so that they can be inspected the very next day. No, we will need time, you say.
You are on to a new tack. But why has Dr Lal not stated a definite conclusion? In fact it turns out that he has: a video cassette of the interview he gave to the BBC is produced. Can't see it now as there is no VCP, we will need time, you say.
The next day you don't even turn up for the meeting. An expert of the AIBMAC, a Marxist, an intellectual whose name appears invariably in the statements propagandising the AIBMAC point of view.
I summarize; but the account applies more or less to the four professional "experts" who appeared as the AIBMAC's nominees in the meeting on January 24, 1991. The other "experts" of the AIBMAC were just its own office bearers. They went one better. They denied the contents. Indeed they denied the very existence of books written not just by Islamic historians and authors, the photocopies of the relevant pages from which had all been supplied weeks earlier, but they also denied the knowledge of even standard works like the Encyclopedia Britannica. That done, the next day they did not turn up either.
THE ISSUES SPECIFIED
The one thing on which Chandra Shekar's government can claim to have catalysed progress is the Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. This was done in two ways: by getting the two sides to begin talking to each other, and by pin-pointing the issue. The issue Chandra Shekar emphasised was: Was the mosque built by demolishing a Hindu temple or structure?
And in this, Chandra Shekar was adhering to what had been stated categorically by Shri Syed Shahbuddin: "I say that if it is proved that the Babri Masjid has been built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on its place, then such a mosque built on such a usurped land deserves to be destroyed. No theologian or Alim can give a fatwa to hold Namaz on it." And this view, in turn, reflects the classical expositions of the law. For instance, the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri categorically states: "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house (or land) and build a mosque or even a Jama Masjid on it, then Namaz in such a mosque will be against the Shariat." In consultation with the two sides, therefore, Chandra Shekar made the issue specific. Each side agreed to submit evidence on this specific issue.
THE AIBMAC EVIDENCE
I was appalled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance which flowed from them. I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the AIBMAC and the intellectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks, pages from the book of some chap, to the effect that Ram was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt. Or an article by someone based, he says, on what he has learnt from one dancer in Sri Lanka, and setting out a folk story, knowledge of which he himself says is confined to a small part of a small district in that country, to the effect that Sita was Ram's sister whom he married, etc.
It was not just that so much of the rest was as tertiary as can be -- articles after articles by sundry journalists which set out no evidence -- it was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers selective court judgment underlying it, some merely the plaints, i.e. the assertions of the parties that happen at the moment to be convenient. And it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the AIBMAC but of the VHP!
They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1934. They show that it had been in utter neglect: the relevant authority testifying at one point to the person-in-charge being an opium addict, to his being thoroughly unfit to look after even the structure. They show different groups or sects of Muslims fighting each other for acquiring the property, and with the descendants of Mir Baqi, the commander who built the structure. They show that the lands, etc., which were given to them by the British were given not so that they may maintain the structure through the proceeds but so that they may maintain themselves, and that they were given these for services, political and military, they had rendered to the British.
It was evident too that it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the structure was a waqf, as was being maintained now. It was not even listed in the lists of either the Shia or Sunni Waqf Boards, as the law required all waqf properties to be. While the AIBMAC has striven now to rule out of court British gazetteers -- as these, after meticulous examination of written and other evidence, record unambiguously that the mosque was built after demolishing the Ram Janmabhoomi temple -- the rulings and judgments filed by the AIBMAC rely on, reproduce at length and accept the gazetteers on the very point of the issue, indeed, they explicitly decree that the gazetteers are admissible as evidence.
They show the Hindus waging an unremitting struggle to regain this place, held, the documents say, "most sacred" by them. They show them continuing to worship the ground inspite of the mosque having been super imposed on it. They show them constructing structures and temples on the peripheral spots when they are debarred from the main one. They show the current suit being filed well past the time limit allowed by our laws.
On regarding the papers, the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government, etc., by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.
THE VHP DOCUMENTS
In complete contrast, the VHP documents are pertinent to the point, and have not as yet been shown to be deficient in any way. They contain the unambiguous statement of Islamic historians, of Muslim narrators, of the grand-daughter of Aurangzeb, to the effect that the mosque was built by demolishing the Ram temple. They contain accounts of European travelers as well as official publications of the British period -- the gazetteers of 1854, 1877, 1881, 1892, 1905; the Settlement Report of 1880; the Surveyor's Report of 1838; the Archeological Survey Reports of 1891 and 1934 -- all of them reaffirming what the Muslim historians had stated: that the mosque was built by destroying the temple, that some of the pillars are in the mosque still, that the Hindus continue to revere the spot and struggle unremittingly to reacquire it.
They contain revenue records of a hundred years and more, which list the site as "Janmasthan" and specify it to be the property of the mahants. They also show how attempts have been made to erase things from these records and superimpose convenient nomenclatures on them -- crude and unsuccessful attempts, for while the forgers have been able to get at the records in some offices they have not been able to get at them in all the offices!
Most important of all, they contain accounts of the archeological excavations which were conducted at the site from 1975 to 1980. These are conclusive: the bases and the pillars, the stone of which the pillars are made, everything coheres. And everything answers the issue the government and the two sides had specified in the affirmative, and unambiguously so.
"CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT"
"But where is a contemporary account of the temple being destroyed?" At first it was, "Show us any document." When the gazetteers were produced, it was, "But the British wrote only to divide and rule." (Why, then, do you keep producing judgments of British Magistrates, pray?) "Show us some non-British document, some pre-British document." Now that these too are at hand, the demand is for contemporary account. This when it is well-known that in the contemporary account of the period -- Babar's own memoir -- the pages from the time he reaches Ayodhya, 2nd April 1528 to 18th September 1528 are missing lost, it is hypothesised, in a storm or in the vicissitudes which Humayan's library suffered during his exile.
It is not just that this latest demand is an after thought. It is that in the face of what exists at the site to this day -- the pillars, etc. -- and in the face of archeological findings, and what has been the universal practice as well as the fundamental faith of Islamic evangelists and conquerors such accounts are not necessary. But there is even more conclusive consideration. Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Mosque. Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque - the case is made?
This entry for 2nd September 1669, for instance, is as contemporary an account as any can ask for: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishwanath at Banaras." The entry for January 1670 set out the fact for the great temple at Mathura: "In this month of Ramzan, the religious minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished. A grand mosque was built on its site at vast expenditure. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the Mosque of Begum Sahib in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad." The entry for 1st January 1705 says: "The Emperor summoning Muhammed Khalid and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchetmen, ordered them to demolish the temple at Pandarpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done."
If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur, and a host of other places, settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the "experts" and "intellectuals" will immediately ask for something else.
HISTORICITY
"But there is no proof that Ram himself existed; nor are any of the other facts about him proven."
The four Gospels themselves, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the last hundred years, differ on fact after fact about Jesus - from the names of his ancestors to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Quran repudiates even the most basic facts about Jesus Christ - it emphatically denounces the notion that he was the Son of God, it repudiates the notion of his virgin birth, it insists that he was not the one who was crucified but a look alike, thereby putting the question of resurrection out altogether. And which member of the AIBMAC will say that the Quran is not an authentic recounting of the facts? Does that mean that every single church rests on myth?
Nor is the historicity of the Prophet the distinguishing feature about him. Every ordinary person living today is historically verifiable after all. The unique feature about the Prophet is that Allah chose him to transmit the Quran, but it would be absurd to ask anyone to prove the fact of Allah having chosen him. It is a matter of faith.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Quran itself is a matter of faith. What we have read, and revere, is the reproduction of the original which lies in heaven inscribed on tablets of gold. And it is the contents of that original which Allah transmitted through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet. Heave, the original on tablets of gold, Allah's decision, Gabriel -- do we prove these?
They, too, are matters of faith. And every mosque is a celebration of those separate foci of faith.
Specific mosques are even more so. The great Al-Aqsa mosque marks the print which the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse which had carried him on his journey. The winged horse, the imprint of one particular foot -- in regard to these would we entertain a demand for "proof"? The Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir enshrines what we revere as the hair of the Prophet. Would we think of proving the matter?
And yet that is what we are insisting the devotees of Ram do.
CONCLUSION
The Muslim laity have been badly misled, and now been badly let down by those who set themselves up as their guardians and sole spokesmen. First, they created the scare that were any reasonable solution to be accepted on this matter, Islam would be endangered. Now they have failed to substantiate their rhetoric. Now that they seem to be finding excuses to withdraw from examining the evidence, we are liable to be plunged back into the vicious politics of manipulating politicians by tempting them with promises of delivering banks of votes -- that is, the precise politics which has fermented the current reaction.
We can stem the relapse. As the "experts" have withdrawn, each of us should secure the documents submitted by the two sides and examine them in the minutest detail. Once we do so it will be that much more difficult for propagandists to thwart this singular effort to introduce reason and reasonableness into the problem.
(Reproduced from his column "As I see it.")
Did the Court Ask, What is Mohd Aslam�s Locus Standi?
Arun Shourie
"What is the VHP? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?", the Supreme Court asked the other day -- and it seemed to have done so in a tone that triggered much delight among secularists.
��A strange question,�� the PM remarked in the Rajya Sabha. A member was up and shouting, actually several secular ones were, interrupting the Prime Minister. Who are the VHP?... They don�t represent the Hindus... They will put a bullet through me..., so what?... The members seemed quite beside themselves. If the mere mention of its name causes so much reaction, the PM observed, then it certainly has locus standi.
In matters of religion and faith, standing is not acquired by winning elections, he said. It depends on the esteem in which people come to hold one...
A telling answer in itself. And it left the critics non-plussed.
Another side to the question that had fallen from the Bench too would have struck you. The Bench did not ask, as the Constitution Bench had not asked, ��Who is Mohammed Aslam, alias �Bhure�? Whom does he represent? What is his locus standi?�� It did not ask, ��What is the Babri Masjid Action Committee? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?�� It did not ask, ��What is the �All India Muslim Law Board�? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?�� How is it that doubt assailed it only in regard to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad?
To put the matter at the least, the Bench could have looked up the Supreme Court�s own judgement in the Ayodhya case itself! ��The movement to construct a Ram temple at the site of the disputed structure gathered momentum in recent years which became a matter of great controversy and a source of tension,�� the judgement quoted the (Narasimha Rao) Government�s ��White Paper�� as saying. ��This led to several parleys the details of which are not very material for the present purpose. These parleys involving the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee (AIBMAC), however failed to resolve the dispute...�� Again, ��At the centre of the Ram Janma Bhumi - Babari Masjid dispute is the demand voiced by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allied organisations for the restoration of a site said to be the birthplace of Sri Ram in Ayodhya...��
Yet again, ��The VHP and its allied organisations base their demand on the assertion that...�� And yet again, ��The demand of the VHP has found support from the Bhartiya Janata Party...�� And yet again, ��It was also stated by certain Muslim leaders that if these assertions were proved, the Muslims would voluntarily hand over the disputed shrine to the Hindus. Naturally, this became the central issue in the negotiations between the VHP and the AIBMAC.��
But suddenly, What is the VHP? Who does it represent? What is its locus standi?
In any event, that allusion to ��parleys�� holds a lesson we will do well to remember. One of the best things Mr Chandrashekhar did during his brief Prime Ministership was to get the two sides to agree that the only way to make progress was to exchange evidence on the matter. The two sides started meeting and exchanging documents and written arguments. The Babri Masjid Action Committee was guided by a clutch of Marxist historians -- actually, ��guided by�� is not quite right: it seemed just the front for these ��eminent historians��. The latter used the offices and facilities of the ICHR that they then controlled to prepare the AIBMAC submissions -- a fact that led the then Member Secretary to resign from his post.
The ��evidence�� that the Babri Masjid group submitted was no evidence at all. It was just a miscellaneous pile -- much of it puerile: that Rama was a King of Egypt, that he was born in Afghanistan, and the rest!
The VHP marshalled an array of evidence from archaeological sources, from historical records, from literary sources. That was the end of the ��parleys��! Realising that they could produce nothing to match what the VHP had submitted, the Marxist historians and the AIBMAC gentry just stopped attending the meetings. And it was this withdrawal, and the consequential death of the talks that Mr Chandrashekhar had initiated, as much as anything else that triggered the chain of events that led ultimately to the destruction of the mosque.
I did not doubt for a moment that the new efforts of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi would meet exactly the same fate. And for good reason. In one of the letters that he included in his 'A Bunch of Old Letters', Pandit Nehru used a phrase about Jinnah that describes this bunch, and its invariable device to the dot: ��Mr Jinnah�s permanently negative answer,�� Panditji wrote. This is the singular negotiating tactic of such individuals: just go on rejecting every formula that the other fellow brings up.
And the tragedy is -- the self-inflicted tragedy is -- that there always are persons, groups, powers that insist that the onus of producing the next formula, some formula which will incorporate an even greater concession to the other fellow is on us. And in the end we give in to this insistence. The power and groups that keep insisting that we go on producing new formulae: the British on the question of partition, the host of interlocutors on Kashmir, the secularists on the Ram Janmabhumi.
And the ones who merely keep deploying the ��permanently negative answer��: Jinnah kept rejecting every formula on partition; Pakistan keeps rejecting every formula on Kashmir; the Babri Masjid votaries keep, and will keep rejecting every formula on the Janmabhumi.
And the infuriating part is that the advice to engage in a dialogue is always directed at us -- the Congress on the question of partition, India on Kashmir, the Hindus on the Janmabhumi! It is because of this unbroken, unvarying pattern of 75 years that the new Interim Order of the Supreme Court fills me with foreboding -- doubly so.
The first concerns dialogue, negotiations. In its 1994 judgement the Supreme Court also had expressed the same pious faith: ��This is a matter suited essentially to resolution by negotiations which does not end in a winner and a loser while adjudication leads to that end,�� the Court said. ��It is in the national interest that there is no loser at the end of the process adopted for resolution of the dispute so that the final outcome does not leave behind any rancour in anyone. This can be achieved by a negotiated solution on the basis of which a decree can be obtained in terms of such solution in these suits. Unless a solution is found which leaves everyone happy, that cannot be the beginning for continued harmony between �we the people of India�.�� The same touching faith! Doomed to the same outcome.
But the least that this route requires to succeed is that the Executive has leeway, that it has a wide enough field over which it can bring the contenders closer. The Supreme Court in its 1994 judgement had left this space -- recall, for instance, the passages regarding the undisputed area. The Interim Order has snatched that space away completely. And taken into the judicial lap what the Constitution Bench had realised was not well suited for resolution through judicial adjudication.
The other omen is of an even darker hue. What the Supreme Court had held about the status quo being maintained only on the disputed site, what the Court had said about it being not just permissible but desirable that the undisputed area be handed back to its Hindu owners -- all this was important, but of far lesser importance than another feature of that judgement, a feature that was of foundational significance.
An argument had been advanced on behalf of Muslims -- the Court remarked that it had been advanced with ��vehemence��. This was the familiar assertion that once a mosque has been built on a piece of land, irrespective of who owned the plot earlier, irrespective of what might have stood on it earlier, irrespective of whether the structure had subsequently been used or not, the land would always be a possession of Muslims.
It was contended that this was the position under Muslim Law, and therefore this is what must hold in this case too -- whether a temple stood on the land earlier, whether namaz had been offered at the site since 1949 etc., all these were essentially irrelevant questions. And that the acquisition of the site by the Government for determining its true owners was invalid on this ground alone: secular laws like the Statute of Limitations, the laws regarding acquisition of property by the State etc., do not apply at all to either a mosque or the site on which it was once built, it was argued on behalf of Muslims.
The Supreme Court dealt in detail with this question -- because of the vehemence with which this argument had been advanced, it said. In doing so it laid down three vital principles. First, it held that what will apply in India is not some abstraction called Mahomedan Law, but ��Mahomedan law as approved by Indian courts��.
Second, it reiterated what Indian courts had from the British period consistently held in regard to the status of a mosque: namely, that a mosque is just another immovable property; that, therefore, the Statute of Limitations applies to it exactly as it does to any other immovable property, that the sovereign power of the State to acquire the structure or the site on which it stands is as unlimited as it is in relation to any other piece of property.
Third, the Court held that even if a structure or practice is manifestly associated with a religion it shall not be immune from State action under the freedom of religion guaranteed by our Constitution -- unless it is a practice essential to that religion. This vital distinction will come home to us when we think of the contrast between, say, the Kaba in Mecca and the mosque next door, between offering namaz and killing cows. The result was immediate. Citing judgements from even the British period, the Court established how, for instance, a mosque could be lost by adverse possession. It showed how even by those judgements it was subject to the Statute of Limitations. It established how ��A practice may be a religious practice but not an essential and integral part of practice of that religion.��
These principles were of foundational importance. They were essential correctives to what had come to pass in the name of secularism. They gave hope that the excesses that had come to be perpetrated in the name of religion could indeed be rolled back through the courts -- for instance, the insistence that namaz shall be offered on public roads, the insistence that slaughtering cows was a fundamental right that flowed from the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution.
That is why not so much the Interim Order but the remarks that fell from the Bench during this hearing are so ominous. If that is the mood of the Court, these vital principles will themselves be diluted in the days ahead.
Dialogue and negotiations blocked each time by that ��permanently negative answer��. And the Courts in the mood of which the Bench has given us a glimpse. What conclusion will the Hindus draw?
But they must abide by the verdict of the courts, the secularists say. Will some Hindu in turn not one day tabulate how many times the Constitution has been amended precisely to overturn verdicts of the Supreme Court, and throw the number back at those who keep hurling this counsel at him, and him alone?
Actually, why wait for that anonymous Hindu, dear reader, why not pre-empt him? Study the 90-odd amendments yourself, and answer: how many of them have been enacted to reverse judgements of the Supreme Court?
Indian Express
March 18, 2002
"What is the VHP? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?", the Supreme Court asked the other day -- and it seemed to have done so in a tone that triggered much delight among secularists.
��A strange question,�� the PM remarked in the Rajya Sabha. A member was up and shouting, actually several secular ones were, interrupting the Prime Minister. Who are the VHP?... They don�t represent the Hindus... They will put a bullet through me..., so what?... The members seemed quite beside themselves. If the mere mention of its name causes so much reaction, the PM observed, then it certainly has locus standi.
In matters of religion and faith, standing is not acquired by winning elections, he said. It depends on the esteem in which people come to hold one...
A telling answer in itself. And it left the critics non-plussed.
Another side to the question that had fallen from the Bench too would have struck you. The Bench did not ask, as the Constitution Bench had not asked, ��Who is Mohammed Aslam, alias �Bhure�? Whom does he represent? What is his locus standi?�� It did not ask, ��What is the Babri Masjid Action Committee? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?�� It did not ask, ��What is the �All India Muslim Law Board�? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi?�� How is it that doubt assailed it only in regard to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad?
To put the matter at the least, the Bench could have looked up the Supreme Court�s own judgement in the Ayodhya case itself! ��The movement to construct a Ram temple at the site of the disputed structure gathered momentum in recent years which became a matter of great controversy and a source of tension,�� the judgement quoted the (Narasimha Rao) Government�s ��White Paper�� as saying. ��This led to several parleys the details of which are not very material for the present purpose. These parleys involving the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee (AIBMAC), however failed to resolve the dispute...�� Again, ��At the centre of the Ram Janma Bhumi - Babari Masjid dispute is the demand voiced by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allied organisations for the restoration of a site said to be the birthplace of Sri Ram in Ayodhya...��
Yet again, ��The VHP and its allied organisations base their demand on the assertion that...�� And yet again, ��The demand of the VHP has found support from the Bhartiya Janata Party...�� And yet again, ��It was also stated by certain Muslim leaders that if these assertions were proved, the Muslims would voluntarily hand over the disputed shrine to the Hindus. Naturally, this became the central issue in the negotiations between the VHP and the AIBMAC.��
But suddenly, What is the VHP? Who does it represent? What is its locus standi?
In any event, that allusion to ��parleys�� holds a lesson we will do well to remember. One of the best things Mr Chandrashekhar did during his brief Prime Ministership was to get the two sides to agree that the only way to make progress was to exchange evidence on the matter. The two sides started meeting and exchanging documents and written arguments. The Babri Masjid Action Committee was guided by a clutch of Marxist historians -- actually, ��guided by�� is not quite right: it seemed just the front for these ��eminent historians��. The latter used the offices and facilities of the ICHR that they then controlled to prepare the AIBMAC submissions -- a fact that led the then Member Secretary to resign from his post.
The ��evidence�� that the Babri Masjid group submitted was no evidence at all. It was just a miscellaneous pile -- much of it puerile: that Rama was a King of Egypt, that he was born in Afghanistan, and the rest!
The VHP marshalled an array of evidence from archaeological sources, from historical records, from literary sources. That was the end of the ��parleys��! Realising that they could produce nothing to match what the VHP had submitted, the Marxist historians and the AIBMAC gentry just stopped attending the meetings. And it was this withdrawal, and the consequential death of the talks that Mr Chandrashekhar had initiated, as much as anything else that triggered the chain of events that led ultimately to the destruction of the mosque.
I did not doubt for a moment that the new efforts of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi would meet exactly the same fate. And for good reason. In one of the letters that he included in his 'A Bunch of Old Letters', Pandit Nehru used a phrase about Jinnah that describes this bunch, and its invariable device to the dot: ��Mr Jinnah�s permanently negative answer,�� Panditji wrote. This is the singular negotiating tactic of such individuals: just go on rejecting every formula that the other fellow brings up.
And the tragedy is -- the self-inflicted tragedy is -- that there always are persons, groups, powers that insist that the onus of producing the next formula, some formula which will incorporate an even greater concession to the other fellow is on us. And in the end we give in to this insistence. The power and groups that keep insisting that we go on producing new formulae: the British on the question of partition, the host of interlocutors on Kashmir, the secularists on the Ram Janmabhumi.
And the ones who merely keep deploying the ��permanently negative answer��: Jinnah kept rejecting every formula on partition; Pakistan keeps rejecting every formula on Kashmir; the Babri Masjid votaries keep, and will keep rejecting every formula on the Janmabhumi.
And the infuriating part is that the advice to engage in a dialogue is always directed at us -- the Congress on the question of partition, India on Kashmir, the Hindus on the Janmabhumi! It is because of this unbroken, unvarying pattern of 75 years that the new Interim Order of the Supreme Court fills me with foreboding -- doubly so.
The first concerns dialogue, negotiations. In its 1994 judgement the Supreme Court also had expressed the same pious faith: ��This is a matter suited essentially to resolution by negotiations which does not end in a winner and a loser while adjudication leads to that end,�� the Court said. ��It is in the national interest that there is no loser at the end of the process adopted for resolution of the dispute so that the final outcome does not leave behind any rancour in anyone. This can be achieved by a negotiated solution on the basis of which a decree can be obtained in terms of such solution in these suits. Unless a solution is found which leaves everyone happy, that cannot be the beginning for continued harmony between �we the people of India�.�� The same touching faith! Doomed to the same outcome.
But the least that this route requires to succeed is that the Executive has leeway, that it has a wide enough field over which it can bring the contenders closer. The Supreme Court in its 1994 judgement had left this space -- recall, for instance, the passages regarding the undisputed area. The Interim Order has snatched that space away completely. And taken into the judicial lap what the Constitution Bench had realised was not well suited for resolution through judicial adjudication.
The other omen is of an even darker hue. What the Supreme Court had held about the status quo being maintained only on the disputed site, what the Court had said about it being not just permissible but desirable that the undisputed area be handed back to its Hindu owners -- all this was important, but of far lesser importance than another feature of that judgement, a feature that was of foundational significance.
An argument had been advanced on behalf of Muslims -- the Court remarked that it had been advanced with ��vehemence��. This was the familiar assertion that once a mosque has been built on a piece of land, irrespective of who owned the plot earlier, irrespective of what might have stood on it earlier, irrespective of whether the structure had subsequently been used or not, the land would always be a possession of Muslims.
It was contended that this was the position under Muslim Law, and therefore this is what must hold in this case too -- whether a temple stood on the land earlier, whether namaz had been offered at the site since 1949 etc., all these were essentially irrelevant questions. And that the acquisition of the site by the Government for determining its true owners was invalid on this ground alone: secular laws like the Statute of Limitations, the laws regarding acquisition of property by the State etc., do not apply at all to either a mosque or the site on which it was once built, it was argued on behalf of Muslims.
The Supreme Court dealt in detail with this question -- because of the vehemence with which this argument had been advanced, it said. In doing so it laid down three vital principles. First, it held that what will apply in India is not some abstraction called Mahomedan Law, but ��Mahomedan law as approved by Indian courts��.
Second, it reiterated what Indian courts had from the British period consistently held in regard to the status of a mosque: namely, that a mosque is just another immovable property; that, therefore, the Statute of Limitations applies to it exactly as it does to any other immovable property, that the sovereign power of the State to acquire the structure or the site on which it stands is as unlimited as it is in relation to any other piece of property.
Third, the Court held that even if a structure or practice is manifestly associated with a religion it shall not be immune from State action under the freedom of religion guaranteed by our Constitution -- unless it is a practice essential to that religion. This vital distinction will come home to us when we think of the contrast between, say, the Kaba in Mecca and the mosque next door, between offering namaz and killing cows. The result was immediate. Citing judgements from even the British period, the Court established how, for instance, a mosque could be lost by adverse possession. It showed how even by those judgements it was subject to the Statute of Limitations. It established how ��A practice may be a religious practice but not an essential and integral part of practice of that religion.��
These principles were of foundational importance. They were essential correctives to what had come to pass in the name of secularism. They gave hope that the excesses that had come to be perpetrated in the name of religion could indeed be rolled back through the courts -- for instance, the insistence that namaz shall be offered on public roads, the insistence that slaughtering cows was a fundamental right that flowed from the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution.
That is why not so much the Interim Order but the remarks that fell from the Bench during this hearing are so ominous. If that is the mood of the Court, these vital principles will themselves be diluted in the days ahead.
Dialogue and negotiations blocked each time by that ��permanently negative answer��. And the Courts in the mood of which the Bench has given us a glimpse. What conclusion will the Hindus draw?
But they must abide by the verdict of the courts, the secularists say. Will some Hindu in turn not one day tabulate how many times the Constitution has been amended precisely to overturn verdicts of the Supreme Court, and throw the number back at those who keep hurling this counsel at him, and him alone?
Actually, why wait for that anonymous Hindu, dear reader, why not pre-empt him? Study the 90-odd amendments yourself, and answer: how many of them have been enacted to reverse judgements of the Supreme Court?
Indian Express
March 18, 2002
The Judgement Vs the Interim Order
Arun Shourie
��The mandate (which the Act imposes upon the Central Government),�� the Supreme Court said in its 1994 judgement on the Ayodhya case, ��is that in managing the property so vested in the Central Government, the Central Government or the authorised person shall ensure maintenance of the status quo [and here the Court quoted merely reproduced -- for the second time within ten lines -- the words in the Act itself) in the area on which the structure (including the premises of the inner and outer courtyards of such structure), commonly known as the Ram Janmabhumi-Babri Masjid, stood.��
There had been some discussion, the Court remarked alluding to the special pleading that had gone on, as to what exactly was meant by ��the area�� -- the ��entire area�� that had been taken over or what. But the provision itself sets out clearly what is meant, said the Court.
The meaning is not the entire area that had been taken over and was specified in the Schedule annexed to the Act, the Court held -- ��since the words which follow qualify its meaning confining it only to the site on which this structure, commonly known as the Ram Janmabhumi-Babri Masjid stood, which site or area is undoubtedly smaller and within the area specified in the Schedule.��
Moreover, the Court specified, the land over which the structure had stood has not been acquired to be held in perpetuity by the Government. It has not been acquired to be put to sundry use by the Government. The sole purpose for which it has been acquired, the Court specified, is to hand it back to its rightful owners -- Hindus or Muslims -- once the dispute about who owned it is settled.
The acquisition is not absolute, the Court declared. It is not for perpetuity. The relevant provisions are ��transitory�� ��for the purpose of its subsequent transfer to the person found entitled to it as a result of the adjudication of the dispute for the resolution of which this step was taken��.
The Presidential Reference also makes clear, the Supreme Court declared, that ��the acquisition of the disputed area was not meant to be absolute but limited to holding it as a statutory receiver till the resolution of the dispute; and then to transfer it...��
��The duty of the Central Government as the statutory receiver,�� the Court emphasised yet again, ��is to hand over the disputed area in accordance with Section 6 of the Act, in terms of the adjudication made in the suits for implementation of the final decision therein. This is the purpose for which the disputed land has been acquired.��
Contrast this emphatic, unambiguous, recurring declaration of the Supreme Court about what the purpose is for which the disputed land was acquired with the secularist clap-trap: the land must be used for building a hospital, a school, a playground, a park, a memorial... -- that is, for anything but for handing it back to the Hindus should they win the title-suit and thereafter reconstruct the temple -- the ancient, well-documented temple -- that Mir Baqi and his crew demolished.
That the disputed area has been acquired solely for this purpose, and that the mandate to maintain the status quo applies only to the disputed area was set out by the Supreme Court in its judgement not once, not twice, but at seven different places.
And there is a clear reason, said the Court, why the Act has mandated that the status quo be maintained on the disputed area till it is transferred back to its rightful owner.
��Unless the status quo is ensured,�� the Court explained, ��the final outcome on resolution of the disputed area may be frustrated by any change made in the disputed area which may frustrate the implementation of the result in favour of the successful party and render it meaningless.
A direction to maintain the status quo in the disputed property is a well-known method and the usual order made during the pendency of a dispute for preserving the property and protecting the interest of the true owner till the adjudication is made.��
Now, as is well known, the area over which the structure stood is but a fraction of the total area that the Government had acquired: the structure per se had covered just a third of an acre, the appurtenant platform etc. had covered another 2.5 acres or so; but the Government had taken over about sixty seven acres.
The only area over which there was a dispute about ownership -- the part over which there has been a dispute ever since the temple was destroyed -- are the one-third to 2.7 acres. Muslims have maintained that as they had acquired it and built a mosque on it long ago, it is their�s forever.
Hindus have maintained that it had been wrested from them by force, that what was sacred to them was razed, that they have never abandoned their ownership of it, that they have -- even when denied access to it -- continued to venerate it from the platforms, the bye-lanes around the spot.
After recounting the successive stages by which the Hindus have come to physically resume worship of the idols at the spot at least since 1949, the Supreme Court observed, ��On the other hand, at least since December 1949 the Muslims have not been offering worship at any place in the disputed site though, it may turn out at the trial of the suits that they had a right to do so.�� This limited area is what is known as the ��disputed area��.
About the rest of the area, the Supreme Court noted with emphasis, there is no dispute at all. "The narration of facts indicates," the Court said, "that the acquisition of properties under the Act affects the rights of both the communities and not merely those of the Muslim community.
The interest claimed by the Muslims is only over the disputed site where the mosque stood before its demolition. The objection of the Hindus to this claim has to be adjudicated. The remaining entire property acquired under the Act is such over which no title is claimed by the Muslims. A large part thereof consists of properties of Hindus of which the title is not even in dispute.��
The purpose for which this undisputed area had nonetheless been acquired was to ensure that, should courts ultimately decide that the disputed site in fact belongs to Muslims, they should not be prevented from enjoying the property by not having access to it.
Indeed, the Court went further. Elaborating on the significance of the words that had been used in the Act itself in this regard -- the words ��so far as may be�� -- the Court held, ��This provides for the situation of transfer being made, if necessary, at any stage and of any part of the (undisputed) property, since Section 7(2) is applicable only to the disputed area.��
Lest any authority use even this clear enunciation to hold on to the undisputed area, the Court added, ��The provision however does not countenance the dispute remaining unresolved or the situation continuing perpetually.
The embargo on transfer till adjudication, and in terms thereof, to be read in Section 6(1), relates only to the disputed area, while transfer of any part of the excess area, retention of which till adjudication of the dispute relating to the disputed area may not be necessary, is not inhibited till then, since the acquisition of the excess area is absolute subject to the duty to restore it to the owner if its retention is found to be unnecessary, as indicated.��
But are all the sixty-seven acres needed for this limited purpose? Should more be acquired to ensure full enjoyment by Muslims in the event they win the title suit? The Court�s answer was absolutely unambiguous: "... the extent of adjacent area considered necessary is in the domain of policy and not a matter for judicial scrutiny or a ground for testing the constitutional validity of the enactment...��
Because of its preoccupations at the time, the Government had not been able to determine, much less indicate to the Court how much and what parts of the undisputed area were required. The Court observed, ��However, at a later stage when the exact area acquired which is needed for achieving the professed purpose of acquisition can be determined, it would not merely be permissible but desirable that the superfluous excess area is released from acquisition and reverted to its earlier owner.��
The Court did not just say, Government ��may�� or ��might�� return this undisputed area to its Hindu owners. It held that the Government is duty-bound to do so, that once it has determined what exact portion is needed for the limited purpose of enabling Muslims to enjoy the disputed site if the courts ultimately hold in their favour, the undisputed portion ��must�� be restored to the undisputed owners.
Contrast these emphatic, unambiguous, recurrent declarations of the Supreme Court with what has now been stated in the interim order. In this order, the judges state, ��Furthermore, no part of the aforesaid land shall be handed over by the Government to anyone and the same shall be retained by the Government till the disposal of this writ petition nor shall any part of this land be permitted to be occupied or used for any religious purpose or in connection therewith.��
How can this be squared with the judgement of the Constitution Bench on the case? Actually, there was one way to square the two. But that turned out to be a telltale embarrassment! In the paragraph preceding the one I have just quoted, the judges set out what they meant by ��the aforesaid land��.
Ordering that counter-affidavits and rejoinders be filed successively in four weeks each, the judges directed, ��In the meantime, we direct that on the 67.703 acres of land located in revenue plot Nos. 159 and 160 in village Kot Ramchandra which is vested in the Central Government, no religious activity of any kind by anyone either symbolic or actual including bhumipuja, shall be permitted or allowed to take place.��
Only two revenue plots in just one revenue village. That left the overwhelming part of the undisputed land out of the Court�s order, and, therefore, one could have assumed that in some sense this interim order conforms to the judgement. But the omission had but to be brought to its attention, and the Court foreclosed that construction!
Yet that is but one of several reasons why the Prime Minister was entirely right when, during his response in the Rajya Sabha on 14 March, he said -- in the understatement so characteristic of him -- that the new order will have to be discussed in detail some day.
Indian Express
March 17, 2002
��The mandate (which the Act imposes upon the Central Government),�� the Supreme Court said in its 1994 judgement on the Ayodhya case, ��is that in managing the property so vested in the Central Government, the Central Government or the authorised person shall ensure maintenance of the status quo [and here the Court quoted merely reproduced -- for the second time within ten lines -- the words in the Act itself) in the area on which the structure (including the premises of the inner and outer courtyards of such structure), commonly known as the Ram Janmabhumi-Babri Masjid, stood.��
There had been some discussion, the Court remarked alluding to the special pleading that had gone on, as to what exactly was meant by ��the area�� -- the ��entire area�� that had been taken over or what. But the provision itself sets out clearly what is meant, said the Court.
The meaning is not the entire area that had been taken over and was specified in the Schedule annexed to the Act, the Court held -- ��since the words which follow qualify its meaning confining it only to the site on which this structure, commonly known as the Ram Janmabhumi-Babri Masjid stood, which site or area is undoubtedly smaller and within the area specified in the Schedule.��
Moreover, the Court specified, the land over which the structure had stood has not been acquired to be held in perpetuity by the Government. It has not been acquired to be put to sundry use by the Government. The sole purpose for which it has been acquired, the Court specified, is to hand it back to its rightful owners -- Hindus or Muslims -- once the dispute about who owned it is settled.
The acquisition is not absolute, the Court declared. It is not for perpetuity. The relevant provisions are ��transitory�� ��for the purpose of its subsequent transfer to the person found entitled to it as a result of the adjudication of the dispute for the resolution of which this step was taken��.
The Presidential Reference also makes clear, the Supreme Court declared, that ��the acquisition of the disputed area was not meant to be absolute but limited to holding it as a statutory receiver till the resolution of the dispute; and then to transfer it...��
��The duty of the Central Government as the statutory receiver,�� the Court emphasised yet again, ��is to hand over the disputed area in accordance with Section 6 of the Act, in terms of the adjudication made in the suits for implementation of the final decision therein. This is the purpose for which the disputed land has been acquired.��
Contrast this emphatic, unambiguous, recurring declaration of the Supreme Court about what the purpose is for which the disputed land was acquired with the secularist clap-trap: the land must be used for building a hospital, a school, a playground, a park, a memorial... -- that is, for anything but for handing it back to the Hindus should they win the title-suit and thereafter reconstruct the temple -- the ancient, well-documented temple -- that Mir Baqi and his crew demolished.
That the disputed area has been acquired solely for this purpose, and that the mandate to maintain the status quo applies only to the disputed area was set out by the Supreme Court in its judgement not once, not twice, but at seven different places.
And there is a clear reason, said the Court, why the Act has mandated that the status quo be maintained on the disputed area till it is transferred back to its rightful owner.
��Unless the status quo is ensured,�� the Court explained, ��the final outcome on resolution of the disputed area may be frustrated by any change made in the disputed area which may frustrate the implementation of the result in favour of the successful party and render it meaningless.
A direction to maintain the status quo in the disputed property is a well-known method and the usual order made during the pendency of a dispute for preserving the property and protecting the interest of the true owner till the adjudication is made.��
Now, as is well known, the area over which the structure stood is but a fraction of the total area that the Government had acquired: the structure per se had covered just a third of an acre, the appurtenant platform etc. had covered another 2.5 acres or so; but the Government had taken over about sixty seven acres.
The only area over which there was a dispute about ownership -- the part over which there has been a dispute ever since the temple was destroyed -- are the one-third to 2.7 acres. Muslims have maintained that as they had acquired it and built a mosque on it long ago, it is their�s forever.
Hindus have maintained that it had been wrested from them by force, that what was sacred to them was razed, that they have never abandoned their ownership of it, that they have -- even when denied access to it -- continued to venerate it from the platforms, the bye-lanes around the spot.
After recounting the successive stages by which the Hindus have come to physically resume worship of the idols at the spot at least since 1949, the Supreme Court observed, ��On the other hand, at least since December 1949 the Muslims have not been offering worship at any place in the disputed site though, it may turn out at the trial of the suits that they had a right to do so.�� This limited area is what is known as the ��disputed area��.
About the rest of the area, the Supreme Court noted with emphasis, there is no dispute at all. "The narration of facts indicates," the Court said, "that the acquisition of properties under the Act affects the rights of both the communities and not merely those of the Muslim community.
The interest claimed by the Muslims is only over the disputed site where the mosque stood before its demolition. The objection of the Hindus to this claim has to be adjudicated. The remaining entire property acquired under the Act is such over which no title is claimed by the Muslims. A large part thereof consists of properties of Hindus of which the title is not even in dispute.��
The purpose for which this undisputed area had nonetheless been acquired was to ensure that, should courts ultimately decide that the disputed site in fact belongs to Muslims, they should not be prevented from enjoying the property by not having access to it.
Indeed, the Court went further. Elaborating on the significance of the words that had been used in the Act itself in this regard -- the words ��so far as may be�� -- the Court held, ��This provides for the situation of transfer being made, if necessary, at any stage and of any part of the (undisputed) property, since Section 7(2) is applicable only to the disputed area.��
Lest any authority use even this clear enunciation to hold on to the undisputed area, the Court added, ��The provision however does not countenance the dispute remaining unresolved or the situation continuing perpetually.
The embargo on transfer till adjudication, and in terms thereof, to be read in Section 6(1), relates only to the disputed area, while transfer of any part of the excess area, retention of which till adjudication of the dispute relating to the disputed area may not be necessary, is not inhibited till then, since the acquisition of the excess area is absolute subject to the duty to restore it to the owner if its retention is found to be unnecessary, as indicated.��
But are all the sixty-seven acres needed for this limited purpose? Should more be acquired to ensure full enjoyment by Muslims in the event they win the title suit? The Court�s answer was absolutely unambiguous: "... the extent of adjacent area considered necessary is in the domain of policy and not a matter for judicial scrutiny or a ground for testing the constitutional validity of the enactment...��
Because of its preoccupations at the time, the Government had not been able to determine, much less indicate to the Court how much and what parts of the undisputed area were required. The Court observed, ��However, at a later stage when the exact area acquired which is needed for achieving the professed purpose of acquisition can be determined, it would not merely be permissible but desirable that the superfluous excess area is released from acquisition and reverted to its earlier owner.��
The Court did not just say, Government ��may�� or ��might�� return this undisputed area to its Hindu owners. It held that the Government is duty-bound to do so, that once it has determined what exact portion is needed for the limited purpose of enabling Muslims to enjoy the disputed site if the courts ultimately hold in their favour, the undisputed portion ��must�� be restored to the undisputed owners.
Contrast these emphatic, unambiguous, recurrent declarations of the Supreme Court with what has now been stated in the interim order. In this order, the judges state, ��Furthermore, no part of the aforesaid land shall be handed over by the Government to anyone and the same shall be retained by the Government till the disposal of this writ petition nor shall any part of this land be permitted to be occupied or used for any religious purpose or in connection therewith.��
How can this be squared with the judgement of the Constitution Bench on the case? Actually, there was one way to square the two. But that turned out to be a telltale embarrassment! In the paragraph preceding the one I have just quoted, the judges set out what they meant by ��the aforesaid land��.
Ordering that counter-affidavits and rejoinders be filed successively in four weeks each, the judges directed, ��In the meantime, we direct that on the 67.703 acres of land located in revenue plot Nos. 159 and 160 in village Kot Ramchandra which is vested in the Central Government, no religious activity of any kind by anyone either symbolic or actual including bhumipuja, shall be permitted or allowed to take place.��
Only two revenue plots in just one revenue village. That left the overwhelming part of the undisputed land out of the Court�s order, and, therefore, one could have assumed that in some sense this interim order conforms to the judgement. But the omission had but to be brought to its attention, and the Court foreclosed that construction!
Yet that is but one of several reasons why the Prime Minister was entirely right when, during his response in the Rajya Sabha on 14 March, he said -- in the understatement so characteristic of him -- that the new order will have to be discussed in detail some day.
Indian Express
March 17, 2002
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Fascism will be Inevitable if Aggression is Called Resurgence
Arun Shourie
'Dalits fight back,' 'Dalit resurgence,' 'Dalit politics will never be the same again,' 'Mumbai massacre a watershed' -- headlines, news stories, comments in the wake of the firing at the crowd in Mumbai. There was a little hiccup -- the leaders of the 'Dalits' whom these publications had been building up for years were thrashed by the 'Dalits' whose resurgence the same press was celebrating! But the prophets of resurgence soon regained their vigour.
That 'resurgence' which our press detected, the 'resurgence' it was celebrating, its prophecy -- 'things will never be the same again'. How do that 'resurgence' and prophecy look two months later?
There is a pattern to this. Two years ago the press was full of analyses, 'resurgence of OBCs.' There is no talk of that today -- Laloo Yadav having shown the uses to which that particular resurgence was put, the resurgent Yadavs and the like having shown in massacre after massacre what they will do to the other group, the 'Dalits', whose resurgence the press is hailing. Before that -- what with killings in Punjab, in Kashmir, in Assam and the North-East -- the press was full of analyses proclaiming the resurgence of 'sub-nationalism', the 'coming into their own' of 'sub-national groups'.
And before that the Muslims were the ones who were proclaimed to be resurgent -- the killings in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque, the rise of the Islamic Seva Sangh: 'Muslim politics will never be the same again,' the press declared, 'Muslim youth alienated, will turn militant.'
And before that Naxalbari was to light the prairie fire. And after that -- what with Charan Singh, Tikait, Devi Lal -- the 'peasants' were proclaimed to be resurgent. And then of course there were the original resurgents throughout - the 'workers'. No talk of any of those resurgences today -- the resurgence this time round is of the 'Dalits'.
Notice, they proclaim resurgence only in regard to groups which constitute parts, never the whole, indeed to qualify as resurgent the group must be denouncing the whole -- for instance, you wouldn't catch any of these analysts seeing in the destruction of the Babri mosque resurgence among Hindus -- that was vandalism, a return to barbarism!
But the terrorists -- so long as they were Sikhs as in Punjab, or Muslims as in Kashmir -- they represented the resurgent sub-nationalities. So, it isn't that our intellectuals detect resurgence anywhere and everywhere. The group must be repudiating the whole, then whatever it does is a manifestation of that resurgence, and, accordingly, by definition entirely in order.
The first point thus is fanciful theorising. The second is purposeful theorising. The third point, indeed a necessary adjunct to both those kinds of theorising, is to block out the reality of what is going on. In the resurgence of workers, the fact that the leaders were just traders in unions had to be overlooked.
In the resurgence of peasants, the all-too-manifest petty politicking of Charan Singh, of Devi Lal and the rest had to be shut from view. In the resurgence heralded by Naxalbari, the fact that the Naxalites were just murdering and extorting had to be buried.
In the resurgence of OBCs, the fact that these were the very ones who on Mandal's own telling, and of course as evidenced by scores and scores of massacres since -- were belabouring the Scheduled Castes had to be obscured, Laloo's loot had to be obfuscated. The latest resurgence has made similar demands. It wasn't clear at all -- two months after the incident it still is not clear -- who put those shoes around the statue in Ramabai Nagar: A rival faction of the Dalit leadership, said many; the Congress out to create a case for the dismissal of the state government, said as many; the Congress acting through the suddenly respectable don, Arun Gawli, said others: Each theory as plausible as the other.
But our press was interested in only those things which could be used to reinforce the bad name it has given to the Shiv Sena-BJP government. Not only was Arun Gawli suddenly respectable -- the new manifestation, like Haji Mastan earlier, of resurgence -- Chhagan Bhujbal -- till the other day 'the gauletier of Thackeray' -- became a hero-victim just as suddenly. That too required strong amnesia.
With the solitary exception of The Observer, not one publication cared to recall what this very man had done not long ago -- the 'Dalits' held a demonstration around the Martyrs Memorial at Flora Fountain in Mumbai; Bhujbal led his followers the following day, and had the Martyrs Memorial and the area around it washed, he had pujas done, he staged an elaborate Shuddhikaran ceremony at the site: The 'Dalits' have polluted the place, he ' declared, and he is having it cleansed with Gangajal.
The resurgents silence the propagandists: No talk of the resurgence of sub-national groups after Bhindranwale, after the Kashmir mercenaries; no talk of workers and peasants after Dutta Samant and the Communists; no talk of the OBCs 'coming into their own' after Laloo Yadav. I have little doubt that the Ambedkarites will, with comparable thoroughness, silence the ones who have read into the latest events the empowerment of yet another group.
Our intellectuals make out that, because the group has been wronged, it has the right to behave as it will, that it has a right to flout norms and rules: It is but natural, and therefore it is but right, their theories go, that the long-suppressed should have no patience with institutions, norms, rules and such fetishes; after all, the theories go, these rules and norms are devices by which the rest keep this group down.
When these two notions are compounded in the consciousness of a group -- the notion that it has been wronged, and that therefore it has the right to do as it will -- Fascism is the certain outcome: A Laloo Yadav acting above the law, his goons taking over the streets when a step is taken to bring him to book - that, if only our press gives up its blinkers, is the real Fascist force.
As are those acting in the name of 'Dalits' today -- the muscle they deploy, the amounts they exact, the brazenness with which they proclaim their exemption from every norm. No society can survive the abandonment of norms, of rules. On the other hand, at each step by reading resurgence into the latest aggressive group, these intellectuals are goading that very shredding of norms.
Soon enough the group which these theorists stoke suffers too. Along with the leaders, these intellectuals make it believe that it has a right to receive without working, that it has a right to grab -- for what the others have today is what belonged to it in the first place, that it is what they have grabbed.
In a word, the intellectuals rationalise aggression, and thereby foment it. This has immediate consequences. Work is no longer a duty, on the contrary the notion that we must work for what we want or need is proclaimed to be a device of the exploiters to keep the group in bondage. As the group becomes aggressive, other groups get pushed and thereby a strong reaction against that particular group develops.
That is what happened in regard to the Sikhs, it is what happened in regard to unionised labour, it is what has happened in the last five years against the Yadavs. What is being done in the name of 'Dalits' will ensure the same outcome against them.
When a group has been taught that it is right for it to be in a rage, rage becomes its second nature. Flying off the handle becomes a habit, even a fashion. And once a habit, it doesn't remain confined to exploding at outsiders: Members of the group -- and the leaders of the group really are the leaders in this regard -- explode just as ferociously at each other.
You would have noticed how such groups split, and go on splitting -- workers' and peasants' organisations, Naxalites, the OBCs, the uncounted factions of the Republican Party, every single group which has been worked up.
The leaders had started by exploiting the sense of insecurity in the group. Intellectuals started by fabricating 'reasons' for the group to feel suspicious of others, and to feel insecure. But the sequence compounds the insecurity. The reaction the aggressive behaviour of the group ignites gives genuine ground for feeling insecure -- that is obvious.
But I have observed a deeper, subterranean reason in addition. The entire chest-beating in the name of the group -- the chest-beating by intellectuals as much as that by the leaders -- comes to be based on gross exaggerations, indeed on wholesale falsehoods. This in turn becomes another reason for being even more aggressive -- the way these leaders and intellectuals descend to scotch the mere attempt at examining their assertions has been put in full view in the last decade.
That screamed-out righteousness, that worked up rage give the game away: They show that the leaders and intellectuals know that there is nothing to their assertions, that the moment examination begins, their shops will shut.
The group suffers -- but our intellectuals will not give up their practised trade any more than the leaders will. So intense is their need for these worked-up groups that, if one ground for stirring them falls through, they immediately latch on to another. Notice how every leftist denounced caste till the other day: 'class, not caste,' that was the war-cry. And today, every leftist is a casteist -- 'in India, caste is class,' that is the new analysis.
The need flows first of all from the high opinion these worthies have of themselves. They are convinced that their anointing is very important: It is vital strength for the group, they are certain. In their own eyes, and something they are even more keen about, in the eyes of others of their kind, shouting on behalf of the latest resurgent group is to declare oneself, it is to take a stand.
Then there is calculation: These intellectuals have convinced themselves for ever so long that shouting 'injustice,' 'exploitation' will get them a following in the target group: To see how potent this lure is you have just to read the internal Communist party documents of the late forties, documents in which the high-command explained that supporting the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan on the ground that Muslims would never get justice In a united India would attract Muslim middle class youth to the party.
But there isn't just calculation, there is compulsion, a psychological one: The very trade of these intellectuals is denunciation of India, of the whole as against the parts. When a group within the whole screams in anger, they feel vindicated: Hence, they ignite the group, 'it is right for you to rage,' they convince it; when it is enraged, they proclaim in triumph, 'see, this is an unjust society.' Even more compelling is the hunger of the impotent. These revolutionaries-by-proxy are a timorous lot, gnawed at by feelings of irrelevance and impotence. They search for the latest group that is stirring into aggressiveness. They gravitate to it. They goad it along. Then, shouting on its behalf, they convince each other they are a part of it, and thereby make-believe that they have power, that they count for something!
Society suffers as a consequence. The group suffers. But by then our friends are on to the next group. Jharkhand Tribals, next round?
The Observer
September 12, 1997
'Dalits fight back,' 'Dalit resurgence,' 'Dalit politics will never be the same again,' 'Mumbai massacre a watershed' -- headlines, news stories, comments in the wake of the firing at the crowd in Mumbai. There was a little hiccup -- the leaders of the 'Dalits' whom these publications had been building up for years were thrashed by the 'Dalits' whose resurgence the same press was celebrating! But the prophets of resurgence soon regained their vigour.
That 'resurgence' which our press detected, the 'resurgence' it was celebrating, its prophecy -- 'things will never be the same again'. How do that 'resurgence' and prophecy look two months later?
There is a pattern to this. Two years ago the press was full of analyses, 'resurgence of OBCs.' There is no talk of that today -- Laloo Yadav having shown the uses to which that particular resurgence was put, the resurgent Yadavs and the like having shown in massacre after massacre what they will do to the other group, the 'Dalits', whose resurgence the press is hailing. Before that -- what with killings in Punjab, in Kashmir, in Assam and the North-East -- the press was full of analyses proclaiming the resurgence of 'sub-nationalism', the 'coming into their own' of 'sub-national groups'.
And before that the Muslims were the ones who were proclaimed to be resurgent -- the killings in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque, the rise of the Islamic Seva Sangh: 'Muslim politics will never be the same again,' the press declared, 'Muslim youth alienated, will turn militant.'
And before that Naxalbari was to light the prairie fire. And after that -- what with Charan Singh, Tikait, Devi Lal -- the 'peasants' were proclaimed to be resurgent. And then of course there were the original resurgents throughout - the 'workers'. No talk of any of those resurgences today -- the resurgence this time round is of the 'Dalits'.
Notice, they proclaim resurgence only in regard to groups which constitute parts, never the whole, indeed to qualify as resurgent the group must be denouncing the whole -- for instance, you wouldn't catch any of these analysts seeing in the destruction of the Babri mosque resurgence among Hindus -- that was vandalism, a return to barbarism!
But the terrorists -- so long as they were Sikhs as in Punjab, or Muslims as in Kashmir -- they represented the resurgent sub-nationalities. So, it isn't that our intellectuals detect resurgence anywhere and everywhere. The group must be repudiating the whole, then whatever it does is a manifestation of that resurgence, and, accordingly, by definition entirely in order.
The first point thus is fanciful theorising. The second is purposeful theorising. The third point, indeed a necessary adjunct to both those kinds of theorising, is to block out the reality of what is going on. In the resurgence of workers, the fact that the leaders were just traders in unions had to be overlooked.
In the resurgence of peasants, the all-too-manifest petty politicking of Charan Singh, of Devi Lal and the rest had to be shut from view. In the resurgence heralded by Naxalbari, the fact that the Naxalites were just murdering and extorting had to be buried.
In the resurgence of OBCs, the fact that these were the very ones who on Mandal's own telling, and of course as evidenced by scores and scores of massacres since -- were belabouring the Scheduled Castes had to be obscured, Laloo's loot had to be obfuscated. The latest resurgence has made similar demands. It wasn't clear at all -- two months after the incident it still is not clear -- who put those shoes around the statue in Ramabai Nagar: A rival faction of the Dalit leadership, said many; the Congress out to create a case for the dismissal of the state government, said as many; the Congress acting through the suddenly respectable don, Arun Gawli, said others: Each theory as plausible as the other.
But our press was interested in only those things which could be used to reinforce the bad name it has given to the Shiv Sena-BJP government. Not only was Arun Gawli suddenly respectable -- the new manifestation, like Haji Mastan earlier, of resurgence -- Chhagan Bhujbal -- till the other day 'the gauletier of Thackeray' -- became a hero-victim just as suddenly. That too required strong amnesia.
With the solitary exception of The Observer, not one publication cared to recall what this very man had done not long ago -- the 'Dalits' held a demonstration around the Martyrs Memorial at Flora Fountain in Mumbai; Bhujbal led his followers the following day, and had the Martyrs Memorial and the area around it washed, he had pujas done, he staged an elaborate Shuddhikaran ceremony at the site: The 'Dalits' have polluted the place, he ' declared, and he is having it cleansed with Gangajal.
The resurgents silence the propagandists: No talk of the resurgence of sub-national groups after Bhindranwale, after the Kashmir mercenaries; no talk of workers and peasants after Dutta Samant and the Communists; no talk of the OBCs 'coming into their own' after Laloo Yadav. I have little doubt that the Ambedkarites will, with comparable thoroughness, silence the ones who have read into the latest events the empowerment of yet another group.
Our intellectuals make out that, because the group has been wronged, it has the right to behave as it will, that it has a right to flout norms and rules: It is but natural, and therefore it is but right, their theories go, that the long-suppressed should have no patience with institutions, norms, rules and such fetishes; after all, the theories go, these rules and norms are devices by which the rest keep this group down.
When these two notions are compounded in the consciousness of a group -- the notion that it has been wronged, and that therefore it has the right to do as it will -- Fascism is the certain outcome: A Laloo Yadav acting above the law, his goons taking over the streets when a step is taken to bring him to book - that, if only our press gives up its blinkers, is the real Fascist force.
As are those acting in the name of 'Dalits' today -- the muscle they deploy, the amounts they exact, the brazenness with which they proclaim their exemption from every norm. No society can survive the abandonment of norms, of rules. On the other hand, at each step by reading resurgence into the latest aggressive group, these intellectuals are goading that very shredding of norms.
Soon enough the group which these theorists stoke suffers too. Along with the leaders, these intellectuals make it believe that it has a right to receive without working, that it has a right to grab -- for what the others have today is what belonged to it in the first place, that it is what they have grabbed.
In a word, the intellectuals rationalise aggression, and thereby foment it. This has immediate consequences. Work is no longer a duty, on the contrary the notion that we must work for what we want or need is proclaimed to be a device of the exploiters to keep the group in bondage. As the group becomes aggressive, other groups get pushed and thereby a strong reaction against that particular group develops.
That is what happened in regard to the Sikhs, it is what happened in regard to unionised labour, it is what has happened in the last five years against the Yadavs. What is being done in the name of 'Dalits' will ensure the same outcome against them.
When a group has been taught that it is right for it to be in a rage, rage becomes its second nature. Flying off the handle becomes a habit, even a fashion. And once a habit, it doesn't remain confined to exploding at outsiders: Members of the group -- and the leaders of the group really are the leaders in this regard -- explode just as ferociously at each other.
You would have noticed how such groups split, and go on splitting -- workers' and peasants' organisations, Naxalites, the OBCs, the uncounted factions of the Republican Party, every single group which has been worked up.
The leaders had started by exploiting the sense of insecurity in the group. Intellectuals started by fabricating 'reasons' for the group to feel suspicious of others, and to feel insecure. But the sequence compounds the insecurity. The reaction the aggressive behaviour of the group ignites gives genuine ground for feeling insecure -- that is obvious.
But I have observed a deeper, subterranean reason in addition. The entire chest-beating in the name of the group -- the chest-beating by intellectuals as much as that by the leaders -- comes to be based on gross exaggerations, indeed on wholesale falsehoods. This in turn becomes another reason for being even more aggressive -- the way these leaders and intellectuals descend to scotch the mere attempt at examining their assertions has been put in full view in the last decade.
That screamed-out righteousness, that worked up rage give the game away: They show that the leaders and intellectuals know that there is nothing to their assertions, that the moment examination begins, their shops will shut.
The group suffers -- but our intellectuals will not give up their practised trade any more than the leaders will. So intense is their need for these worked-up groups that, if one ground for stirring them falls through, they immediately latch on to another. Notice how every leftist denounced caste till the other day: 'class, not caste,' that was the war-cry. And today, every leftist is a casteist -- 'in India, caste is class,' that is the new analysis.
The need flows first of all from the high opinion these worthies have of themselves. They are convinced that their anointing is very important: It is vital strength for the group, they are certain. In their own eyes, and something they are even more keen about, in the eyes of others of their kind, shouting on behalf of the latest resurgent group is to declare oneself, it is to take a stand.
Then there is calculation: These intellectuals have convinced themselves for ever so long that shouting 'injustice,' 'exploitation' will get them a following in the target group: To see how potent this lure is you have just to read the internal Communist party documents of the late forties, documents in which the high-command explained that supporting the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan on the ground that Muslims would never get justice In a united India would attract Muslim middle class youth to the party.
But there isn't just calculation, there is compulsion, a psychological one: The very trade of these intellectuals is denunciation of India, of the whole as against the parts. When a group within the whole screams in anger, they feel vindicated: Hence, they ignite the group, 'it is right for you to rage,' they convince it; when it is enraged, they proclaim in triumph, 'see, this is an unjust society.' Even more compelling is the hunger of the impotent. These revolutionaries-by-proxy are a timorous lot, gnawed at by feelings of irrelevance and impotence. They search for the latest group that is stirring into aggressiveness. They gravitate to it. They goad it along. Then, shouting on its behalf, they convince each other they are a part of it, and thereby make-believe that they have power, that they count for something!
Society suffers as a consequence. The group suffers. But by then our friends are on to the next group. Jharkhand Tribals, next round?
The Observer
September 12, 1997
Ayodhya: Muslim Argument Examined
Ayodhya: Muslim Argument Examined
Arun Shourie
At first, the demand-cum-assurance was, "If you can bring any proof showing a temple had been demolished to construct the mosque, we will ourselves demolish the mosque". A host of documents -- reports of the Archaeological Survey of India going back to 1891, Gazetteers going back to 1854, survey reports going back to 1838 were produced which stated unambiguously that a Ram temple had been demolished to construct the mosque".
The demand suddenly changed. "These are all British documents", it was now said. "The British concocted this story to divide and rule. "Show us some Pre-British documents" was an invention to get over inconvenient facts. It became evident soon enough, when in response to Chandrashekhar's initiative the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee submitted documents, most of these turned out to be nothing but the rulings of sundry British magistrates. Worse, they confirmed what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had been saying: that the mosque had not been in use since 1936;that it has been built by demolishing the Ram temple: that the Hindus had, at the cost of many lives, been trying throughout to capture the spot, as they held it to be the sacred birth place of Lord Ram.
In any event, non-British, specifically Muslim documents as well as pre-British documents, including the account of an Austrian Jesuit priest who had stayed in Ayodhya in 1766-71 were produced. Each of them stated the same facts.
But each of these is only repeating what the other is saying. It was demanded that show some contemporary document". The demand for such a document was manifestly a dodge : the one document -- the Babarnama -- which could have settled the matter is truncated: Babar records his reaching Ayodhya on 2 April 1528. The pages from then to 18 September 1528 are missing, and are surmised to have been lost in a storm in May 1529, or during Humayun's subsequent wanderings in the desert as a fugitive. The matter, however, was soon nailed. If the absence of a contemporary accounts - the very day's Court bulletins recording the destruction of the temples of Mathura, Kashi, Pandharpur and scores and scores of other places and their replacement by mosques are available proof enough to propel Shahabuddin etc to demolish those mosques?
No answer was forthcoming, instead, there were demands for more concrete proof. This was soon available in the results of the archaeological excavations which had been conducted in 1975-86, when attention was drawn to the pillars on which the domes etc. of the mosque rest to this day. to the carvings on these, it was said that these could well have been brought from elsewhere. But that alibi too floundered. It could not account for the pillar bases which were found three to four feet below the surface just outside the boundary wall; these were in perfect alignment with the pillars inside the mosque, and it was clear that, along with them, there must have been pillars on these bases which supported the larger structure of the temple; no one would have dragged bases of pillars from a distance and buried them outside the mosque to align with pillars inside the mosque!
So, archaeology itself was denounced. And sophistry was put out. Irfan Habib led the charge. But his own howler showed his arguments to be special pleading: if one went by the dates he ascribed on the basis of "Carbon dating" and all. Babar would have expired in 1965 instead of 1530, the reign of Akbar would commence in 2001 instead of having ended in 1605.
Since then, the case of these pleaders has been made worse by the new finds: entire walls and floor levels have now come into-view, twelve to fourteen feet below the surface. No one could have picked these up from a distance and planted them below the structure.
Shahabuddin�s Latest Argument
At the discussion on Ayodhya which Newstrack organised on 1 August Shahabuddin produced yet another argument. I had just quoted a signed statement he had distributed to the press as late as 15 June 1989 in which he had said. "But the Hindu chauvinists are totally confused about their own case... "Whatever the Hindu chauvinist case, the Muslim community has, without any legal obligation, offered, as a moral gesture, to demolish the Babri Masjid -- if it is proved that a temple stood on the site of the Babri Masjid and it was pulled down to construct the mosque. As the point at issue accordingly was whether there had been a temple at the site, I said, we should focus on the archaeological evidence to settle the matter.
Shahabuddin said that he stood by the statement. His argument was that The temple just could not have been pulled down as pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat. Incredulous, The principal correspondent of Newstrack, Manoj Raghuvanshi, later asked Shahabuddin whether in that case no temple had been demolished by Muslim rulers. "It is not a historical fact", said Shahabuddin, "that a standing temple in peace time was demolished by any Muslim ruler". "Assertions to the contrary", he said, "are all chauvinist propaganda"; Even with the hedging -- "standing temple", "in peace time" -- that was quite a lump to swallow. "You mean even Sonmath was not demolished". Raghuvanshi asked, "Sonmath was disintegrated," said Shahabuddin, and reaffirmed his thesis that temples could not have been demolished because pulling them down to build mosques was against the Shariat.
"Disintegrated", not "demolished"? A disingenuous give-away. I thought the VHP would be quite satisfied with that kind of disintegration now. Even if one accepted his contention about Shariat, the Inference Shahbuddin had drawn was indefensible; it was like saying that no murders take place today because murdering is prohibited by the law.
But there is a more conclusive point. Is it at all the case that demolishing a place of worship to replace it with a mosque is prohibited by the Shariat?
Encyclopedia of Islam
Every single Muslim historian of medieval India lists temples which the ruler he is writing about has destroyed and the mosques he has built instead. In his famous work, Sita Ram Goel reproduces some of these account verbatim1. Doing nothing but this, without any comments at all, takes over 170 printed pages of the book.
Nor was the practice confined to India, or to temples. Here are just two paragraphs from the 75 pages long entry. In the Encyclopedia of Islam2 "...it is rather doubtful whether the process (of acquiring churches) was a regular one; in any case the Muslims in course of time appropriated many churches to themselves. With the mass-conversions to Islam, this was a natural result. The churches taken over by the Muslims were occasionally used as dwellings3. At a later date, it also happened that they were used as government offices, as in Egypt in 146.4 The obvious thing, however, was to transform the churches taken into mosques. It is related of �Amr b, al-Asi� that he performed the salat in a church (Makrizi, iv. 6) and Zaid b. �Ali says regarding churches and synagogues, �Perform thy salat in them: it will not harm thee5. It is not clear whether the reference in these cases is to conquered sanctuaries; it is evident, in any case, that the saying is intended to remove any misgivings about the use of captured churches and synagogues as mosques. The most important example of this kind was in Damascus where al-Walid b. �Abb al-Malik in 86 (705) took the church of St. John from the Christians and had it rebuilt; he is said to have offered the Christians another church in its stead6. He is said to have transformed into mosques ten churches in all in Damascus. It must have been particularly in the villages, with the gradual conversion of the people to Islam, that the churches were turned into mosques. In the Egyptian village there were no mosques in the earlier generation of Islam7. But when al-Mamun was fighting the Copts, many churches were turned into mosques8. It is also recorded of mosques in Cairo that they were converted churches. According to one tradition, the Rashida mosque was an unfinished Jacobite church, which was surrounded by Jewish and Christian graves9. In the immediate vicinity al-Hakim turned a Jacobite and a Nestorian Church into mosques10. When Djawhar built a palace in al-Kahira, a dir was taken in and transformed into a mosque11. Similar changes took place at later dates12 and synagogues also were transformed in this way13. The chief mosque in Palermo was previously a church14. After the Crusades, several churches were turned into mosques in Palestine15.
"Other sanctuaries than those of the �people of the scripture� were turned into mosques. For example a Masjid al-Shams between Hilla and Kerbela was the successor of an old temple of Shamash16. Not far from Ishtakhr was a Masjid Sulaiman which was an old 'fire-temple'. the pictures on the walls of which could still be seen in the time of Mas�udi and al-Makdisi17. In Ishtakhr itself there was a djami�, which was a converted fire-temple18. In Masisa, the ancient Mopsuhestia, al-Mansur in 140 built a mosque on the site of an ancient temple19. The chief mosque in Dihli was originally a temple20. Thus in Islam also the old rule holds that sacred places survive changes of religion. It was especially easy in cases where Christian sanctuaries were associated with Biblical personalities who were also recognised by Islam: e.g., the Church of St John in Damascus and many holy places in Palestine. One example is the mosque of Job in Shekh Sad, associated with Sura xxi. 83, xxxviii. 40; here in Silvia's time (fourth century) there was a church of Job.
Prophet and Shariat
But could it not be that, like the Muslim rulers in India, these Muslim rulers of the Middle East were also doing all this in violation of the Shariat? As we know, the Shariat is based on what the Quran says and on what the prophet did, that is on the Sunnah. The Quran is sanguinary in the extreme, there can be little doubt on the matter. The only question therefore is about what the Prophet himself did.
The evidence is incontrovertible -- it leaves nothing of Shahabuddin's latest argument. The Prophet's companions as well as his biographers -- the earliest. all devout Muslim, whose accounts are the most authoritative sources we have of the Prophet's life -- report his ordering the destruction of a mosque as it had been set up by persons he did not think well of, they report his ordering new converts to demolish a church and establish a mosque instead at the site, they report his converting what had on all accounts become a pagan temple, with idols, paintings and all, into the greatest mosque of all -- that is, the Kaba itself. There is space to recall just an incident or two.
We learn from Ibn Sa�d�s book and widely used collection of Hadis, of a delegation of 13 to 19 members of Banu Hanifah calling upon the Prophet. We learn of them being looked after generously -- with bread, meat, milk, butter, dates. They receive instruction in Islam. They swear allegiance to the Prophet. It is time to leave. Talq b. Ali, who was in the delegation, states: "We went out as a deputation to God's messenger and swore allegiance to him and prayed along with him. We told him that we had a church in our land, and we asked him for some of the leavings of the water he used for ablution. He called for water, performed ablution, then poured it out for us into a skin vessel, and gave us the following command. �Go away, and when you come to your land break down your church, sprinkle this water on its site, and use it as a mosque�. We told him that our land was distant, the heat severe, and that the water would evaporate, to which he replied, �Add some water to it. for it will only bring more good to it23.�
Upon returning they did as the Prophet had commanded. Our narrator. Talq b, Ali, became the muezzin of the mosque and recited the azaan. The friar of the church. the reverential Ibu Sa�d records. "heard it (the azaan) and said, �It is a word of truth and call to truth�. Then he escaped and it was the end of the regime�24. Any ambiguity there?
Nor can Shahabuddin's claim that Shariat forbids the destruction of temples etc. in peace time be sustained in view of what the Prophet himself commanded and did. His earliest biographers -- Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa�d, for instance -- record instance after instance in which idols and temples were smashed, destroyed and burnt down at his orders. The temples of al-Uzza, al-Laat, and al-Manaat -- the three goddesses who are subjects of the Satanic verses in the Quran -- the temples around Ta�if, those of Fils and Ruda in Tayys -- are all reported by them to have been destroyed on the direct orders of the Prophet. Similarly, the biographers report the Prophet's joy when converts came and reported to him that they had destroyed this temple or that, or smashed to smithereens this idol or that. These were not instances when during a battle an army over-ran a site which happened to be a temple. These were instances of persons or tribes having come over to Islam, and then, as part of their new commitment, destroying the places of worship.
Nor, it must be noted, was the Prophet less stem about some refractory party setting up even a mosque. His orders at Dhu Awan are well known. Ibn Ishaq reports that as the Prophet approached the town, the devotees approached him saying, "We have built a mosque for the sick and needy and for nights of bad weather, and we would like you to come to us and pray for us there". The Prophet, Ibn Ishaq records, said that "he was on the point of travelling, and was preoccupied, or words to that effect, and that when he came back, if God willed, he would come to them and pray for them in it". But at Dhu Awan, upon hearing about the mosque, he summoned the followers, "and told them to go to the mosque of these evil men and destroy and burn it". That is exactly what the followers then did. A revelation came down from Allah and sanctified the destruction25.
I just do not see where Shahabuddin derives his cumenical rule from.
A Conclusive Example
But the most telling example is that of the Kaba, and the Masjidal-Haram, the mosque -- the most revered in Islam around it. And it is to this that we should turn to settle the matter.
As we saw, Shahabuddin�s latest argument is that no Muslim ruler could ever have destroyed a temple to build a mosque as doing so is prohibited by the Shariat. The Shariat is derived pre-eminently from what the Prophet himself did and said. So, the question is; how does that argument fare in the light of what the Prophet himself did?
The conclusive answer to this matter -- as to several others which have cropped up in the Ramjanmabhoomi controversy -- lies In the history of the Kaba and the Masjid al-Haram in which it is situated.
Mat the Kaba was
Till the very day the Prophet took it under his control after his conquest of Mecca, the Kaba and the structure around it were a place of pagan worship with idols and paintings of all sorts of gods and goddesses.
From the earliest to the most recent biographers of the Prophet, all speak of it as such. Recalling days long before the Prophet, Ibn Ishaq reports the answer of the Hudhaylis to the king when he asked them why they too would not do in regard to the Kaba -- circumambulate the temple, venerate it, shave their heads etc. -- as they were exhorting him to do , "They replied that it was indeed the temple of their father Abraham, but the idols which the inhabitants had set up round it, and the blood which they shed there (by sacrificing animals) presented an insuperable obstacle. They are unclean polytheists, said they -- or words to that effect". We learn of the Prophet's arguments with the Controllers of the shrine about the idols. We learn of their fear that should his iconoclasm prevail they would lose the livelihood they now secured out of the pilgrims who came to worship the idols, and accordingly their fierce opposition to the Prophet. We learn of his returning to Mecca for "the lesser pilgrimage" and going to the Kaba "cluttered with idols though it was." Such are the accounts in the earliest and most authoritative of his biographies. The accounts continue to this day.
An Iranian Scholar�s views
"Why did so many tribes sustain the wealth and power of the Qoraysh by coming to the Kaba?", the Iranian scholar, Ali Dashti, asks about pre-Islamic times in his justly-acclaimed book Twenty Three Years 26, "The reason was that the Kaba housed famous idols and contained a black stone which the Arabs held sacred... Each group of pilgrims had to shout its entreaties to its idol while circumambulating the Kaba and running from Safa to Marwa". "The Kaba," he writes, recounting the setting in which Islam was established, "was an important idol-temple, much visited by Beduin tribesmen and greatly respected as a holy place... The livelihood of the Meecans and the prestige of the Quoryash chiefs depended on this coming and going. The Beduin came to visit the Kaba, which was an idol temple. If the new religion required destruction of the idols, they would not come any more..." Ali Dashti refers to the Kaba repeatedly as "the idol-temple which the tribes had revered..." as "the famous idol-temple."
The temple had several idols, among them 360 statues. The Quran itself mentions the three goddesses -- al-Lat, al-Uzza and al-Manaat -- who were worshipped there. The most prominent idol however was that of Hubal, "who", the first Encyclopedia of Islam states, "may be called the God of Mecca and of the Kaba". A male figure, it was made of red carnelian. The statue stood inside the Kaba, says the new edition of the Encyclopedia, above the sacred well which was thought to have been dug by Abraham to receive the offerings brought to the sanctuary. Though a stellar deity, its principal function was that of a "cleromantic divinity", it being the custom to consult the idol by divining arrows. Hubal, the number of idols -- 360 -- as well as the rites associated with them, have all been taken to point to an astral symbolism, and the temple has accordingly been taken to have been dedicated to the sun, the moon and the planets.
How it was transformed
The temple continued in this condition till the very day on which the Prophet re-entered it upon capturing Mecca. That moment of triumph is recorded in great detail by the biographers. The accounts establish both sets of facts -- they establish what was in the temple at that moment, and what the Prophet did to it. Notice that the moment was exactly the kind of moment which would test Shahabuddin's claim about what is and what is not allowed by the Shariat; this was not a situation of war, quite the contrary -- the Meccans had surrendered without a real fight; the protagonist was the Prophet himself, so there can be no doubt about what the Shariat -- based as it pre-eminently is on what he said and did -- would entail; the structure had, as we have seen, been a house of worship of an altogether un-Islamic kind forages.
Upon entering, the Prophet went round the Kaba seven times on his camel. He then climbed into the cube -- the Kaba proper. Inside he found a dove made of wood, said in the Encyclopedia to having been possibly devoted to the Semitic Venus. "He broke it in his hands," records Ibn Ishaq, "and threw it away," He then saw paintings of Abraham. Jesus and Mary inside the structure; by one set of traditions he had all of them destroyed, by another he had all except those of Jesus and Mary destroyed. At the noon prayer that day "he ordered," Ibn Ishaq reports, "that all the idols which were round the Kaba should be collected and burned with fire and broken up." That was done. Soon enough idolaters were forbidden from the shrine.
Here then was a structure which before the Prophet had been for several generations a place of worship of an altogether inclusive, pagan kind. The Prophet took it over -- or reclaimed it, as the faithful would say -- and transformed into the greatest mosque of Islam. Where does that leave the Shahabuddin thesis - "No temple could have been destroyed to build a mosque as doing so is against the Shariat"?
Prophet Adopts Pagan Rituals
Nor does the story end there. While, as the Encyclopedia puts it, "all the pagan trappings which had adhered to the Kaba were thrust aside," "it is incontrovertible that an entire pre-Islamic ritual, previously steeped in paganism, was adopted by Islam after it had been purified and given a strictly monotheistic orientation. "Treating the area as consecrated ground, treating it as a refuge, the sacrificing of animals (shifted now from the Kaba to Mina), the various elements connected with the Haj, including among these, the stoning of the Devil by throwing pebbles, the rushing between Safa and Marwa, the halt at Arafat -- all these, as the Encyclopedia and Ali Dashti etc. point out, date from the pre-Islamic period. Some things, as Ali Dashti notes, were just a bit transformed. The pre-Islamic Arabs approaching for instance the goddess Manaat would call out, "Here I am at your service, (labbayka) O Manaat." The same call was now addressed to Allah; "Labbayka Allahomma labbayka." "Here I am at your service, Allah, at your service". The retention of these -- even after transformation -- led to great disquiet. Even Umar, one of the most devoted adherents of the Prophet, is said to have exclaimed on approaching the Black Stone, for Glance. "I know that thou art a stone, that neither helps nor hurts and if the Messenger of Allah had not kissed thee, I would not kiss thee". The special veneration accorded to the stone, to the structure, to everything which comes in contact with it -- for instance, the rain water which falls off it through the spout, the cloth which is used to cover it and which is cut into pieces and sold to the pilgrims after being taken down -- have continued to be contrasted with the strict admonitions against idolatry. The disquiet has not settled. Here is Ali Dashti on the decisions the Prophet handed down upon entering Kaba:
"The Prophet Mohammed's decision to set out on a visit to the Kaba in 6 A H / 628 A D is puzzling. Did he really believe the Kaba to be God�s abode? Or did he make this move in order to placate followers for whom the Kaba-visitation was an ancestral tradition? Was his decision, which came unexpectedly in view of the resolve of the hostile Qorayshites to prevent Moslems from entering Mecca, and which led to the disappointing truce of Hodaybiya a political stratagem designed to impress the Qoraysh chiefs with Moslem numerical and military strength and to draw ordinary unfanatical Meecans to the new religion? How could the man who had introduced the new religion and laws and had repudiated all the beliefs and superstitions of his own people now revive the main component of the old tradition in a new form? Islam's zealous founder and legislator had above all insisted on pure monotheism, telling the people that belief in the One God is the only road to happiness and proclaiming that 'the noblest among you in God's sight are the most pious among you." 27 Had he now succumbed to national or racial feeling? Did he want to make veneration of Ishmael�s house a symbol of Arab National identity?
Why Pilgrimage to Mecca?
"However that may be, the decision was so surprising and so inconsistent with Islamic principles that many Moslems were upset. Several believers objected to the running between Safa and Marwa because it had been a pagan Arab rite; but its retention was imposed by verse 153 Sura 2, "Safa and Marwa are among God's waymarks". According to well authenticated reports, Omar b, ol-Khattab, who was one of Mohammad's greatest and wisest companions, said that he would never have kissed the black stone if he had not personally seen the Prophet kiss it. Ghazzali, whose authority in Islamic matters deserves respect, wrote frankly that he could find no explanation of the hajj ritual but obeyed because it was an accomplished fact.
"There is one verse in the Quran which sheds some light on the matter and is perhaps an answer to questions about it. This is verse 28 of Sura 9 (ot-Tawba); "O believers, it is a fact that the polytheists are unclean. Therefore they shall not approach the mosque of the Sanctuary (i.e. the Kaba) after this year of theirs. If you fear poverty, God will enrich you from his bounty". According to the Tafsir Ol-Jalalayn, this meant that God would compensate the Arabs with victories and receipts of tribute. The Sura of repentance (ot-Tawba) is chronologically the last in the Qoran, having been sent down in 10 A H / 631 A D, well after the Moslem conquest of Mecca. The ban on visitation of the Kaba by non-muslim tribes was likely to disquiet the people of Mecca, whose livelihood and flourishing trade depended on the coming and going of Arab tribes and groups. Although the Meecans were of the same tribe as the Prophet, most of them had only become Moslem under duress. If Mecca should lose its prosperity, there might be a risk of widespread apostasy. That risk would be averted by making pilgrimage to Mecca incumbent on Moslems.
"This explanation is of course a mere hypothesis; to what extent it corresponds to the reality can never be known. In any case no rational or religious justification can be found for the retention of ancient pagan practices in the ritual of the Islamic hajj..."
And it is said that it is Hinduism which "swallows" other religions by incorporating their rituals and making Avtaars of their deities; However that may be, the Black Stone -- the veneration in which it is held, the powers which are attributed to it, the benedictions which are assumed to flow from seeing, touching and kissing it; the fact that the rituals followed can so directly be traced to pre-Islamic times, and that their retention has continued to bewilder devout Muslims like Umar and Ghazzali -- all these themselves put two things beyond doubt; the Kaba was a place of pagan idol worship with an elaborate set of rituals and an entire mode of life to go with it; second, the Prophet took it over and made it the holiest shrine of Islam.
Where does that leave Shahabuddin's latest argument?
"But where is the proof?"
When Shahabuddin was expounding his thesis about the Shariat not allowing the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque, I alluded to what the Kaba had been and how the Prophet himself had made it into a mosque.
Not true, said Shahabuddin. The Kaba was not a temple. It was a mosque from times immemorial, the foundations of it having been laid by Abraham and Ishmael -- the latter are prophets of the Jews but have been proclaimed by the Quran to have been the forbearers of the Prophet.
If the VHP had said something like that about the Ram Janmasthan, Shahabuddin, and of course our "Secular" polemicists, would have asked. "But what is the Proof that Abraham and Ishmael built the Kaba?" Well, what is the proof?
"The Arabs possess no historical or semi-historical records of the origin of the Kaba," says the Encyclopedia", and we as little. "For the entire period of the Prophet's stay in Mecca after he began receiving the revelations -- thirteen years -- and for the first year and a half after he went to Medina, the faithful were required to bow in prayer, not towards the Kaba, but towards Jerusalem. Then came the revelation to change the Qibla to Kaba. From the point of view of dogma, the Encyclopedia notes, "this volte-face was justified by an appeal to the �religion of Abraham� which was specially invented for the occasion.28
The "proof" of Abraham and Ishmael laying the foundations of the Kaba therefore is just the fact that it is so stated in the Quran29. Now, whether an affirmation just because it is in the Quran is to be regarded as proof is entirely a matter of faith. To insist that we must accept it as such would be to urge that exact kind of proof which the Babri Masjid protagonists have been rejecting so emphatically in the case of Ram's birth-place.
The only other circumstances bearing on the affirmation in the Quran is the Makaam Abraham a sort of mark on a stone which lies near the Kaba. The faithful believe that once, after the building had risen to some height. Abraham stood on that stone, and the mark on it is his footprint. The Muslims look upon the footprint with the same reverence with which Hindus would views similar marks believed to be of their Avtaars. But that mark in the stone does not settle the matter -- for it is as difficult to prove that the maker in that stone is indeed the impress which Abraham�s foot made on it as it is to prove the original affirmation in the Quran that Abraham built the Kaba. One has thus to fall back on the continuity of the tradition over such a long period, we have to fall back for proof on the fact that Muslims have long believed that Abraham built the Kaba. But that is exactly how the Hindus have long believed the spot now occupied by the Babri Masjid to have been the place at which Lord Ram was born.
The Navel of the Earth
Why is the Kaba vital? After all, a point to which I shall revert in a moment, had the Prophet not said that every spot on earth is sacred, that Allah has made the entire earth a masjid? There are two views regarding the importance of Kaba. One is that the Kaba is the navel of the earth. It is believed to have existed before the earth was created by Allah -- on one account 40 years earlier, on one 2000 years earlier. Allah created heaven, we are told, and then the earth by stretching out the substance of the earth around this navel. Creation competed, the Kaba we learn, now is the highest point of the earth, and its position corresponds exactly to that of the Pole Star, which we also learn, is the highest point in the heavens. As heaven is above the earth and as Kaba is the highest point on earth, it is the place by being in which one is nearest to heaven.
The other view is that it is not just the centre of the earth, but of the universe. The universe, in this account, consists of seven heavens -- one above the other -- and seven earths -- one below the other. All the fourteen levels are perfectly aligned -- the highest point in each lies perfectly in line with the highest of other levels. Now, the highest point of the seventh heaven is the Throne of Allah, the highest point on earth -- and exactly in the centre of the universe -- is the Kaba. The Kaba we see in Mecca, we are further instructed, is an exact replica of the original structure which is in heaven and which is made of gold.30
Myths or History?
But why was it necessary to create this replica on earth? The accounts differ. As we have seen, on one account it is Abraham who laid its foundations and with Ishmael built it one the prompting of Gabriel, the angel who, as we know, was later to transmit the revelations from Allah to the Prophet. On the other account, the structure was built by Adam.
Originally Adam was so tall that he could hear the heavenly songs around Allah's Throne directly. But after his fall he shrunk so much that the upper realms were out of his reach. Upon his importuning God sent him the tent around which and through which he could attain to the beatitudes, and this later was made into the Kaba, in answer to his pleas that Mecca had no one, that the shrine had no worshipers Allah promised that it would become the centre of pilgrimage, and that promise Allah fulfilled. The original structure was later washed away in the Great Flood. The angels spirited away and kept safe the Black Stone. That is how Abraham came to rebuild the structure later on, and Gabriel brought the Black Stone, back to him. We learn that the Stone itself -- now in three large and several small pieces held together by a silver band as it split in the course of a fire -- was originally white; it became black upon contact with the sinfulness of the pagan period31.
Such are the reasons on account of which the Kaba and the Black Stone are of such extraordinary holiness.
Now, which of these elements of the legends can be "proved" in the way proof of Ram's birthplace is sought? Yet it is precisely because of them that the Kaba is so sacred.
The Al Aqsa Mosque
After the Masjid al-Haram in which the Kaba lies, the mosque held most sacred by the faithful is the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. And why so? The rock around which it is built has a mark. It is believed to be the imprint the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse after his night's journey to this point in Jerusalem and thence to heaven : in heaven, as is well known, he met Moses and Jesus etc. Which elements of this can we prove? Heaven? The winged horse? The night's journey? That the mark is the imprint of a human foot? That the foot of which it is an imprint was that of the Prophet? (Incidentally the mosque is built on the site where according to the other set of beliefs stood the church built by Justinian). The Masjid al-Khaif in Mina is also built around a stone which the devout hold sacred; they put their heads on it, why? Because the stone has a mark which, it is said, was made by the Prophet placing his head on it. The Masjid al-Baghla in Medina enshrined the footprints of the Prophet's mule in stone. The Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Egypt was built where Musa, that is Moses, talked with the Lord... And so on. In each instance, ask that what proof can I provide for the proposition on which this structure is built?
The Prophet's distinction
Today we are being told that a mosque can never be dismantled or shifted. It is not just that the inviolability which is being attached to the structure of a mosque is a later -- much later -- accretion into Islam; the first mosque in Basra, the place being an encampment then, was built of reeds so that, as the Encyclopedia notes, it could be taken down with the camp. It is not just that even the most revered mosques -- the Kaba itself, the Prophet's mosque in Medina -- have been dismantled more than once so as to replace them with more imposing structures. It is not just that to this day in the Middle East mosques are broken and then another structure bearing that name built elsewhere for purposes as mundane as widening highways. It is that doing so would seem to accord with the Prophet's view of the matter.
"I have been given five things," the Prophet said, "which were not given to any amongst the Prophets before me". Among these he said was; the fact that "The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for praying and a thing to perform tayammum. Therefore my followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due". (The other four things were: "Allah made me victorious by awe (by His frightening my enemies) for a distance of one month's journey"; "Booty has been made halal (lawful) for me (and was not made so for anyone else)"; "Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation exclusively but I have been sent to all mankind"; and, "I have been given the right of intercession (on the Day of Resurrection)"32. There are interesting variations in the precise words in some traditions, the words 'the earth (which) has been made clean and a place of worship' become 'the treasures of the earth which were placed in my hand."
In accordance with this view that the whole earth was a place of worship, the very first mosque he founded -- the one in Medina -- was constructed at a site which because of accretions to Islam since then, in fact in large part due to what it has adopted of other religions, would leave our protagonists looking askance. Soon after his arrival in Medina, the Prophet asked the Banu-An-Najjar to sell him a particular plot of land so that he may build a mosque on it. They would not accept a price for it saying they would seek it from Allah, and they turned the plot over to the Prophet. "There were graves of pagans in it", the hadis goes, "and some of it was unlevelled and there were sonic date-palm trees in it. The Prophet ordered that the graves of the pagans be dug out and the unlevelled land be levelled and the date-palm trees be cut down..." All this was done and the mosque built in land which till that moment had contained the graves of pagans in it. The adherents today would regard such a site polluted, and yet that is where the Prophet himself constructed his mosque33.
Conclusions
Our brief survey suggests three conclusions. Each of these strikes at the very root of the arguments which are being asserted by the Babri Masjid protagonists, and each does so in a different way:
*
The latest argument -- that no Muslim ruler destroyed any temple simply because doing so is against the Shariat -- does not hold, not only because of what Muslim historians have themselves recorded abound. innumerable instances, but also because there seems to be no warrant for the rule in view of what the Prophet himself did:
*
It is as difficult to prove the reasons for holding the most revered mosque sacred as it is to prove that Lord Ram was born at a particular place;
*
The shifting of mosque is permissible not only in view of the practice to this day in the most orthodox Islamic countries, but also in view of the Prophet's acclamation that Allah had made the entire earth, that is each and every spot in it a place of worship.
These are conclusions which follow in regard to the immediate issue at hand. But I think an even more important lesson is implicit in the foregoing.
I have all too often seen persons lose patience as protagonists of the Babri Masjid shift their arguments, as they obfuscate what they had said earlier, as they adopt one set of criteria for one issue -- to justify overturning the Shah Bano verdict for instance -- and another set for another issue -- in regard to adhering to the court verdict on some aspect of the Ayodhya issue for instance. But such exasperation must be eschewed. Instead, every assertion of the protagonists must be examined in detail. Every argument they advance must be examined logically and in the light of evidence.
Whatever be the outcome in regard to one structure, such an exercise -- of treating the arguments seriously, of dealing with them rationally, of examining event statement thoroughly, of looking up the law, the history books -- such an exercise will itself yield inestimable returns; instead of hurling calumny and threats at each other, we will learn to talk to each other: we will learn to settle issues rationally and by evidence: we will -- all of us, Muslims as much as-others -- will get to know these leaders and their politics: most important, we will open up all parts of our heritage -- Islam as much as Hinduism -- and every aspect of each part to exhumation, and thus to discourse.
Footnotes:
1. Sitaram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to them (New Delhi, Voice of India, 1991)
2. "Masjid", Encyclopedia of Islam, pp. 1931-36.
3. Tabari, i. 2405, 2407.
4. Makrizi iv.35; of for Kufa, Baladhuri, p.286.
5. Corpus jurisdi Zaidb. �Ali, ed Griffini, No. 364.
6. ibid, Bi; and also J.A. 9 Sec., vii 369 sqq. Quatremere, Hist. Sult Mamt. 11/1,262 sqq. and the article "Damascus"
7. Makrizi, iv. 28 sq.,30.
8. ibid., 9.30.
9. Makrizi, iv.63,64.
10. ibid. p.65.
11. ibid. p. 269.
12. ibid. p. 240.
13. Masjid Ibn al-Banna, ibid., p. 265.
14. Yakut, Mu�djam i. 719.
15. Sauvaire, Hist. De Jerus, it d�Hibron,, 1876, p. 77; Quatremere, Hist. Sult. Maml., I/II., 40.
16. see Goldziher, Muh, Stud., ii.331 sq.
17. Mas�udi, Murudi, iv. 77; B.G.A., iii.444.
18. ibid., p. 436.
19. Baladhuri, p. 165 sq.
20. (Ibn Battuta, iii.151); as to Ta�if of. Abu Dawud, Salat, bab 10.
21. Mas�udi, 1.91; Baedeker, Palast, u. Syrun, 1910, p. 147.
22. Kitab at-Tabaqat Al-Kabu, (Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, Publication No. 46, Volume I. Pp 373-4) Mishkat Al-Masabih
23. 1 ibid.
24. Kitabal-Tabaqat at-Kabir, op.cit., Volume I, pp. 373-4.
25. Quran 9. 108.
26. Twenty Three Years, A Study in the Prophetic Career of Mohammed (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1985).
27. Sura 49, verse 13.
28. Sura ii, 129, iii, 89 etc.
29. Quran 2. 121.
30. The Quran too, as is well known, is an exact reproduction of the text of two tablets - also of gold - which are lying in heaven.
31. On all this see, for instance, the Encyclopedia of Islam�s entry, Ka�ba.
32. Shahih Al-Bukhari, the Book of Salat, tradition 429; also Sahih Muslim, the Book of Salat, traditions 1056-1067.
33. Sahih -Al-Bukhari, the Book of Salat, tradition 420; also Sahih Muslim, the Book of Salat, tradition 1068.
(The author is an eminent Indian Journalist.)
Manthan
October-December 1992
Arun Shourie
At first, the demand-cum-assurance was, "If you can bring any proof showing a temple had been demolished to construct the mosque, we will ourselves demolish the mosque". A host of documents -- reports of the Archaeological Survey of India going back to 1891, Gazetteers going back to 1854, survey reports going back to 1838 were produced which stated unambiguously that a Ram temple had been demolished to construct the mosque".
The demand suddenly changed. "These are all British documents", it was now said. "The British concocted this story to divide and rule. "Show us some Pre-British documents" was an invention to get over inconvenient facts. It became evident soon enough, when in response to Chandrashekhar's initiative the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee submitted documents, most of these turned out to be nothing but the rulings of sundry British magistrates. Worse, they confirmed what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had been saying: that the mosque had not been in use since 1936;that it has been built by demolishing the Ram temple: that the Hindus had, at the cost of many lives, been trying throughout to capture the spot, as they held it to be the sacred birth place of Lord Ram.
In any event, non-British, specifically Muslim documents as well as pre-British documents, including the account of an Austrian Jesuit priest who had stayed in Ayodhya in 1766-71 were produced. Each of them stated the same facts.
But each of these is only repeating what the other is saying. It was demanded that show some contemporary document". The demand for such a document was manifestly a dodge : the one document -- the Babarnama -- which could have settled the matter is truncated: Babar records his reaching Ayodhya on 2 April 1528. The pages from then to 18 September 1528 are missing, and are surmised to have been lost in a storm in May 1529, or during Humayun's subsequent wanderings in the desert as a fugitive. The matter, however, was soon nailed. If the absence of a contemporary accounts - the very day's Court bulletins recording the destruction of the temples of Mathura, Kashi, Pandharpur and scores and scores of other places and their replacement by mosques are available proof enough to propel Shahabuddin etc to demolish those mosques?
No answer was forthcoming, instead, there were demands for more concrete proof. This was soon available in the results of the archaeological excavations which had been conducted in 1975-86, when attention was drawn to the pillars on which the domes etc. of the mosque rest to this day. to the carvings on these, it was said that these could well have been brought from elsewhere. But that alibi too floundered. It could not account for the pillar bases which were found three to four feet below the surface just outside the boundary wall; these were in perfect alignment with the pillars inside the mosque, and it was clear that, along with them, there must have been pillars on these bases which supported the larger structure of the temple; no one would have dragged bases of pillars from a distance and buried them outside the mosque to align with pillars inside the mosque!
So, archaeology itself was denounced. And sophistry was put out. Irfan Habib led the charge. But his own howler showed his arguments to be special pleading: if one went by the dates he ascribed on the basis of "Carbon dating" and all. Babar would have expired in 1965 instead of 1530, the reign of Akbar would commence in 2001 instead of having ended in 1605.
Since then, the case of these pleaders has been made worse by the new finds: entire walls and floor levels have now come into-view, twelve to fourteen feet below the surface. No one could have picked these up from a distance and planted them below the structure.
Shahabuddin�s Latest Argument
At the discussion on Ayodhya which Newstrack organised on 1 August Shahabuddin produced yet another argument. I had just quoted a signed statement he had distributed to the press as late as 15 June 1989 in which he had said. "But the Hindu chauvinists are totally confused about their own case... "Whatever the Hindu chauvinist case, the Muslim community has, without any legal obligation, offered, as a moral gesture, to demolish the Babri Masjid -- if it is proved that a temple stood on the site of the Babri Masjid and it was pulled down to construct the mosque. As the point at issue accordingly was whether there had been a temple at the site, I said, we should focus on the archaeological evidence to settle the matter.
Shahabuddin said that he stood by the statement. His argument was that The temple just could not have been pulled down as pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat. Incredulous, The principal correspondent of Newstrack, Manoj Raghuvanshi, later asked Shahabuddin whether in that case no temple had been demolished by Muslim rulers. "It is not a historical fact", said Shahabuddin, "that a standing temple in peace time was demolished by any Muslim ruler". "Assertions to the contrary", he said, "are all chauvinist propaganda"; Even with the hedging -- "standing temple", "in peace time" -- that was quite a lump to swallow. "You mean even Sonmath was not demolished". Raghuvanshi asked, "Sonmath was disintegrated," said Shahabuddin, and reaffirmed his thesis that temples could not have been demolished because pulling them down to build mosques was against the Shariat.
"Disintegrated", not "demolished"? A disingenuous give-away. I thought the VHP would be quite satisfied with that kind of disintegration now. Even if one accepted his contention about Shariat, the Inference Shahbuddin had drawn was indefensible; it was like saying that no murders take place today because murdering is prohibited by the law.
But there is a more conclusive point. Is it at all the case that demolishing a place of worship to replace it with a mosque is prohibited by the Shariat?
Encyclopedia of Islam
Every single Muslim historian of medieval India lists temples which the ruler he is writing about has destroyed and the mosques he has built instead. In his famous work, Sita Ram Goel reproduces some of these account verbatim1. Doing nothing but this, without any comments at all, takes over 170 printed pages of the book.
Nor was the practice confined to India, or to temples. Here are just two paragraphs from the 75 pages long entry. In the Encyclopedia of Islam2 "...it is rather doubtful whether the process (of acquiring churches) was a regular one; in any case the Muslims in course of time appropriated many churches to themselves. With the mass-conversions to Islam, this was a natural result. The churches taken over by the Muslims were occasionally used as dwellings3. At a later date, it also happened that they were used as government offices, as in Egypt in 146.4 The obvious thing, however, was to transform the churches taken into mosques. It is related of �Amr b, al-Asi� that he performed the salat in a church (Makrizi, iv. 6) and Zaid b. �Ali says regarding churches and synagogues, �Perform thy salat in them: it will not harm thee5. It is not clear whether the reference in these cases is to conquered sanctuaries; it is evident, in any case, that the saying is intended to remove any misgivings about the use of captured churches and synagogues as mosques. The most important example of this kind was in Damascus where al-Walid b. �Abb al-Malik in 86 (705) took the church of St. John from the Christians and had it rebuilt; he is said to have offered the Christians another church in its stead6. He is said to have transformed into mosques ten churches in all in Damascus. It must have been particularly in the villages, with the gradual conversion of the people to Islam, that the churches were turned into mosques. In the Egyptian village there were no mosques in the earlier generation of Islam7. But when al-Mamun was fighting the Copts, many churches were turned into mosques8. It is also recorded of mosques in Cairo that they were converted churches. According to one tradition, the Rashida mosque was an unfinished Jacobite church, which was surrounded by Jewish and Christian graves9. In the immediate vicinity al-Hakim turned a Jacobite and a Nestorian Church into mosques10. When Djawhar built a palace in al-Kahira, a dir was taken in and transformed into a mosque11. Similar changes took place at later dates12 and synagogues also were transformed in this way13. The chief mosque in Palermo was previously a church14. After the Crusades, several churches were turned into mosques in Palestine15.
"Other sanctuaries than those of the �people of the scripture� were turned into mosques. For example a Masjid al-Shams between Hilla and Kerbela was the successor of an old temple of Shamash16. Not far from Ishtakhr was a Masjid Sulaiman which was an old 'fire-temple'. the pictures on the walls of which could still be seen in the time of Mas�udi and al-Makdisi17. In Ishtakhr itself there was a djami�, which was a converted fire-temple18. In Masisa, the ancient Mopsuhestia, al-Mansur in 140 built a mosque on the site of an ancient temple19. The chief mosque in Dihli was originally a temple20. Thus in Islam also the old rule holds that sacred places survive changes of religion. It was especially easy in cases where Christian sanctuaries were associated with Biblical personalities who were also recognised by Islam: e.g., the Church of St John in Damascus and many holy places in Palestine. One example is the mosque of Job in Shekh Sad, associated with Sura xxi. 83, xxxviii. 40; here in Silvia's time (fourth century) there was a church of Job.
Prophet and Shariat
But could it not be that, like the Muslim rulers in India, these Muslim rulers of the Middle East were also doing all this in violation of the Shariat? As we know, the Shariat is based on what the Quran says and on what the prophet did, that is on the Sunnah. The Quran is sanguinary in the extreme, there can be little doubt on the matter. The only question therefore is about what the Prophet himself did.
The evidence is incontrovertible -- it leaves nothing of Shahabuddin's latest argument. The Prophet's companions as well as his biographers -- the earliest. all devout Muslim, whose accounts are the most authoritative sources we have of the Prophet's life -- report his ordering the destruction of a mosque as it had been set up by persons he did not think well of, they report his ordering new converts to demolish a church and establish a mosque instead at the site, they report his converting what had on all accounts become a pagan temple, with idols, paintings and all, into the greatest mosque of all -- that is, the Kaba itself. There is space to recall just an incident or two.
We learn from Ibn Sa�d�s book and widely used collection of Hadis, of a delegation of 13 to 19 members of Banu Hanifah calling upon the Prophet. We learn of them being looked after generously -- with bread, meat, milk, butter, dates. They receive instruction in Islam. They swear allegiance to the Prophet. It is time to leave. Talq b. Ali, who was in the delegation, states: "We went out as a deputation to God's messenger and swore allegiance to him and prayed along with him. We told him that we had a church in our land, and we asked him for some of the leavings of the water he used for ablution. He called for water, performed ablution, then poured it out for us into a skin vessel, and gave us the following command. �Go away, and when you come to your land break down your church, sprinkle this water on its site, and use it as a mosque�. We told him that our land was distant, the heat severe, and that the water would evaporate, to which he replied, �Add some water to it. for it will only bring more good to it23.�
Upon returning they did as the Prophet had commanded. Our narrator. Talq b, Ali, became the muezzin of the mosque and recited the azaan. The friar of the church. the reverential Ibu Sa�d records. "heard it (the azaan) and said, �It is a word of truth and call to truth�. Then he escaped and it was the end of the regime�24. Any ambiguity there?
Nor can Shahabuddin's claim that Shariat forbids the destruction of temples etc. in peace time be sustained in view of what the Prophet himself commanded and did. His earliest biographers -- Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa�d, for instance -- record instance after instance in which idols and temples were smashed, destroyed and burnt down at his orders. The temples of al-Uzza, al-Laat, and al-Manaat -- the three goddesses who are subjects of the Satanic verses in the Quran -- the temples around Ta�if, those of Fils and Ruda in Tayys -- are all reported by them to have been destroyed on the direct orders of the Prophet. Similarly, the biographers report the Prophet's joy when converts came and reported to him that they had destroyed this temple or that, or smashed to smithereens this idol or that. These were not instances when during a battle an army over-ran a site which happened to be a temple. These were instances of persons or tribes having come over to Islam, and then, as part of their new commitment, destroying the places of worship.
Nor, it must be noted, was the Prophet less stem about some refractory party setting up even a mosque. His orders at Dhu Awan are well known. Ibn Ishaq reports that as the Prophet approached the town, the devotees approached him saying, "We have built a mosque for the sick and needy and for nights of bad weather, and we would like you to come to us and pray for us there". The Prophet, Ibn Ishaq records, said that "he was on the point of travelling, and was preoccupied, or words to that effect, and that when he came back, if God willed, he would come to them and pray for them in it". But at Dhu Awan, upon hearing about the mosque, he summoned the followers, "and told them to go to the mosque of these evil men and destroy and burn it". That is exactly what the followers then did. A revelation came down from Allah and sanctified the destruction25.
I just do not see where Shahabuddin derives his cumenical rule from.
A Conclusive Example
But the most telling example is that of the Kaba, and the Masjidal-Haram, the mosque -- the most revered in Islam around it. And it is to this that we should turn to settle the matter.
As we saw, Shahabuddin�s latest argument is that no Muslim ruler could ever have destroyed a temple to build a mosque as doing so is prohibited by the Shariat. The Shariat is derived pre-eminently from what the Prophet himself did and said. So, the question is; how does that argument fare in the light of what the Prophet himself did?
The conclusive answer to this matter -- as to several others which have cropped up in the Ramjanmabhoomi controversy -- lies In the history of the Kaba and the Masjid al-Haram in which it is situated.
Mat the Kaba was
Till the very day the Prophet took it under his control after his conquest of Mecca, the Kaba and the structure around it were a place of pagan worship with idols and paintings of all sorts of gods and goddesses.
From the earliest to the most recent biographers of the Prophet, all speak of it as such. Recalling days long before the Prophet, Ibn Ishaq reports the answer of the Hudhaylis to the king when he asked them why they too would not do in regard to the Kaba -- circumambulate the temple, venerate it, shave their heads etc. -- as they were exhorting him to do , "They replied that it was indeed the temple of their father Abraham, but the idols which the inhabitants had set up round it, and the blood which they shed there (by sacrificing animals) presented an insuperable obstacle. They are unclean polytheists, said they -- or words to that effect". We learn of the Prophet's arguments with the Controllers of the shrine about the idols. We learn of their fear that should his iconoclasm prevail they would lose the livelihood they now secured out of the pilgrims who came to worship the idols, and accordingly their fierce opposition to the Prophet. We learn of his returning to Mecca for "the lesser pilgrimage" and going to the Kaba "cluttered with idols though it was." Such are the accounts in the earliest and most authoritative of his biographies. The accounts continue to this day.
An Iranian Scholar�s views
"Why did so many tribes sustain the wealth and power of the Qoraysh by coming to the Kaba?", the Iranian scholar, Ali Dashti, asks about pre-Islamic times in his justly-acclaimed book Twenty Three Years 26, "The reason was that the Kaba housed famous idols and contained a black stone which the Arabs held sacred... Each group of pilgrims had to shout its entreaties to its idol while circumambulating the Kaba and running from Safa to Marwa". "The Kaba," he writes, recounting the setting in which Islam was established, "was an important idol-temple, much visited by Beduin tribesmen and greatly respected as a holy place... The livelihood of the Meecans and the prestige of the Quoryash chiefs depended on this coming and going. The Beduin came to visit the Kaba, which was an idol temple. If the new religion required destruction of the idols, they would not come any more..." Ali Dashti refers to the Kaba repeatedly as "the idol-temple which the tribes had revered..." as "the famous idol-temple."
The temple had several idols, among them 360 statues. The Quran itself mentions the three goddesses -- al-Lat, al-Uzza and al-Manaat -- who were worshipped there. The most prominent idol however was that of Hubal, "who", the first Encyclopedia of Islam states, "may be called the God of Mecca and of the Kaba". A male figure, it was made of red carnelian. The statue stood inside the Kaba, says the new edition of the Encyclopedia, above the sacred well which was thought to have been dug by Abraham to receive the offerings brought to the sanctuary. Though a stellar deity, its principal function was that of a "cleromantic divinity", it being the custom to consult the idol by divining arrows. Hubal, the number of idols -- 360 -- as well as the rites associated with them, have all been taken to point to an astral symbolism, and the temple has accordingly been taken to have been dedicated to the sun, the moon and the planets.
How it was transformed
The temple continued in this condition till the very day on which the Prophet re-entered it upon capturing Mecca. That moment of triumph is recorded in great detail by the biographers. The accounts establish both sets of facts -- they establish what was in the temple at that moment, and what the Prophet did to it. Notice that the moment was exactly the kind of moment which would test Shahabuddin's claim about what is and what is not allowed by the Shariat; this was not a situation of war, quite the contrary -- the Meccans had surrendered without a real fight; the protagonist was the Prophet himself, so there can be no doubt about what the Shariat -- based as it pre-eminently is on what he said and did -- would entail; the structure had, as we have seen, been a house of worship of an altogether un-Islamic kind forages.
Upon entering, the Prophet went round the Kaba seven times on his camel. He then climbed into the cube -- the Kaba proper. Inside he found a dove made of wood, said in the Encyclopedia to having been possibly devoted to the Semitic Venus. "He broke it in his hands," records Ibn Ishaq, "and threw it away," He then saw paintings of Abraham. Jesus and Mary inside the structure; by one set of traditions he had all of them destroyed, by another he had all except those of Jesus and Mary destroyed. At the noon prayer that day "he ordered," Ibn Ishaq reports, "that all the idols which were round the Kaba should be collected and burned with fire and broken up." That was done. Soon enough idolaters were forbidden from the shrine.
Here then was a structure which before the Prophet had been for several generations a place of worship of an altogether inclusive, pagan kind. The Prophet took it over -- or reclaimed it, as the faithful would say -- and transformed into the greatest mosque of Islam. Where does that leave the Shahabuddin thesis - "No temple could have been destroyed to build a mosque as doing so is against the Shariat"?
Prophet Adopts Pagan Rituals
Nor does the story end there. While, as the Encyclopedia puts it, "all the pagan trappings which had adhered to the Kaba were thrust aside," "it is incontrovertible that an entire pre-Islamic ritual, previously steeped in paganism, was adopted by Islam after it had been purified and given a strictly monotheistic orientation. "Treating the area as consecrated ground, treating it as a refuge, the sacrificing of animals (shifted now from the Kaba to Mina), the various elements connected with the Haj, including among these, the stoning of the Devil by throwing pebbles, the rushing between Safa and Marwa, the halt at Arafat -- all these, as the Encyclopedia and Ali Dashti etc. point out, date from the pre-Islamic period. Some things, as Ali Dashti notes, were just a bit transformed. The pre-Islamic Arabs approaching for instance the goddess Manaat would call out, "Here I am at your service, (labbayka) O Manaat." The same call was now addressed to Allah; "Labbayka Allahomma labbayka." "Here I am at your service, Allah, at your service". The retention of these -- even after transformation -- led to great disquiet. Even Umar, one of the most devoted adherents of the Prophet, is said to have exclaimed on approaching the Black Stone, for Glance. "I know that thou art a stone, that neither helps nor hurts and if the Messenger of Allah had not kissed thee, I would not kiss thee". The special veneration accorded to the stone, to the structure, to everything which comes in contact with it -- for instance, the rain water which falls off it through the spout, the cloth which is used to cover it and which is cut into pieces and sold to the pilgrims after being taken down -- have continued to be contrasted with the strict admonitions against idolatry. The disquiet has not settled. Here is Ali Dashti on the decisions the Prophet handed down upon entering Kaba:
"The Prophet Mohammed's decision to set out on a visit to the Kaba in 6 A H / 628 A D is puzzling. Did he really believe the Kaba to be God�s abode? Or did he make this move in order to placate followers for whom the Kaba-visitation was an ancestral tradition? Was his decision, which came unexpectedly in view of the resolve of the hostile Qorayshites to prevent Moslems from entering Mecca, and which led to the disappointing truce of Hodaybiya a political stratagem designed to impress the Qoraysh chiefs with Moslem numerical and military strength and to draw ordinary unfanatical Meecans to the new religion? How could the man who had introduced the new religion and laws and had repudiated all the beliefs and superstitions of his own people now revive the main component of the old tradition in a new form? Islam's zealous founder and legislator had above all insisted on pure monotheism, telling the people that belief in the One God is the only road to happiness and proclaiming that 'the noblest among you in God's sight are the most pious among you." 27 Had he now succumbed to national or racial feeling? Did he want to make veneration of Ishmael�s house a symbol of Arab National identity?
Why Pilgrimage to Mecca?
"However that may be, the decision was so surprising and so inconsistent with Islamic principles that many Moslems were upset. Several believers objected to the running between Safa and Marwa because it had been a pagan Arab rite; but its retention was imposed by verse 153 Sura 2, "Safa and Marwa are among God's waymarks". According to well authenticated reports, Omar b, ol-Khattab, who was one of Mohammad's greatest and wisest companions, said that he would never have kissed the black stone if he had not personally seen the Prophet kiss it. Ghazzali, whose authority in Islamic matters deserves respect, wrote frankly that he could find no explanation of the hajj ritual but obeyed because it was an accomplished fact.
"There is one verse in the Quran which sheds some light on the matter and is perhaps an answer to questions about it. This is verse 28 of Sura 9 (ot-Tawba); "O believers, it is a fact that the polytheists are unclean. Therefore they shall not approach the mosque of the Sanctuary (i.e. the Kaba) after this year of theirs. If you fear poverty, God will enrich you from his bounty". According to the Tafsir Ol-Jalalayn, this meant that God would compensate the Arabs with victories and receipts of tribute. The Sura of repentance (ot-Tawba) is chronologically the last in the Qoran, having been sent down in 10 A H / 631 A D, well after the Moslem conquest of Mecca. The ban on visitation of the Kaba by non-muslim tribes was likely to disquiet the people of Mecca, whose livelihood and flourishing trade depended on the coming and going of Arab tribes and groups. Although the Meecans were of the same tribe as the Prophet, most of them had only become Moslem under duress. If Mecca should lose its prosperity, there might be a risk of widespread apostasy. That risk would be averted by making pilgrimage to Mecca incumbent on Moslems.
"This explanation is of course a mere hypothesis; to what extent it corresponds to the reality can never be known. In any case no rational or religious justification can be found for the retention of ancient pagan practices in the ritual of the Islamic hajj..."
And it is said that it is Hinduism which "swallows" other religions by incorporating their rituals and making Avtaars of their deities; However that may be, the Black Stone -- the veneration in which it is held, the powers which are attributed to it, the benedictions which are assumed to flow from seeing, touching and kissing it; the fact that the rituals followed can so directly be traced to pre-Islamic times, and that their retention has continued to bewilder devout Muslims like Umar and Ghazzali -- all these themselves put two things beyond doubt; the Kaba was a place of pagan idol worship with an elaborate set of rituals and an entire mode of life to go with it; second, the Prophet took it over and made it the holiest shrine of Islam.
Where does that leave Shahabuddin's latest argument?
"But where is the proof?"
When Shahabuddin was expounding his thesis about the Shariat not allowing the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque, I alluded to what the Kaba had been and how the Prophet himself had made it into a mosque.
Not true, said Shahabuddin. The Kaba was not a temple. It was a mosque from times immemorial, the foundations of it having been laid by Abraham and Ishmael -- the latter are prophets of the Jews but have been proclaimed by the Quran to have been the forbearers of the Prophet.
If the VHP had said something like that about the Ram Janmasthan, Shahabuddin, and of course our "Secular" polemicists, would have asked. "But what is the Proof that Abraham and Ishmael built the Kaba?" Well, what is the proof?
"The Arabs possess no historical or semi-historical records of the origin of the Kaba," says the Encyclopedia", and we as little. "For the entire period of the Prophet's stay in Mecca after he began receiving the revelations -- thirteen years -- and for the first year and a half after he went to Medina, the faithful were required to bow in prayer, not towards the Kaba, but towards Jerusalem. Then came the revelation to change the Qibla to Kaba. From the point of view of dogma, the Encyclopedia notes, "this volte-face was justified by an appeal to the �religion of Abraham� which was specially invented for the occasion.28
The "proof" of Abraham and Ishmael laying the foundations of the Kaba therefore is just the fact that it is so stated in the Quran29. Now, whether an affirmation just because it is in the Quran is to be regarded as proof is entirely a matter of faith. To insist that we must accept it as such would be to urge that exact kind of proof which the Babri Masjid protagonists have been rejecting so emphatically in the case of Ram's birth-place.
The only other circumstances bearing on the affirmation in the Quran is the Makaam Abraham a sort of mark on a stone which lies near the Kaba. The faithful believe that once, after the building had risen to some height. Abraham stood on that stone, and the mark on it is his footprint. The Muslims look upon the footprint with the same reverence with which Hindus would views similar marks believed to be of their Avtaars. But that mark in the stone does not settle the matter -- for it is as difficult to prove that the maker in that stone is indeed the impress which Abraham�s foot made on it as it is to prove the original affirmation in the Quran that Abraham built the Kaba. One has thus to fall back on the continuity of the tradition over such a long period, we have to fall back for proof on the fact that Muslims have long believed that Abraham built the Kaba. But that is exactly how the Hindus have long believed the spot now occupied by the Babri Masjid to have been the place at which Lord Ram was born.
The Navel of the Earth
Why is the Kaba vital? After all, a point to which I shall revert in a moment, had the Prophet not said that every spot on earth is sacred, that Allah has made the entire earth a masjid? There are two views regarding the importance of Kaba. One is that the Kaba is the navel of the earth. It is believed to have existed before the earth was created by Allah -- on one account 40 years earlier, on one 2000 years earlier. Allah created heaven, we are told, and then the earth by stretching out the substance of the earth around this navel. Creation competed, the Kaba we learn, now is the highest point of the earth, and its position corresponds exactly to that of the Pole Star, which we also learn, is the highest point in the heavens. As heaven is above the earth and as Kaba is the highest point on earth, it is the place by being in which one is nearest to heaven.
The other view is that it is not just the centre of the earth, but of the universe. The universe, in this account, consists of seven heavens -- one above the other -- and seven earths -- one below the other. All the fourteen levels are perfectly aligned -- the highest point in each lies perfectly in line with the highest of other levels. Now, the highest point of the seventh heaven is the Throne of Allah, the highest point on earth -- and exactly in the centre of the universe -- is the Kaba. The Kaba we see in Mecca, we are further instructed, is an exact replica of the original structure which is in heaven and which is made of gold.30
Myths or History?
But why was it necessary to create this replica on earth? The accounts differ. As we have seen, on one account it is Abraham who laid its foundations and with Ishmael built it one the prompting of Gabriel, the angel who, as we know, was later to transmit the revelations from Allah to the Prophet. On the other account, the structure was built by Adam.
Originally Adam was so tall that he could hear the heavenly songs around Allah's Throne directly. But after his fall he shrunk so much that the upper realms were out of his reach. Upon his importuning God sent him the tent around which and through which he could attain to the beatitudes, and this later was made into the Kaba, in answer to his pleas that Mecca had no one, that the shrine had no worshipers Allah promised that it would become the centre of pilgrimage, and that promise Allah fulfilled. The original structure was later washed away in the Great Flood. The angels spirited away and kept safe the Black Stone. That is how Abraham came to rebuild the structure later on, and Gabriel brought the Black Stone, back to him. We learn that the Stone itself -- now in three large and several small pieces held together by a silver band as it split in the course of a fire -- was originally white; it became black upon contact with the sinfulness of the pagan period31.
Such are the reasons on account of which the Kaba and the Black Stone are of such extraordinary holiness.
Now, which of these elements of the legends can be "proved" in the way proof of Ram's birthplace is sought? Yet it is precisely because of them that the Kaba is so sacred.
The Al Aqsa Mosque
After the Masjid al-Haram in which the Kaba lies, the mosque held most sacred by the faithful is the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. And why so? The rock around which it is built has a mark. It is believed to be the imprint the Prophet's foot made as he alighted from the winged horse after his night's journey to this point in Jerusalem and thence to heaven : in heaven, as is well known, he met Moses and Jesus etc. Which elements of this can we prove? Heaven? The winged horse? The night's journey? That the mark is the imprint of a human foot? That the foot of which it is an imprint was that of the Prophet? (Incidentally the mosque is built on the site where according to the other set of beliefs stood the church built by Justinian). The Masjid al-Khaif in Mina is also built around a stone which the devout hold sacred; they put their heads on it, why? Because the stone has a mark which, it is said, was made by the Prophet placing his head on it. The Masjid al-Baghla in Medina enshrined the footprints of the Prophet's mule in stone. The Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Egypt was built where Musa, that is Moses, talked with the Lord... And so on. In each instance, ask that what proof can I provide for the proposition on which this structure is built?
The Prophet's distinction
Today we are being told that a mosque can never be dismantled or shifted. It is not just that the inviolability which is being attached to the structure of a mosque is a later -- much later -- accretion into Islam; the first mosque in Basra, the place being an encampment then, was built of reeds so that, as the Encyclopedia notes, it could be taken down with the camp. It is not just that even the most revered mosques -- the Kaba itself, the Prophet's mosque in Medina -- have been dismantled more than once so as to replace them with more imposing structures. It is not just that to this day in the Middle East mosques are broken and then another structure bearing that name built elsewhere for purposes as mundane as widening highways. It is that doing so would seem to accord with the Prophet's view of the matter.
"I have been given five things," the Prophet said, "which were not given to any amongst the Prophets before me". Among these he said was; the fact that "The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for praying and a thing to perform tayammum. Therefore my followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due". (The other four things were: "Allah made me victorious by awe (by His frightening my enemies) for a distance of one month's journey"; "Booty has been made halal (lawful) for me (and was not made so for anyone else)"; "Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation exclusively but I have been sent to all mankind"; and, "I have been given the right of intercession (on the Day of Resurrection)"32. There are interesting variations in the precise words in some traditions, the words 'the earth (which) has been made clean and a place of worship' become 'the treasures of the earth which were placed in my hand."
In accordance with this view that the whole earth was a place of worship, the very first mosque he founded -- the one in Medina -- was constructed at a site which because of accretions to Islam since then, in fact in large part due to what it has adopted of other religions, would leave our protagonists looking askance. Soon after his arrival in Medina, the Prophet asked the Banu-An-Najjar to sell him a particular plot of land so that he may build a mosque on it. They would not accept a price for it saying they would seek it from Allah, and they turned the plot over to the Prophet. "There were graves of pagans in it", the hadis goes, "and some of it was unlevelled and there were sonic date-palm trees in it. The Prophet ordered that the graves of the pagans be dug out and the unlevelled land be levelled and the date-palm trees be cut down..." All this was done and the mosque built in land which till that moment had contained the graves of pagans in it. The adherents today would regard such a site polluted, and yet that is where the Prophet himself constructed his mosque33.
Conclusions
Our brief survey suggests three conclusions. Each of these strikes at the very root of the arguments which are being asserted by the Babri Masjid protagonists, and each does so in a different way:
*
The latest argument -- that no Muslim ruler destroyed any temple simply because doing so is against the Shariat -- does not hold, not only because of what Muslim historians have themselves recorded abound. innumerable instances, but also because there seems to be no warrant for the rule in view of what the Prophet himself did:
*
It is as difficult to prove the reasons for holding the most revered mosque sacred as it is to prove that Lord Ram was born at a particular place;
*
The shifting of mosque is permissible not only in view of the practice to this day in the most orthodox Islamic countries, but also in view of the Prophet's acclamation that Allah had made the entire earth, that is each and every spot in it a place of worship.
These are conclusions which follow in regard to the immediate issue at hand. But I think an even more important lesson is implicit in the foregoing.
I have all too often seen persons lose patience as protagonists of the Babri Masjid shift their arguments, as they obfuscate what they had said earlier, as they adopt one set of criteria for one issue -- to justify overturning the Shah Bano verdict for instance -- and another set for another issue -- in regard to adhering to the court verdict on some aspect of the Ayodhya issue for instance. But such exasperation must be eschewed. Instead, every assertion of the protagonists must be examined in detail. Every argument they advance must be examined logically and in the light of evidence.
Whatever be the outcome in regard to one structure, such an exercise -- of treating the arguments seriously, of dealing with them rationally, of examining event statement thoroughly, of looking up the law, the history books -- such an exercise will itself yield inestimable returns; instead of hurling calumny and threats at each other, we will learn to talk to each other: we will learn to settle issues rationally and by evidence: we will -- all of us, Muslims as much as-others -- will get to know these leaders and their politics: most important, we will open up all parts of our heritage -- Islam as much as Hinduism -- and every aspect of each part to exhumation, and thus to discourse.
Footnotes:
1. Sitaram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to them (New Delhi, Voice of India, 1991)
2. "Masjid", Encyclopedia of Islam, pp. 1931-36.
3. Tabari, i. 2405, 2407.
4. Makrizi iv.35; of for Kufa, Baladhuri, p.286.
5. Corpus jurisdi Zaidb. �Ali, ed Griffini, No. 364.
6. ibid, Bi; and also J.A. 9 Sec., vii 369 sqq. Quatremere, Hist. Sult Mamt. 11/1,262 sqq. and the article "Damascus"
7. Makrizi, iv. 28 sq.,30.
8. ibid., 9.30.
9. Makrizi, iv.63,64.
10. ibid. p.65.
11. ibid. p. 269.
12. ibid. p. 240.
13. Masjid Ibn al-Banna, ibid., p. 265.
14. Yakut, Mu�djam i. 719.
15. Sauvaire, Hist. De Jerus, it d�Hibron,, 1876, p. 77; Quatremere, Hist. Sult. Maml., I/II., 40.
16. see Goldziher, Muh, Stud., ii.331 sq.
17. Mas�udi, Murudi, iv. 77; B.G.A., iii.444.
18. ibid., p. 436.
19. Baladhuri, p. 165 sq.
20. (Ibn Battuta, iii.151); as to Ta�if of. Abu Dawud, Salat, bab 10.
21. Mas�udi, 1.91; Baedeker, Palast, u. Syrun, 1910, p. 147.
22. Kitab at-Tabaqat Al-Kabu, (Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, Publication No. 46, Volume I. Pp 373-4) Mishkat Al-Masabih
23. 1 ibid.
24. Kitabal-Tabaqat at-Kabir, op.cit., Volume I, pp. 373-4.
25. Quran 9. 108.
26. Twenty Three Years, A Study in the Prophetic Career of Mohammed (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1985).
27. Sura 49, verse 13.
28. Sura ii, 129, iii, 89 etc.
29. Quran 2. 121.
30. The Quran too, as is well known, is an exact reproduction of the text of two tablets - also of gold - which are lying in heaven.
31. On all this see, for instance, the Encyclopedia of Islam�s entry, Ka�ba.
32. Shahih Al-Bukhari, the Book of Salat, tradition 429; also Sahih Muslim, the Book of Salat, traditions 1056-1067.
33. Sahih -Al-Bukhari, the Book of Salat, tradition 420; also Sahih Muslim, the Book of Salat, tradition 1068.
(The author is an eminent Indian Journalist.)
Manthan
October-December 1992
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)