Arun Shourie
In painting Goddess Saraswati naked M.F. Hussein, his secularist advocates argue, is merely exercising his Fundamental Right to freedom of expression, he is merely giving form to his artistic, creative urge. The first question is: How come the freedom and creative urge of the thousands and thousands of artists our country has have never led even one of them to ever paint or draw a picture of Prophet Muhammad in which his face is manifest? I am not on the point of dress or undress, the features could have been made as celestial and handsome as our artists could have imagined -- why is it that they never got the urge to draw or sculpt even the handsomest representation of the Prophet?
The rationalization is that doing so would have hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslims, the Prophet himself having forbidden all representations. The reason, as distinct from the rationalization, is different: were an artist to make such a representation Muslims would be ignited by their controllers to riot, they would not let that artist live in peace thereafter.
Notice first that in the lexicon of those who are shouting for Hussein the point about not hurting religious sentiments manifestly does not apply to the Hindus: in their case the alternate principle of the right of the artist to paint as he pleases takes precedence. The Hindus notice this duality more and more.
Indeed they notice the length to which some are prepared to exercise their right to give full rein to their creative urge, disregarding what Hindus might feel as a consequence. As recently as August last year, the art gallery of the INDIA TODAY group, ART TODAY held an exhibition of "modern Indian miniatures". Prominent among the paintings on display was one that showed a naked ( that is, completely naked ) Radha astride a naked ( that is, completely naked ) Lord Krishna -- the two fornicating in a garden. Posters with this painting prominently featured were put up inviting viewers to the gallery. The August, 1995 issue of the magazine, INDIA TODAY carried an advertisement -- urging readers to purchase prints of paintings which were on display at the gallery, the advertisement too featured prominently the same painting of Radha laying Lord Krishna in a garden. Some persons protested. No one heeded them. A demonstration was then held outside the gallery, the demonstrators entered the gallery. The painting was taken down. Friends who heard of the incident denounced the demonstrators: "Hindu bigots", "The saffron brigade on the look-out for issues," "Fascist goons who want to impose their constipated brand of Hinduism on everyone." To establish the principle, and even more to demonstrate the scorn in which they held "these goons" another publication, 'The India Magazine', as demonstrative about its secular credentials, put that very painting on its cover. That this was done with full knowledge that doing so was likely to offend others is evident from the fact that, simultaneously with putting the painting on the cover, the person most prominently associated with 'The India Magazine' applied for anticipatory bail.
Now, the collections of hadis contain scores and scores of descriptions of the Prophet, as they contain accounts -- accounts in the words and on the testimony of the Prophet's wives themselves -- about his relations with his wives; how is it that none of our artists have ever felt the creative urge to portray even accurately any of those descriptions, to say nothing of these magazines ever inviting their readers to purchase colorful reproductions of the paintings or putting the paintings on their covers and posters. Indeed I have not the least doubt that if they received even an article -- which, after all, can never be as tantalizing as a Hussein painting -- an article which did no more than reproduce verbatim those accounts, they would refuse to print it: all the great principles about not hurting the religious sentiments of others, all the provisions of law -- sections 153A, 295A, 298 -- will be invoked in justification. But when it comes to a painting of a naked Radha astride a naked Lord Krishna fornicating in a garden, carrying it in advertisements, putting that on the cover is a Fundamental Right, to object to it is to throttle an artist's right to give expression to his creative urge.
It is not the freedom of expression these worthies are committed to. They are committed to their having freedom alone: can you recall a single liberal protesting against the ban on Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam Through Hadis -- a book so scrupulously academic that it was but a paraphrase of the Sahih Muslim, one of the canonical compilations of hadis -- to say nothing of any one of them deigning to put in a word against goondas -- claiming to represent the Muslims -- who tried to get at me in Hyderabad or the goondas -- claiming to speak for the other lot these worthies champion, the "Dalits" -- who did get at me in Pune? Not one deigned to do so. They are not the champions and practitioners of free speech, they are the practitioners of a very special brand of the dialectic: Strong to the weak, Weak to the strong. And that is what the Hindus are noticing: neither the gallery nor the magazine spared a thought for the religious sentiments it might offend till the "goons" marched into the gallery, but they had but to march in and the painting was immediately taken down; Hussein was all defiance one day, but the moment some paintings of his were burnt, he was suddenly sorry....
"But nude representations are a part of our tradition. Look at Konark, look at Khajuraho," the advocates have been shouting. But what has the figure of a woman being had by a dog in Konark have to do with worship ? What basis is there for declaring the women portrayed there are Saraswati or Sita or Lakshmi ? And then, as a reader points out, there is the other consideration : depicting women completely naked has for centuries been very much a part of European painting and sculpture tradition; but do the artists not stop at using this tradition for portraying Virgin Mary naked?
And as for Saraswati being depicted naked, her image is set out in our iconography, in the mantras by which we invoke her; in all these she is referred to as "....yaa shubhra vastraavritaa....", as one "draped in white". That white dress draping her is one of the four distinguishing marks of representations of Goddess Saraswati -- the other three being that she holds beads in one hand, a book in another and the vina in a third.
"But I have every right to portray her as I will," a secular friend protested when I repeated to him this iconographic description to which one of the best known and sagacious authorities on our art had drawn my attention. Assume you do, but then you can't simultaneously claim that what you are doing is in accord with that tradition. Second, if painting Goddess Saraswati naked is an intrinsic part of our tradition because sundry women have been depicted naked and fornicating in Khajuraho and Konark, then, my dear friend, what about the Dasham Granth of Guru Govind Singh and its 300 treyi chitra? How come not one of you has ever been stirred by his creative urge to put on canvas any of those -- most vivid and vigourous -- pen-portraits? Is the work of Guru Govind Singh any less a part of the Sikh tradition than the Gita Govind? What about the scores and scores of hadis I mentioned earlier ? Alongside the Quran, they are not just any old element of Islam, they are the very foundation. Let us see you affirm the right of artists to depict images -- not imagined ones, not ones that depart from the mantras as the painting in question does, just the most scrupulously faithful and exact images -- of what is described therein.
The next argument of our artists and intellectuals is just as much a manufacture of convenience: "All our religions, everything about our past is the common heritage of all of us, it belongs to each of us equally," they have been saying. This presumably has been done to preempt those who would say that Hussein is particularly in the wrong to have painted Hindu goddesses naked because he is a Muslim. Fine. But how come so many of you are up in arms when I write on Islamic law? In particular, how come you work up such a fury even though, unlike a painter, I am not conjuring up an image and am instead documenting every single sentence and paragraph with the exact text of the sacred works of Islam? What happens at that time to this principle of all our religions and everything in our past being the common heritage that belongs to each one of us equally? Then these very magazines and intellectuals are full of sanctimonious sermons: If members of one religion start commenting on the practices and beliefs of other religions, there will be hell to pay, they proclaim.
It is this double-standard which outrages the Hindus more and more, it is this which these inchoate outbursts are revolts against.
Many Hindus also notice the other thing -- the one I mentioned as the reason as against the rationalization for no artist ever being galvanized by the creative urge when it comes to painting the features of the Prophet. They notice that the artists do not do so, not because these masters cannot do so, nor because their muse never goads them in this direction, but because they know that, were they to do so, they would be set upon. And that the State -- which is weak, and which also has internalized the same double-standards to rationalize its weakness -- will not come to their rescue. Therefore, more and more Hindus are concluding that we too should acquire the same reputation, we too should acquire the same capacity. In a word, three things are teaching the Hindus to become Islamic: the double-standards of the secularists and the State, the demonstrated success of the Muslims in bending both the State and the secularists by intimidation, and the fact that both the State and the secularists pay attention to the sentiments of Hindus only when the Hindus become a little Islamic.
The secularists' shout, "But these things destroy the very basis of our culture." The Hindus see that argument as being no better than the Devil quoting the Scripture, or, to put it in words the secularists would find more persuasive, than my quoting the Quran: for they know that these are the very persons who have been deriding them for living a life rooted in that culture, they are the ones who have been denouncing that culture and every thing associated with it -- the idols, the beliefs, the rituals -- as being nothing but devices which the Brahmins have forged to perpetuate inequity, to perpetuate exploitation of the poor masses.
The arguments of the secularists therefore are mere pretense. Yet I believe that it was plain wrong to break the window-panes and burn the paintings. Free speech is vital for our country. If it is curbed, what will be killed is not a painting but reform -- for all reform offends as it is a voice against the way things are at that moment. I believe that even if one's singular concern is Hinduism and its rehabilitation, free speech is the best guarantee: the more Eastern religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism and others -- are subjected to critical inquiry the more their luminescent essence shines forth; by contrast the Semitic religions -- down to Marxism-Leninism -- wither at the first exposure to exegesis and inquiry: and the controllers of these religions have been very conscious of this, that is why they have for centuries together put inquiry down with a lethal hand. The twin principles which the champions of Hussein's right to paint as he will have been proclaiming are the exact pincer which will work -- the principle that there must be freedom of speech and that every religion, and the principle that every aspect of our past is the common heritage of each of us equally. All we should ensure is that these principles hold good for all equally. And when someone paints like Hussein did in this instance, instead of burning his paintings we should use them to document the double-standards which mar current policies and discourse, and demand that either the standard apply to all or to none. Thus : education, not burning; parity, not suppression.
In Hussein's case in particular, I feel that the youngsters who took offence missed a very vital point -- not just about his painting but about his life. He is and has continued to be a Muslim. Now, as anyone who has read anything about the Prophet knows, the Prophet cursed and detested those who made representations of things. He put pictures at par with dogs, and, remember, he had all dogs killed. "The angels do not enter a house," he declared on the authority of the angel, Gabriel, "which contains a dog or pictures." Abu Huraira, the source of a large proportion of the hadis, states that God's Messenger narrated that Gabriel had promised to visit him one day but didn't turn up, and so, when he came the next day, the Prophet inquired as to what had happened. Gabriel, the Prophet narrated, said, "I came to you last night and was prevented from entering simply by the fact that there were images at the door, for there was a figured curtain with images on it and there was a dog in the house. So, order that the head of the image which is at the door of the house be cut off so that it may become like the form of a tree; order that the curtain be cut up and made into two cushions spread out on which people may tread; and order that the dog be put out." "God's Messenger," the hadis concludes, "then did so." His wife, Aisha tells us, "The Prophet never left in his house anything containing figures of a cross without destroying it." She recalls how the Prophet reprimanded her for two cushions she had made because they contained pictures. The Prophet declared that those who made representations of things "will receive the severest punishment on the day of resurrection," that "Everyone who makes representations of things will go to hell." He declared them to be "the worst of God's creatures." He put them at par with "the one who kills a prophet, or who is killed by a prophet, or kills one of his parents." [ Several other hadis, and of course several instances can be cited; for the few which have been quoted see, Mishkat Al-Masabih, Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, Volume II, Book XXI, Chapter V, pp. 940-44. ]
Hussein on the contrary has made painting images his very life. Therefore, in a very deep sense, his entire life is an endeavour to open an aperture in that wall of prohibitions. It has been a banner for liberalism, indeed for liberation.
In sum, I am for Hussein, not for his champions;
The position which Hussein's champions have taken up is just the one which our society needs;
We should hold them to their word, and have them stick by it in the case of one and all;
And we should await the day when their muse will lead them to exercise their creative urge, "that one talent which is death to hide," paint as freely and with as much abandon themes from all our religions and traditions.
Finally, a forecast : the more the secularists insist on double-standards, the more Islamic will the Hindus become.
Showing posts with label shariat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shariat. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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.")
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
Sunday, May 25, 2008
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
Hideaway Communalism
Arun Shourie
A case in which the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar, the fourth Rector of one of the greatest centers of Islamic learning in India, listing some of the mosques, including the Babri Masjid, which were built on the sites and foundations of temples, using their stones and structures, is found to have the tell-tale passages censored out.
The book is said to have become difficult to get.
It is traced: And it is found to have been commended just 15 years ago by the most influential Muslim scholar of our country today, the current Rector of the great center of Islamic learning, and the Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board.
Evasion, concealment have become a national habit. And they have terrible consequences. But first I must give you some background. The National Ulama of Lucknow is one of the principal centers of Islamic learning in India. It was founded in 1894. It ranks today next only to the Darul-Ulum at Deoband. The government publication, Centers of Islamic Learning in India, recalls how the founders "aimed at producing capable scholars who could project a true image of Islam before the modern world in an effective way'; it recalls how "Towards fulfilling its avowed aim in the matter of educational reform, it (the group) decided to establish an ideal educational institution which would not only provide education in religious and temporal sciences but also offer technical training"; it recalls how "It (Nadwa) stands out today -- with its college, a vast and rich library and Research and Publication Departments housed in fine buildings -- as one of the most outstanding institutions for imparting instruction in the Islamic Sciences"; it recalls how "A salient feature of this institution is its emphasis on independent research"; it recalls how "The library of the Nadwa, housed in the central hall and the surrounding rooms of the main building, is, with more than 75,000 titles including about 3,000 handwritten books mostly in Arabic and also in Persian, Urdu, English etc., one of the finest libraries of the sub-continent". That was written 10 years ago. The library now has 125,000 books.
Its Head
Today the institution is headed by Maulana Abdul-Hasan Ali Nadwi. Ali Mian, as he is known to one and all, is almost without any doubt the most influential Muslim teacher and figure today -- among the laity, in government circles, and among scholars and governments abroad.
He was among the founders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the fundamentalist organization; but because of differences with Maulana Maudoodi, he left soon. Today he is the chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board. He is a founder member of the Raabta Alam-e-Islami, the Pan-Islamic body with headquarters in Mecca, which decides among other things the amounts that different Islamic organizations the world over should receive. He has been the Nazim, that is the Rector, of the Darul-Ulum Nadwatul-Ualama since 1961, that is for well over a quarter of a century. The Nadwa owns not a small part of its eminence to the scholarship, the exertions, the national and international contacts of Ali Mian.
Politicians of all hues -- Rajiv Gandhi, V P Singh, Chandrasekhar seek him out. He is the author of several books, including the well known Insani Duniya Par Musalmanon Ke Uruj-Zaval Ka Asar (The Impact of the Rise and Fall of Muslims on Mankind), and is taken as the authority on Islamic law, jurisprudence, theology, and specially history. And he has great, in fact decisive, influence on the politics of Muslims in India.
His Father and His Book
His father, Maulana Hakim Sayed Abdul Hai, was an equally well known and influential figure. When the Nadwa was founded, the first Rector, Maulana Muhammed Monghyri, the scholar at whose initiative the original meeting in 1892 which led to establishment of the Nadwa was called, had chosen Maulana Abdul Hai as the Madagar Nazim, the additional Rector. Abdul Hai served in that capacity till July 1915 when he was appointed the Rector. Because of his scholarship and his services to the institution and to Islam, he was reappointed as the Rector in 1920. He continued in that post till his death in February 1923. He too wrote several books, including a famous directory which has just been republished from Hyderabad, of thousands of Muslims who had served the cause of Islam in India, chiefly by the numbers they had converted to the faith.
During some work, I came across the reference to a book of his and began to look for it. It was a long, discursive book, I learnt, which began with descriptions of geography, flora and fauna, languages, people and regions of India. These were written for Arabic speaking people, the book having been written in Arabic.
In 1972, I learnt, the Nadwatul-Ulama had the book translated into Urdu and published the most important chapters of the book under the title Hindustan Islami Ahad Mein ("Hindustan Under Islamic Rule"). Ali Mian, I was told, had himself written the foreword in which he had commended the book most highly. The book as published had left out description of geography etc, on the premise that facts about these are well known to Indian readers.
A Sudden Reluctance
A curious fact hit me in the face. Many of the persons who one would have normally expected to be knowledgeable about such publications were suddenly reluctant to recall this book. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had been removed, for instance from the Aligarh Muslim University Library. Some even suggested that a determined effort had been made three or four years ago to get back each and every copy of this book.
Fortunately the suggestion turned out to be untrue. While some of the libraries one would normally expect to have the book -- the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi; the famous libraries in Hyderabad -- those of the Dairutual Maarifal-Osmania, of the Salar Jung Museum, of the Nizam's Trust, of the Osmania University, the Kutubkhana-I-Saidiya -- did not have it, others did. Among the latter were the Nadwa's library itself, the justly famous Khuda Baksh Library in Patna, that of the Institute of Islamic Studies in Delhi.
The fact that the book was available in all these libraries came as a great reassurance. I felt that if reactionaries and propagandists have become so well organized that they can secure disappearance from every library of a book they have come not to like, we are in deep trouble. Clearly they were not that respectful. The fact that, contrary to what I had been told, the book was available also taught me another reassuring thing: factional fights among Muslim fundamentalists are as sharp and intense as are the factional fights among fundamentalists of other hues. For the suggestion of there being something sinister in the inaccessibility of the book had come to me from responsible Muslim quarters.
'This valuable gift, this historical testament'
The book is the publication number 66 of the Majlis Tehqiqat wa Nashriat Islam, the publication house of the Nadwatul-Ulama, Lucknow. The Arabic version was published in 1972 in Hyderabad, the Urdu version in 1973 in Lucknow. An English version was published in 1977. I will use the Urdu version as the illustration. Maulana Abdul-Hasan Ali Nadwi, that is Ali Mian himself contributes the foreword. It is an eloquent, almost lyrical foreword.
Islam has imbued its followers with the quest for truth, with patriotism, he writes. Their nature, their culture has made Muslims the writers of true history, he writes. Muslims had but to reach a country, he writes, and its fortunes lit up and it awakened from the slumber of hundreds an thousands of years. The country thereby ascended from darkness to light, he writes, from oblivion and obscurity to the pinnacle of name and fame. Leaving its parochial ambit, he writes, it joined the family of man, it joined the wide and vast creation of God. And the luminescence of Islam, he writes, transformed its hidden treasure into the light of eyes. It did not suck away the wealth of the country, he writes, and vomit it elsewhere as western powers did. On the contrary, it brought sophistication, culture, beneficent administration, peace, tranquility to the country. It raised the country from the age of savagery to the age of progress, he writes, from infantilism to adulthood. It transformed its barren lands into swaying fields, he writes, its wild shrubs into fruit-laden trees of such munificence that the residents could not even have dreamt of them.
And so on.
He then recalls that the vast learning and prodigious exertions of Maulana Abdul Hai, his 8-volume work on 4500 Muslims who served the cause of Islam in India, his directory of Islamic scholars. He recalls how after completing these books the Maulana turned to subjects which had till then remained obscure, how in these labors the Maulana was like the proverbial bee collecting honey from varied flowers. He recounts the wide range of the Mualana's scholarship. He recounts how the latter collected rare data, how a person like him accomplished single-handed what entire academics are unable these days to do.
He recounts the structure of the present book. He recalls how it lay neglected for long, how, even as the work of retranscribing a moth-eaten manuscript was going on, a complete manuscript was discovered in Azamgarh, how in 1933 the grace of Providence saved it from destruction and obscurity.
He writes that the book brings into bold relief those hallmarks of Islamic rule which have been unjustly and untruthfully dealt with by western and Indian historians, which in fact many Muslim historians and scholars in universities and academics too have treated with neglect and lack of appreciation.
Recalling how Maulana Abdul Hai had to study thousands of pages on a subject, Ali Mian says that only he who has himself worked on the subject can appreciate the effort that has gone into the study. You will get in a single chapter of this book, he tells the reader, the essence which you cannot obtain by reading scores of books. This is the result, he writes, of the fact that the author labored only for the pleasure of the God, for the service of the learning, and the fulfillment of his own soul. Such authors expected no rewards, no applause, he tells us. Work has their entire satisfaction. That is how they were able to put in such Herculean labors, to spend their entire life on one subject. We are immensely pleased, he concludes, to present this valuable gift and historical testament to our countrymen and hope that Allah will accept this act of service and scholars will also receive it with respect and approbation.
The Explanation
Such being the eminence of the author, such being the greatness of the work, why is it not the cynosure of the fundamentalists' eyes ?
The answer is in the chapter "Hindustan ki Masjidein" , The Mosques of Hindustan (India).
Barely seventeen pages; the chapter is simply written. A few facts about some of the principal mosques are described in a few lines each.
The facts are well-known, they are elementary, and setting them out in few lines each should attract no attention. And yet as we shall see, there is a furtiveness in regard to them. Why? Descriptions of seven mosques provide the answer.
The devout constructed so many mosques, Maulana Abdul Hai records, they lavished such huge amounts and such labors on them that they cannot be all reckoned, that every city, town, hamlet came to be adorned by a mosque. He says that he will therefore have to be content with setting out the facts of just a few of the well-known ones.
A few sentences from what he says about mosques will do:
Qawwat al-Islam Mosque at Delhi
"According to my findings the first mosque of Delhi is Qubbat al-Islam or Quwwat al-Islam which, it is said, Qutub-Din Aibak constructed in H. 587 after demolishing the temple built by Prithvi Raj and leaving certain parts of the temple; and when he returned from Ghazni in H. 592, he started building, under orders from Shihabuddin Ghori, a huge mosque of inimitable red stones, and certain parts of the temple were included in the mosque. After that, when Shamsud-Din Altamish became the king, he built, on both sides of it, edifices of white stones, and on one side of it he started constructing the loftiest of all towers which has no equal in the world for its beauty and strength."
The Mosque at Jaunpur
"This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi with chiseled stones. Originally, it was a Hindu temple after demolishing which he constructed the mosque. It is known as the Atala Masjid. The Sultan used to offer his Friday and Id prayers in it, and Qazi Shihbud-Din gave lessons in it"
The Mosque at Kanauj
"This mosque stands on an elevated ground inside the Fort of Kanauj. It is well-known that it was built on the foundations of some Hindu temple (that stood) here. It is a beautiful mosque. They say that it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi in H. 809 as is recorded in Gharbat Nigar. "
The Jami Mosque at Etawah
"This mosque stands on the bank of the Jamuna at Etawah. There was a Hindu temple at this place, on the site of which this mosque was constructed. It is also patterned after the mosque at Kanauj. Probably it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans."
Babri Masjid at Ayodhya
"This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya which Hindus call the birth place of Ramchandraji. There is a famous story about his wife Sita. It is said Sita had a temple here in which she lived and cooked food for her husband. On that very site Babar constructed this mosque in H. 963 "
Mosques of Aalamgir Aurangzeb
"It is said that the mosque of Benares was built by Alamgir on the site of Vishweshwar Temple. That temple was very tall and held as holy among the Hindus. On this very site and with those very stones he constructed a lofty mosque, and its ancient stones were rearranged after being embedded in the walls of the mosque. It is one of the renowned mosques of Hindustan. The second mosque at Beneras is the one which was built by Alamgir on the bank of Ganga with chiseled stones. This also is a renowned mosque of Hindustan. It has 28 towers, each of which is 238 feet tall. This is on the bank of the Ganga and its foundations extend to the depth of the waters. Alamgir built mosque at Mathura. It is said that this mosque was built on the site of the Gobind Dev Temple which was very strong and beautiful as well as exquisite"
"It is said"
But the Maulana is not testifying to the facts. He is merely reporting what was believed. He repeatedly says, "It is said that".
That seems to be a figure of speech with the Maulana. When describing the construction of the Quwwatul Islam mosque by Qutubuddin Aibak, for instance he uses the same "It is said".
If the facts were in doubt, would a scholar of Ali Mian's diligence and commitment not have commented on them in his fullbodied foreword? Indeed, he would have decided against republishing them as he decided not to republish much of the original book.
And if the scholars had felt that the passages could be that easily disposed of, why should any effort have been made to take a work to the excellence of which a scholar of Ali Mian's stature has testified in such a fullsome manner, and what has been done to this one? And what is that?
Each reference to each of these mosques having been constructed on the sites of temples with, as in the case of Benaras, the stones of the very temples which were demolished for that very purpose have been censored out of the English version of the book ! Each one of the passages on each one of the seven mosques!
Indeed there is not just censorship but substitution. In the Urdu volume we are told in regard to the mosque at Kanauj for instance that "This mosque stands on an elevated ground inside the fort of Kanauj. It is well known that it was built on the foundation of some Hindu temple that stood here." In the English version we are told in regard to the same mosque that "It occupied a commanding site, believed to have been the place earlier occupied by an old and decayed fort".
If the passages could have been explained away by referring to the "It is said", why would anyone have thought it necessary to remove these passages from the English version -- that is the version which is likely to be read by persons other than the faithful? Why would anyone bowdlerize the book of a major scholar in this way?
Conclusions
But that, though obvious, weighs little with me. The fact that temples were broken and mosques constructed in their place is well known. Nor is the fact that the materials of the temples -- the stones and the idols -- were used in constructing the mosque, news. It was thought that this was the way to announce hegemony. It was thought that this was the way to strike at the heart of the conquered -- for in those days the temple was not just a place of worship; it was the hub of the community's life, of its learning, of its social life. So the lines in the book which bear on this practice are of no earth-shaking significance in themselves. Their real significance -- and I dare say that they are but the smallest, most innocuous example that one can think of on the mosque-temple business -- lies in the evasion and concealment they have spurred. I have it on good authority that the passages have been known for long, and well known to those who have been stoking the Babri Masjid issue.
(Several other modern Muslim historians and epigraphists accept that the fact that many other mosques including the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya stand on the sites of Hindu temples.)
That is the significant thing; they have known them, and their impulse has been to conceal and bury rather than to ascertain the truth.
I have little doubt that a rational solution can be found for the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi tangle, a solution which will respect the sentiments, the essentials, of the religions of all.
But no solution can be devised if the issue is going to be made the occasion for a show of strength by either side, if it is going to be converted into a symbol for establishing who shall prevail.
The fate of Maulana Abdul Hai's passages -- and I do not know whether the Urdu version itself was not a conveniently sanitized version of the original Arabic Volume -- illustrates the cynical manner in which those who spoke the passions of religion to further their politics are going about the matter.
Those who proceed by such cynical calculations sow havoc for all of us, for Muslims, for Hindus, for all. Those who remain silent in the face of such cynicism, such calculations help them sow the havoc.
Will we shed our evasions and concealment? Will we at last learn to speak and face the whole truth? To see how communalism of one side justifies and stokes that of the other? To see that these "leaders" are not interested in facts, not in the religion, not in a building or a site, but in power, in their personal power, and in that alone? That for them religion is but an instrument, an instrument which is so attractive because the costs of wielding it fall on others, on their followers, and not on them?
Will we never call a halt to them?
Indian Express
February 5, 1989
A case in which the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar, the fourth Rector of one of the greatest centers of Islamic learning in India, listing some of the mosques, including the Babri Masjid, which were built on the sites and foundations of temples, using their stones and structures, is found to have the tell-tale passages censored out.
The book is said to have become difficult to get.
It is traced: And it is found to have been commended just 15 years ago by the most influential Muslim scholar of our country today, the current Rector of the great center of Islamic learning, and the Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board.
Evasion, concealment have become a national habit. And they have terrible consequences. But first I must give you some background. The National Ulama of Lucknow is one of the principal centers of Islamic learning in India. It was founded in 1894. It ranks today next only to the Darul-Ulum at Deoband. The government publication, Centers of Islamic Learning in India, recalls how the founders "aimed at producing capable scholars who could project a true image of Islam before the modern world in an effective way'; it recalls how "Towards fulfilling its avowed aim in the matter of educational reform, it (the group) decided to establish an ideal educational institution which would not only provide education in religious and temporal sciences but also offer technical training"; it recalls how "It (Nadwa) stands out today -- with its college, a vast and rich library and Research and Publication Departments housed in fine buildings -- as one of the most outstanding institutions for imparting instruction in the Islamic Sciences"; it recalls how "A salient feature of this institution is its emphasis on independent research"; it recalls how "The library of the Nadwa, housed in the central hall and the surrounding rooms of the main building, is, with more than 75,000 titles including about 3,000 handwritten books mostly in Arabic and also in Persian, Urdu, English etc., one of the finest libraries of the sub-continent". That was written 10 years ago. The library now has 125,000 books.
Its Head
Today the institution is headed by Maulana Abdul-Hasan Ali Nadwi. Ali Mian, as he is known to one and all, is almost without any doubt the most influential Muslim teacher and figure today -- among the laity, in government circles, and among scholars and governments abroad.
He was among the founders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the fundamentalist organization; but because of differences with Maulana Maudoodi, he left soon. Today he is the chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board. He is a founder member of the Raabta Alam-e-Islami, the Pan-Islamic body with headquarters in Mecca, which decides among other things the amounts that different Islamic organizations the world over should receive. He has been the Nazim, that is the Rector, of the Darul-Ulum Nadwatul-Ualama since 1961, that is for well over a quarter of a century. The Nadwa owns not a small part of its eminence to the scholarship, the exertions, the national and international contacts of Ali Mian.
Politicians of all hues -- Rajiv Gandhi, V P Singh, Chandrasekhar seek him out. He is the author of several books, including the well known Insani Duniya Par Musalmanon Ke Uruj-Zaval Ka Asar (The Impact of the Rise and Fall of Muslims on Mankind), and is taken as the authority on Islamic law, jurisprudence, theology, and specially history. And he has great, in fact decisive, influence on the politics of Muslims in India.
His Father and His Book
His father, Maulana Hakim Sayed Abdul Hai, was an equally well known and influential figure. When the Nadwa was founded, the first Rector, Maulana Muhammed Monghyri, the scholar at whose initiative the original meeting in 1892 which led to establishment of the Nadwa was called, had chosen Maulana Abdul Hai as the Madagar Nazim, the additional Rector. Abdul Hai served in that capacity till July 1915 when he was appointed the Rector. Because of his scholarship and his services to the institution and to Islam, he was reappointed as the Rector in 1920. He continued in that post till his death in February 1923. He too wrote several books, including a famous directory which has just been republished from Hyderabad, of thousands of Muslims who had served the cause of Islam in India, chiefly by the numbers they had converted to the faith.
During some work, I came across the reference to a book of his and began to look for it. It was a long, discursive book, I learnt, which began with descriptions of geography, flora and fauna, languages, people and regions of India. These were written for Arabic speaking people, the book having been written in Arabic.
In 1972, I learnt, the Nadwatul-Ulama had the book translated into Urdu and published the most important chapters of the book under the title Hindustan Islami Ahad Mein ("Hindustan Under Islamic Rule"). Ali Mian, I was told, had himself written the foreword in which he had commended the book most highly. The book as published had left out description of geography etc, on the premise that facts about these are well known to Indian readers.
A Sudden Reluctance
A curious fact hit me in the face. Many of the persons who one would have normally expected to be knowledgeable about such publications were suddenly reluctant to recall this book. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had been removed, for instance from the Aligarh Muslim University Library. Some even suggested that a determined effort had been made three or four years ago to get back each and every copy of this book.
Fortunately the suggestion turned out to be untrue. While some of the libraries one would normally expect to have the book -- the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi; the famous libraries in Hyderabad -- those of the Dairutual Maarifal-Osmania, of the Salar Jung Museum, of the Nizam's Trust, of the Osmania University, the Kutubkhana-I-Saidiya -- did not have it, others did. Among the latter were the Nadwa's library itself, the justly famous Khuda Baksh Library in Patna, that of the Institute of Islamic Studies in Delhi.
The fact that the book was available in all these libraries came as a great reassurance. I felt that if reactionaries and propagandists have become so well organized that they can secure disappearance from every library of a book they have come not to like, we are in deep trouble. Clearly they were not that respectful. The fact that, contrary to what I had been told, the book was available also taught me another reassuring thing: factional fights among Muslim fundamentalists are as sharp and intense as are the factional fights among fundamentalists of other hues. For the suggestion of there being something sinister in the inaccessibility of the book had come to me from responsible Muslim quarters.
'This valuable gift, this historical testament'
The book is the publication number 66 of the Majlis Tehqiqat wa Nashriat Islam, the publication house of the Nadwatul-Ulama, Lucknow. The Arabic version was published in 1972 in Hyderabad, the Urdu version in 1973 in Lucknow. An English version was published in 1977. I will use the Urdu version as the illustration. Maulana Abdul-Hasan Ali Nadwi, that is Ali Mian himself contributes the foreword. It is an eloquent, almost lyrical foreword.
Islam has imbued its followers with the quest for truth, with patriotism, he writes. Their nature, their culture has made Muslims the writers of true history, he writes. Muslims had but to reach a country, he writes, and its fortunes lit up and it awakened from the slumber of hundreds an thousands of years. The country thereby ascended from darkness to light, he writes, from oblivion and obscurity to the pinnacle of name and fame. Leaving its parochial ambit, he writes, it joined the family of man, it joined the wide and vast creation of God. And the luminescence of Islam, he writes, transformed its hidden treasure into the light of eyes. It did not suck away the wealth of the country, he writes, and vomit it elsewhere as western powers did. On the contrary, it brought sophistication, culture, beneficent administration, peace, tranquility to the country. It raised the country from the age of savagery to the age of progress, he writes, from infantilism to adulthood. It transformed its barren lands into swaying fields, he writes, its wild shrubs into fruit-laden trees of such munificence that the residents could not even have dreamt of them.
And so on.
He then recalls that the vast learning and prodigious exertions of Maulana Abdul Hai, his 8-volume work on 4500 Muslims who served the cause of Islam in India, his directory of Islamic scholars. He recalls how after completing these books the Maulana turned to subjects which had till then remained obscure, how in these labors the Maulana was like the proverbial bee collecting honey from varied flowers. He recounts the wide range of the Mualana's scholarship. He recounts how the latter collected rare data, how a person like him accomplished single-handed what entire academics are unable these days to do.
He recounts the structure of the present book. He recalls how it lay neglected for long, how, even as the work of retranscribing a moth-eaten manuscript was going on, a complete manuscript was discovered in Azamgarh, how in 1933 the grace of Providence saved it from destruction and obscurity.
He writes that the book brings into bold relief those hallmarks of Islamic rule which have been unjustly and untruthfully dealt with by western and Indian historians, which in fact many Muslim historians and scholars in universities and academics too have treated with neglect and lack of appreciation.
Recalling how Maulana Abdul Hai had to study thousands of pages on a subject, Ali Mian says that only he who has himself worked on the subject can appreciate the effort that has gone into the study. You will get in a single chapter of this book, he tells the reader, the essence which you cannot obtain by reading scores of books. This is the result, he writes, of the fact that the author labored only for the pleasure of the God, for the service of the learning, and the fulfillment of his own soul. Such authors expected no rewards, no applause, he tells us. Work has their entire satisfaction. That is how they were able to put in such Herculean labors, to spend their entire life on one subject. We are immensely pleased, he concludes, to present this valuable gift and historical testament to our countrymen and hope that Allah will accept this act of service and scholars will also receive it with respect and approbation.
The Explanation
Such being the eminence of the author, such being the greatness of the work, why is it not the cynosure of the fundamentalists' eyes ?
The answer is in the chapter "Hindustan ki Masjidein" , The Mosques of Hindustan (India).
Barely seventeen pages; the chapter is simply written. A few facts about some of the principal mosques are described in a few lines each.
The facts are well-known, they are elementary, and setting them out in few lines each should attract no attention. And yet as we shall see, there is a furtiveness in regard to them. Why? Descriptions of seven mosques provide the answer.
The devout constructed so many mosques, Maulana Abdul Hai records, they lavished such huge amounts and such labors on them that they cannot be all reckoned, that every city, town, hamlet came to be adorned by a mosque. He says that he will therefore have to be content with setting out the facts of just a few of the well-known ones.
A few sentences from what he says about mosques will do:
Qawwat al-Islam Mosque at Delhi
"According to my findings the first mosque of Delhi is Qubbat al-Islam or Quwwat al-Islam which, it is said, Qutub-Din Aibak constructed in H. 587 after demolishing the temple built by Prithvi Raj and leaving certain parts of the temple; and when he returned from Ghazni in H. 592, he started building, under orders from Shihabuddin Ghori, a huge mosque of inimitable red stones, and certain parts of the temple were included in the mosque. After that, when Shamsud-Din Altamish became the king, he built, on both sides of it, edifices of white stones, and on one side of it he started constructing the loftiest of all towers which has no equal in the world for its beauty and strength."
The Mosque at Jaunpur
"This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi with chiseled stones. Originally, it was a Hindu temple after demolishing which he constructed the mosque. It is known as the Atala Masjid. The Sultan used to offer his Friday and Id prayers in it, and Qazi Shihbud-Din gave lessons in it"
The Mosque at Kanauj
"This mosque stands on an elevated ground inside the Fort of Kanauj. It is well-known that it was built on the foundations of some Hindu temple (that stood) here. It is a beautiful mosque. They say that it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi in H. 809 as is recorded in Gharbat Nigar. "
The Jami Mosque at Etawah
"This mosque stands on the bank of the Jamuna at Etawah. There was a Hindu temple at this place, on the site of which this mosque was constructed. It is also patterned after the mosque at Kanauj. Probably it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans."
Babri Masjid at Ayodhya
"This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya which Hindus call the birth place of Ramchandraji. There is a famous story about his wife Sita. It is said Sita had a temple here in which she lived and cooked food for her husband. On that very site Babar constructed this mosque in H. 963 "
Mosques of Aalamgir Aurangzeb
"It is said that the mosque of Benares was built by Alamgir on the site of Vishweshwar Temple. That temple was very tall and held as holy among the Hindus. On this very site and with those very stones he constructed a lofty mosque, and its ancient stones were rearranged after being embedded in the walls of the mosque. It is one of the renowned mosques of Hindustan. The second mosque at Beneras is the one which was built by Alamgir on the bank of Ganga with chiseled stones. This also is a renowned mosque of Hindustan. It has 28 towers, each of which is 238 feet tall. This is on the bank of the Ganga and its foundations extend to the depth of the waters. Alamgir built mosque at Mathura. It is said that this mosque was built on the site of the Gobind Dev Temple which was very strong and beautiful as well as exquisite"
"It is said"
But the Maulana is not testifying to the facts. He is merely reporting what was believed. He repeatedly says, "It is said that".
That seems to be a figure of speech with the Maulana. When describing the construction of the Quwwatul Islam mosque by Qutubuddin Aibak, for instance he uses the same "It is said".
If the facts were in doubt, would a scholar of Ali Mian's diligence and commitment not have commented on them in his fullbodied foreword? Indeed, he would have decided against republishing them as he decided not to republish much of the original book.
And if the scholars had felt that the passages could be that easily disposed of, why should any effort have been made to take a work to the excellence of which a scholar of Ali Mian's stature has testified in such a fullsome manner, and what has been done to this one? And what is that?
Each reference to each of these mosques having been constructed on the sites of temples with, as in the case of Benaras, the stones of the very temples which were demolished for that very purpose have been censored out of the English version of the book ! Each one of the passages on each one of the seven mosques!
Indeed there is not just censorship but substitution. In the Urdu volume we are told in regard to the mosque at Kanauj for instance that "This mosque stands on an elevated ground inside the fort of Kanauj. It is well known that it was built on the foundation of some Hindu temple that stood here." In the English version we are told in regard to the same mosque that "It occupied a commanding site, believed to have been the place earlier occupied by an old and decayed fort".
If the passages could have been explained away by referring to the "It is said", why would anyone have thought it necessary to remove these passages from the English version -- that is the version which is likely to be read by persons other than the faithful? Why would anyone bowdlerize the book of a major scholar in this way?
Conclusions
But that, though obvious, weighs little with me. The fact that temples were broken and mosques constructed in their place is well known. Nor is the fact that the materials of the temples -- the stones and the idols -- were used in constructing the mosque, news. It was thought that this was the way to announce hegemony. It was thought that this was the way to strike at the heart of the conquered -- for in those days the temple was not just a place of worship; it was the hub of the community's life, of its learning, of its social life. So the lines in the book which bear on this practice are of no earth-shaking significance in themselves. Their real significance -- and I dare say that they are but the smallest, most innocuous example that one can think of on the mosque-temple business -- lies in the evasion and concealment they have spurred. I have it on good authority that the passages have been known for long, and well known to those who have been stoking the Babri Masjid issue.
(Several other modern Muslim historians and epigraphists accept that the fact that many other mosques including the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya stand on the sites of Hindu temples.)
That is the significant thing; they have known them, and their impulse has been to conceal and bury rather than to ascertain the truth.
I have little doubt that a rational solution can be found for the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi tangle, a solution which will respect the sentiments, the essentials, of the religions of all.
But no solution can be devised if the issue is going to be made the occasion for a show of strength by either side, if it is going to be converted into a symbol for establishing who shall prevail.
The fate of Maulana Abdul Hai's passages -- and I do not know whether the Urdu version itself was not a conveniently sanitized version of the original Arabic Volume -- illustrates the cynical manner in which those who spoke the passions of religion to further their politics are going about the matter.
Those who proceed by such cynical calculations sow havoc for all of us, for Muslims, for Hindus, for all. Those who remain silent in the face of such cynicism, such calculations help them sow the havoc.
Will we shed our evasions and concealment? Will we at last learn to speak and face the whole truth? To see how communalism of one side justifies and stokes that of the other? To see that these "leaders" are not interested in facts, not in the religion, not in a building or a site, but in power, in their personal power, and in that alone? That for them religion is but an instrument, an instrument which is so attractive because the costs of wielding it fall on others, on their followers, and not on them?
Will we never call a halt to them?
Indian Express
February 5, 1989
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