Arun Shourie
The findings of the Justice Wadhwa Commission of Inquiry
On the face of it, the report of the Wadhwa Commission on the murder of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons should have been very welcome to our secular friends. Justice Wadhwa has concluded that the main person who organised the attack was Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh, and that his motive in doing so was "misplaced fundamentalism", namely his conviction that conversions by missionaries were threatening Hinduism. He also records evidence to the effect that Dara Singh had been involved in an activity which, in the eyes of secularists, is as deplorable as an activity can get: protection of cows from slaughter.
But no, the secularists are all in rage. "A stained report," "A whitewash," "A politically tutored report" -- they have been shouting. Justice Wadhwa has failed the litmus test: if only he had included a sentence -- a single sentence! -- imputing -- howsoever obliquely -- that Dara Singh was in some way affiliated to some organization that can be linked to the RSS or the BJP, what applause would have greeted the Report!
But the Judge has stuck to evidence. Hence the fury! For our friends, a Commission of Inquiry is credible only if it is useful!
In fact, the Report is instructive on many counts. Not to heed them is to condemn the country to further problems.
The first to draw a lesson should be the press. In Chapter 10, Justice Wadhwa takes up "Other Proximate Incidents." The first of these is the alleged rape of Sister Jacqueline Mary on 3 February, 1999. "Orissa nun raped in moving car," the headlines declared, Justice Wadhwa records. "Orissa's second stain: nun raped," shouted the Indian Express, "Nun gangraped by men in sari in Orissa," hollered The Telegraph. The village "has become the rallying point of Christians of the area," the papers proclaimed. "The press, on the basis of some statement made by the pastor of the Church highlighted the role of some Hindu fundamentalist organizations," writes Justice Wadhwa. "....It was termed as a planned attack on the Church. It was said that there was a role of communal forces.... Electronic media was not far behind. It was highlighted as an anti-Christian attack." "Do not treat this as an isolated incident," the papers quoted teachers of a Christian convent school saying, "A communal conspiracy is suspected to be behind the rape."
There indeed was a conspiracy, and a communal one at that. The whole thing was a concoction -- by those whose agenda it is to paint Hindus as communalists on the rampage, and the RSS, BJP etc. as organizations which are orchestrating a "pogrom". "Investigations, however, revealed that what Sister Mary said in the FIR was not true," records Justice Wadhwa. "It was a made up story. Investigations found that there was in fact no rape of Sister Mary.... B. B. Panda, D(irector) G(eneral) (of) P(olice) stated that the 'rape of the nun' case was projected and highlighted all over the world and was also projected as an attack on Christians when in fact it was not true, and the case turned out to be false."
The second incident occurred on 7 February, 1999. Two children, aged 10 and 19, were found murdered, a third had sustained injuries. "This incident again attracted a great deal of publicity in the media, including electronic media," writes Justice Wadhwa. "Newspapers came up with the headings, 'Two Christians killed, one injured in Orissa,' '2 tribal Christians done to death in Kandhamal,' and 'Orissa hunts for Christians' killer'. Additional D. G. P. John Nayak reportedly said that the communal angle to the attempted rape and murder could not be ruled out...." "A certain political party even blamed the State and Central Governments," Justice Wadhwa recalls, "and stated that the inaction of the State Government in the Manoharpur missionary killing incident (the killing of Staines and his sons) and the alleged rape of the nun in Baripada encouraged miscreants to commit yet another crime in Kandhamal." "In short," he concludes, "as per various reports that appeared in the newspapers, the incident was taken as an attack on the Christians."
And what turned out to be the truth? "Ultimately investigation revealed that the crime was committed by a relative of the victims who was also a Christian," the Commission notes.
I'll come to the third incident in a moment, for it concerns an institution other than the press. The fourth incident occurred on 8 December, 1998. Tribals attacked the police station at Udaygiri, stormed the jail, dragged two undertrial prisoners out, and lynched them to death in front of the police station. After that, they burnt houses belonging to members of a particular caste, Pana. The incident too was projected as a Hindu-Christian encounter. It was nothing of the kind. The tribals were being harassed by criminals who happened to be from the Pana caste. The police had been doing nothing. One day the criminals robbed tribals of all their cash as they were proceeding to seek employment. That ignited the flash. But a Hindu-Christian clash it became!
That is one lesson, and Justice Wadhwa draws special attention to it: the press should not rush to conclusions before it has investigated the facts. The facts he has recorded urge that the caution be made specific: the press should be particularly wary of going by allegations of communalism-mongers.
The second institution which comes out most poorly is the Minorities Commission. For quite some time now, this Commission has been putting out patently partisan reports, reports so partisan as to appear to be designed to inflame. It is all too the good, therefore, that in the course of his inquiries into the incidents, Justice Wadhwa has given us a glimpse into the way it goes about its work. The incident I postponed mentioning is typical.
In it, in mid-March, 1999, Hindus -- a minority in the village -- were pictured as having sparked off Hindu-Christian clashes in village Ranalai. Christians painted a large Cross on a hillock. Some Hindus transfigured it into a Trishul. A peace committee consisting of representatives from both communities decided that there would be neither a Cross nor a Trishul. Next day, Hindus went and erased the sign. Christians alleged that while returning, Hindus shouted slogans proclaiming victory. Tension mounted. While trying to control the situation, a Circle Inspector of the police was manhandled by Christians. He registered an FIR against three of them. Houses of Christians were said to have been burned down. Cross-complaints were filed by Hindus and Christians -- each side accusing the other.
The Minorities Commission sent a team, and declared that the genesis of the trouble lay in BJP men inflaming feelings of the local Hindus and instructing them to convert the Cross into a Trishul. As for the incidents and tension, it came to the conclusion it always does: the Hindus had created the trouble.
Justice Wadhwa observes, "These findings are without examining any person on oath or receiving evidence on affidavits." The Minorities Commission had also stigmatized the State Government for inaction. Justice Wadhwa writes, "When the members of the Minorities Commission visited the village [within a fortnight of the supposed incidents], normalcy prevailed. Cases had already been registered against members of both the groups...." Justice Wadhwa shows that the Minorities Commission proceeded in a manner that is in manifest violation of its own statute.
And he quotes the account that The Economic Times correspondent filed after visiting the village. The 22 March, 1999 issue of the paper reported, Justice Wadhwa writes, "that roots of the Ranalai village incident in Gajapati district of Orissa in which houses of Christian families were burnt down by Hindu tribals of nearby villages lie in the economic disparities prevailing between the two communities. The report further said that tension had been building up since the night of February 9, when 23 houses of Hindu families were burnt down by criminals belonging to the Christian community of the nearby Jhami Gaon.... The report further stated that 'The unfortunate incident was largely unreported and totally ignored by national and international media'."
The constructions of the Minorities Commission on the Staines' murder turn out to be designed to colour that crime in the same hue. To take one example, Staines and his family were not involved in preaching of Christianity for the previous 10 years leading to conversion in Manoharpur, the Minorities Commission said in the report it sent to Justice Wadhwa. In fact, associates of Staines himself told the Wadhwa Commission that Staines used to conduct "Bible classes" at "Jungle camps." One of his oldest acquaintances told the Commission that Staines had been totally secretive about both the "Jungle camps" and the accounts etc. of the Leprosy House he ran. While some witnesses maintained that he never even attended baptisms, some reported that he did, that he provided vehicles for marriages and baptism functions. More telling is something of an order altogether different from the oral testimony of witnesses.
It turns out that Staines and his wife, Gladys, regularly filed despatches for a journal in Australia, Tidings. This journal is run by the missionary organization in Australia which financed Staines and his activities in Manoharpur. When the Commission learned about the despatches, it requested the concerned persons for copies of the journal. None were supplied! The Commission had to obtain these from other sources. Justice Wadhwa reproduces several extracts from the despatches.
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 25 April, 1997: The first jungle camp in Ramchandrapur was a fruitful time and the Spirit of God worked among the people. About 100 attended and some were baptized at the camp. At present Misayel and some of the Church leaders are touring a number of places where people are asking for baptism. Five were baptized at Bigonbadi. Pray for the Etani Trust in which the Mission properties are vested. One man managed by underhand means to get parts of the property in his own name and a number of nominal Christians of the Baripada Church are also trying to get some of this valuable property for themselves. The Trust is having to take legal action to rectify this."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 23 July, 1997: Praise God for answered prayer in the recent Jagannath car festival at Baripada. A good team of preachers came from the village churches and four OM workers helped in the second part of the festival. There were record book sales, so a lot of literature has gone into the people's hand...." (Incidentally, "OM" is a carefully chosen acronym: the organization it signifies is actually one of the largest publishers and distributors of missionary literature!)
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 September, 1997: Praise God we now have the Ho New Testament in Oriya script and many copies are now in the hands of the Ho people. Pray to God that it will be used of God to speak to many as they read his word in their own language...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 11 February, 1998: Jungle camp means four days of Bible teaching, prayer and fellowship of Christians living together. It enables believers from other churches to meet with local Christians to discuss experiences and encourage one another.... The camp also can create hunger in the hearts of those who come just to observe. Each camp has a bookstall, which for many is the only chance to buy Christian literature.... It was also encouraging to see so many Ho people following the references in the Ho New Testament during the messages at Sarat Jungle camp. We sold all the New Testaments we took there...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 20 March, 1998: "....Over the next two months there will be a programme of baptism in nearby villages for those asking for them. These are times for witness to non-Christians too...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 May, 1998: There are many new believers in the Manoharpur Church and the work is growing. The devil is now finding opportunity to hinder the work of God. There is disagreement between the young people and the older men of the Church. A problem arose about the land on which the Church is built and the planned Vacation Bible School had to be canceled. Last year more than 100 children attended this programme. The translation of Daily Life into Oriya is complete...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 June, 1998: In many churches here Sunday schools have ceased to function. I have been advocating these and at a recent Church leaders meeting I heard that some have re-started this work.... The Vacation Bible School that was to be held at Manoharpur was canceled because of problems in the Church there. Two hundred and eight children registered for the one at Raika.... It was an excellent time and some young people who teach in VBS are being trained and encouraged for children's work and Sunday school."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 21 August, 1998: ....There are still divisions in the Church at Manoharpur and the churches at Durakuntia and Burudi are very weak. It is wonderful to see the little girls being cared for in the Rairangpur hostel. They have a wonderful opportunity to learn to read and learn of the Lord...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 18 September, 1998: Four men visited Manoharpur Church to discuss the problems there and much was sorted out. A man who wants to be the head of the Church wants to bring in or join with two other groups who do not teach and walk according to the scriptures...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 December, 1998: It is encouraging to hear of some improvement in the Church at Manoharpur and that they are preparing for the jungle camp. Misayel, Paul and Nehemiah visited Patana in early December but, as many were away rice harvesting, they could meet only with a few. They were able to encourage a new believer who had been a priest of the Sana Dhoram, an animist sect. The village people pleaded with him not to become a Christian saying, 'How can we continue our worship if you leave us?' 'You can do as you like, but I am following Christ,' he said. Continue to pray. God is working."
The typical concerns of a typical missionary -- harvesting souls for the Church. The prejudices of a missionary -- Sanatana Dharma, an animist sect! While his wife and some others denied this, one of his close associates spoke of his "hatred" for other religions. This associate reported -- and even Gladys, Staines' wife, acknowledged -- that, if he happened to be at any non-Christian function, Graham Staines would never take prasad, as, Mrs. Staines claimed, doing so is prohibited in the Bible....
After reviewing the evidence, the Wadhwa Commission, therefore, concludes, "Besides his involvement with Leprosy House, Staines was also involved in missionary work. The missionary work of Staines has come to light from the various despatches sent by him to Australia, which are published in the newsletter, 'Tidings'. Staines also used to take part in baptism ceremonies although he may not have necessarily carried out the baptism himself. Paul Murmu says that Staines attended baptism ceremonies and marriage ceremonies of Christian families whenever he was available. However, it is the despatches sent by Staines to Australia in the newsletter 'Tidings' that make it clear that Staines was also involved in active propagation of his religion apart from his social work. It is also clear from the said despatches that conversions were taking place in jungle camps. The missionary work of Staines obviously included organizing and conducting jungle camps, translating the Bible in tribal languages, preaching of Bible to the tribals. It is obvious, therefore, that Staines was both a social worker engaged in the treatment and eradication of leprosy amongst the poorest of the poor and also a missionary driven by a deep commitment to his religion and the belief that he should spread its tenets amongst the people in the area. His missionary activities did lead to conversions of tribals to his faith."
But as far as the Minorities Commission is concerned, supresso veri, and pronounce! Even such misrepresentations by bodies such as the Minorities Commission are lessons in themselves. But, as we shall see, these are minor ones compared to other lessons which the Wadhwa Commission's Report holds out.
Having asserted that Graham Staines had not been involved in missionary work, the Minorities Commission asserted that cordial relations existed between Hindus and Christians, that there were no ill-feelings among them. The two assertions together set the stage for the main theme the Commission pressed: the murders were lightning out of the blue, they were the handiwork of Dara Singh, and Dara Singh in turn was affiliated to the Bajrang Dal.
While a number of Christian witnesses as well as some policemen told the Justice Wadhwa Commission that there was no communal tension in the area, others testified to the contrary. There had been tensions between the communities for seven years, they told the Commission. And for one reason.
The Australian missionary organization which was financing Staines had set up 20-25 churches in Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts, a linguist working with the Indian Evangelical Mission told the Commission. Jungle camps were used for baptizing persons, witnesses told the Commission. B. B. Panda, who was Director General of Police, Orissa from October, 1997 to March, 1999, stated in a report to the State Government that "Mr. Staines was attending Jungle Mela in Manoharpur for the last more than 20 years. Majority of the local Adivasi Christians had been converted to Christianity through his efforts." S. C. Bala, the Superintendent of Police of the Crime Branch, who investigated the case, was asked by the Wadhwa Commission about his assessment regarding the likely motive for the murders. He told the Commission that the motive "appeared to be that non-Christian people were aggrieved on the ground that Christian fathers/missionaries are converting the people to Christianity in a deceitful manner by giving allurements."
More telling are the despatches of Staines and his wife in Tidings, the newsletter of the Australian missionary organization. They themselves wrote about these tensions repeatedly.
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 September, 1997: ....The Ho believers in Thakurmunda still face persecution. From time to time the village people have beaten them up, broken their bicycles and not allowed them to worship in their own Church building. Three people came to Baripada to meet district officials and petition for justice. Pray that action will be taken to allow freedom to worship."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 22 February, 1998: We have just arrived home from the Baliposi camp a day early. Some people from a Hindu militant group who are persecuting the Christians came to the camp but were not able to disturb the meetings. On the last day the police came and told us to stop the meeting and leave, as they would not be able to protect us...." -- election-related requirements left no men to spare.
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 20 March, 1998: Six men came to Baripada to speak with officials in the intelligence department regarding the tension in the Thakurmunda area...."
"Graham and Gladys Staines, Mayurbhanj, 19 May, 1998: ....We have been told that a militant Hindu group plans to concentrate on Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts to turn Christians back to Hinduism...."
In a word: conversions were taking place; this had caused tensions; so much so that a Hindu group had decided to try and get them back into Hinduism. But for our Minorities Commission, all was peace and harmony!
The First Information Report on the Staines' murder was filed by the pastor of the Manoharpur Church. He turns out to be a good candidate for some of our secularist organizations. The assailants shouted "Jai Bajrang Dal," he said in the FIR. Witness after Christian witness testified that what the assailants shouted was "Jai Bajrang Bali." The assailants set fire to the Church, he said. The Church turned out to not have been harmed. On count after count -- what he saw, what he heard, the persons he named as having committed the crime -- the pastor's statements turned out to be contradictory. On count after count he disowned them himself. After narrating these somersaults, Justice Wadhwa remarks, "It is, thus, clear that the FIR was drawn up only after the Chief Minister had left Manoharpur. From all angles, it is a doctored FIR, a large part of which has been disowned by the informant himself and also has been shown to be false." But it is this FIR which became the basis for imaginative journalism.
B. B. Panda, who was then Director General of Police, Orissa, told the Commission that the New Indian Express -- that is, the southern editions of the Indian Express -- of 25 January, 1999, quoted him as saying, "over 50 people suspected to be activists of the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad were involved in the incident, and so far 47 persons have been arrested." He told the Commission that as he had not said this, he sent the paper a contradiction. The paper did not publish the contradiction.
By that figure of 47-50 arrests hangs another lesson also.
One result of the gruesome nature of the murders, of the fact that even the little sons had been done to death, of the fact that the State Government had to show to the Congress leadership in Delhi that it was acting energetically, and also of the glare the media had brought to bear on the case was that the police felt it just had to show something. The consequence? "The police went berserk," observes Justice Wadhwa. It picked up anyone who in its imagination could somehow or the other be linked with the Bajrang Dal. Fifty one persons were thrown into jail. The Crime Branch found that there was absolutely no case against them. All of them had to be released. Justice Wadhwa observes, "It would thus appear that 51 persons underwent the agony of going into judicial custody for two months or more. Though initially the State Government took a great deal of pride that police arrested as many as 51 accused showing the efficiency and promptness of the police, but ultimately subsequent events showed that in the State of Orissa, as far as these 51 persons are concerned, there was no rule of law. Prakash Mehra (DIG) in his supervision note had stated that there was no evidence in respect of all the five FIR named accused persons or the 51 persons arrested by the local police."
"The question then arises in view of the contradictions which make the FIR a false document, what was the motivating force behind it?," asks Justice Wadhwa. "And why as many as 51 innocent persons were arrested between 23rd to 28th January, 1999?" "Answers to these questions are not far to seek," he concludes. "The State Government was rattled by the gravity of the crime. To divert attention from its own failure to maintain law and order and to protect the innocent and then show 'speedy and decisive' action, a false picture is presented."
And as for the involvement of the Bajrang Dal etc., the Commission concludes, "The Commission has scrutinized the evidence before it and especially the evidence of the associates of Dara Singh who were involved in the carnage at Manoharpur. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the persons involved in the crime was in fact a member of either the Bajrang Dal or BJP or any organization. There is nothing to suggest in the evidence before the Commission, or in the investigation conducted by the Crime Branch and the CBI thus far that there is involvement of any organization, even that of Bajrang Dal, in the planning and the execution of the crime."
Several witnesses testified to Dara Singh's involvement in the crime -- in preparing for it, in executing it. Justice Wadhwa is in doubt that Dara Singh was the prime mover. To fly off in rage at Dara Singh, and feel that one has done one's duty is to miss the point.
There are several important pointers. Several witnesses testified that Dara Singh had been engaged in rescuing cows that were being transported for slaughter. He had been trying to get the State to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laws. This activity was taken, even by the police, to be "anti-Muslim" activity. Dara Singh was accordingly implicated in cases filed by persons engaged in transporting and selling cows for slaughter. That is as far as the consequences for Dara Singh under the law are concerned. The effect on the people was the exact opposite. Witness-29, who testified that he had been asked by Dara Singh to accompany him to Manoharpur, told the Commission, "Dara Singh is a very popular figure in the village as he forcibly frees cows from the people who take them for selling. After freeing the cows, Dara Singh distributes the cows among the villagers...."
Cows are revered by Hindus. The man trying to save them becomes an outlaw in the eyes of the police, and a hero in the eyes of the people. Two lessons in that.
On the other hand, Staines and his associates are left free to go on converting Hindus to Christianity. There is no evidence that Staines himself resorted to fraud, force or allurement. Even so, tensions mount because of conversions. Staines' own despatches testify to this. But our institutions -- the Minorities Commission and the police being representative in this regard -- even in retrospect assert the fiction that there was no tension between Christians and non-Christians.
The second clue is provided by the evidence of a key witness, one whose testimony contributes most to nailing the involvement of Dara Singh. He is one Dipu Das. He was a close associate of Dara Singh. He revealed to the Commission that "youth from Gayalmunda and Bhalughera had approached Dara Singh sometime in August 1998 to stop the Christians from converting Hindus to Christianity...."
That is the key lesson: if the State is going to persist with double-standards in regard to the sentiments of Hindus and non-Hindus on the one hand, and with a deliberate shutting of eyes on the other, it is paving the way for such crimes.
That lesson is brought home most forcefully by Justice Wadhwa's findings in regard to the Orissa law that bears on conversions. As has been noted earlier, Orissa passed a law in 1967 to regulate conversions. It is known as the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act. Its constitutionality -- as well as that of the allied law in Madhya Pradesh -- has been upheld by a five judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh [AIR 1977 SC 908]. Among other things, the law provides, "No person shall convert or attempt to convert, either directly or otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by use of force or by inducement or by any fraudulent means, nor shall any person abet such conversion." Anyone doing so, the Act provides, shall be punished by imprisonment of up to one year and/or a fine of Rs. 5,000. In case the offence relates to a minor, a woman or a person belonging to the Scheduled Castes or Tribes, the punishment shall be double.
To prevent misuse, the Act provides that the offence shall not be investigated by an officer below the rank of an Inspector of Police, and that no prosecution shall be instituted without the sanction of the Magistrate of the District or an equivalent authority.
The Act was passed in 1967. Rules under it were not framed till November, 1989, Justice Wadhwa notes. The Rules are salutary, and will repay a moment's attention:
"3(i) Each District Magistrate shall maintain a list of religious institutions or organizations propagating religious faith in his district and that of persons directly or indirectly engaged for propagation of religious faith in the district.
"(ii) The District Magistrate, if he thinks fit, may call for a list of persons with the religious faith, receiving benefits either in cash or in kind from the religious organizations or institutions or from any person connected therewith.
"4. Any person intending to convert his religion shall give a declaration before a Magistrate, 1st Class, having jurisdiction prior to such conversion that he intends to convert his religion on his own will.
"5(i) The concerned religious priest shall intimate the date, time and place of the ceremony in which conversion shall be made along with the names and addresses of the persons to be converted to the concerned District Magistrate before fifteen days of the said ceremony.
"(ii) The intimation shall be in Form A and shall be delivered either personally by the Priest to the concerned District Magistrate or sent to him by registered post with acknowledgment due.
"6. The District Magistrate on receiving the intimation from the priest shall sign thereon stating the date on which and the hour at which the intimation has been delivered to him or received by him, and shall forthwith acknowledge the receipt thereof in Form B.
"7. The District Magistrate shall maintain a register of conversion in Form C and shall cover therein particulars of the intimation received by him.
"8. Any person who contravenes the provisions of Rule 5 or 6 shall be liable to a fine of Rupees one thousand.
"9. The District Magistrate shall by the 10th of each month send to the State Government a report of intimations received by him during the preceding month in Form D."
That is the law. And what is the reality? Justice Wadhwa reports:
"No one was aware of the Freedom of Religion Act or the Rules framed thereunder in the State at least in the districts of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. These provisions of law were lying dormant and [had] never [been] put into operation for the last many years. Admittedly, there were conversions to Christianity in these two districts. No person intending to convert his religion ever gave a declaration before a Magistrate prior to such conversion of his intent to convert his religion on his own will which was the requirement of Rule 4. Similarly also the religious priest did not give intimation of such conversion as per Form A under the Rules. District Magistrate did not maintain a register of conversion as per Form prescribed. Since they did not make any record of conversions, they did not send any report of conversion to the State Government.
"Mr. Balakrishnan, District Magistrate, Mayurbhanj and Mr. Saurabh Garg, District Magistrate, Keonjhar were examined to know if any action [had been] taken under the Freedom of Religion Act and the Rules framed thereunder. They expressed ignorance of the provisions of the law relating to conversion and said they had become aware of these only after the incident at Manoharpur on the night of 22 / 23-1-1999. To me, it appears that even now they do not understand the full scope and intent of the provisions of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act and the Rules. These are salutary provisions and prohibit conversion from one religion to another by the use of force, inducement or by any fraudulent means. Even any abetment to such conversion has been made an offence. If these provisions of law, in my view, are strictly followed no one can have any grievance to contend that gullible and innocent tribals are being converted."
The Commission asked the Advocate General for a report on prosecutions under the Act. From 1967 to 1990, the Advocate General informed the Commission, the Act was not enforced as its constitutional vires had been challenged. Since then -- that is, in nine years -- 10 cases had been registered. In one case the accused had been discharged. In one case he had been acquitted. In regard to two the Final Report had been submitted. And six were pending trial.
The lesson -- a cruel one -- shouts at us: as this is the attitude of the State machinery to law, the Dara Singhs will continue to become heroes with the local population.
Showing posts with label communalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Objective Whitewash for Objective History (PART I of II) !
Arun Shourie
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
Objective Whitewash for Objective History (PART I of II) !
Objective Whitewash for Objective History (PART I of II) !
Arun Shourie
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
Arun Shourie
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Toppling the BJP Government on the 31st
Arun Shourie
The so-called secular parties -- that is, all fifteen of them, including the Muslim League -- are continuing to insist that they shall vote out the BJP Government on the 31st. Assume that they do, and assume that a Government headed by Deve Gowda assumes office. It will be a Janata Dal Government for two simple reasons : there is nothing to the National Front except the Janata Dal; second, what was being touted as the other half of the "NF-LF", that is the Left Front has already opted out -- like the Congress, it says it to will support the "National Front" Government from outside. The Governments of Charan Singh and Chandrashekhar were "supported from the outside" by the Congress. One lasted till the day it had to face the House, the other lasted four months. But to the defenders of secularism all that is history. The situation now is different, they say; for one thing there are those experiences to warn the secular parties and leaders, they say; moreover, this time the leaders of "the forces of social change" are very conscious of the historic responsibility that rests on their shoulders, they say.
The situation is indeed different. As I said, assume that a Government headed by Deve Gowda has been installed. The Patna High Court has ruled that the agencies of the Bihar Government cannot be trusted with the investigation into the gawala loot. Will the Government of Deve Gowda try to nail the culprits who have walked off with Rs 3700 Crore of public funds from the treasuries of Bihar, when all this has been looted during the reign of the very man, Laloo Yadav who happens to be the President of the party of which Deve Gowda happens to be a member ? Even if Laloo Yadav had not been the President of the Janata Dal, he would still be in control of 15-20 MPs. Will Deve Gowda pursue an inquiry which is certain to corner such a person ? Will he ever be able to forget that the Janata Dal has only 43 MPs -- forty less than Charan Singh had, two less than Chandrashekhar had -- and that 21 of these are from Laloo's Bihar ?
Or take the cases in which Congressmen have a direct interest. The St Kitts case, the case regarding the bribes paid to the JMM MPs, the numerous affairs involving cheating by Chandraswami and his associates. In each of these not just the ordinary member of the Congress but the President of that party has a vital stake. If Deve Gowda does not stall them, the Congress will be honour-bound to withdraw support. If he stalls them, you can see where that will leave the issue which all the pollsters said was of the greatest concern to the people in the elections -- namely corruption. Not just these cases involving the President of the Congress, take even a case like the hawala one. Even if one disregards the statement of S.K. Jain that he had paid three and a half crores to Narasimha Rao, the case involves several far-from-ordinary Congressmen. If Deve Gowda does not take steps to stall the case, each of these will be pushing Narasimha Rao or whoever the Congress President is to remind Deve Gowda what "support from the outside" means. If Rao or his successor succeeds in having Deve Gowda or his successor stall the case, the corrupt get away again. If Rao fails to check Deve Gowda, resentment against Rao within the Congress swells further, the party disintegrates further, and with it the "support from outside".
That is just one illustration regarding one of the issues about which the people were concerned in these elections : the moment the "National Front" Government is installed the people can say good bye to that issue. The position shall be no different in regard to other matters. Before the BJP Government was formed, that is when the working premise still was that the NF-LF Government is going to assume office, and at a time when the Left parties, certainly the CPI expected to be a part of the Government, Madhu Trehan asked A B Bardhan of the CPI what the NF-LF Government would do about the economic policies of the Congress Government. Bardhan said the policies would be reversed. But the Congress will be supporting your Government, how will you reverse their policies?, Madhu asked, a little incredulous. That is their problem, said Bardhan, and he repeated the phrase more than once for good measure. And yet we are to believe that these parties are getting together with an agreed programme!
But it is not just policies, it is structure, it is the base itself which will put them at loggerheads. The Narayan Dutt Tewari-Moopanar-Mamta Banerjee phenomenon will be repeated all over. Assume that a Janata Dal Government is in office and the Congress has pledged to keep it afloat. But can J B Patnaik in Orissa afford to subordinate the Orissa unit of the Congress to the local unit of the Janata Dal ? Will he let go of the cases against Biju Patnaik, can he afford to let go of them ? But how can he pursue cases against such an important leader of the party whose Government his party is keeping alive at the Centre? The alliance will entail that the local unit of the Congress in Bihar must subordinate itself completely to the discredited Laloo Yadav, that the local unit of the Congress in Andhra must completely efface itself in favour of Chandrababu Naidu, that the units in Bengal and Kerala must subordinate themselves to the CPI(M).
What hope can these units then have of survival? The stains that today discolor Laloo will rub off on the Congress also, exactly as those of Mulayam Singh's Government in U.P. so thoroughly discredited the Congress in that state. In Andhra, West Bengal, Kerala the situation is even more urgent : in such states the Congress is fighting a battle of survival -- and it is fighting against well organised, rapacious adversaries. The very reason for its continuance in such states is that it is available to those who do not like the ruling parties there. Once the Congress enters into a direct or indirect alliance with these very parties at the Centre, that is in regard to the country as a whole, why would those who support the local units of the Congress do so any longer? A Narasimha Rao can afford to ignore all this : far from being concerned about strengthening the Congress, he has derived his strength in good measure from seeing the Congress weakened; moreover he cannot now have a very long horizon. But what about the local Congressman, the local Congress leader? Can he also go on looking with comparable equanimity at the subordination, and thereby the certain erosion of his platform? In a word, as these partners are in deadly competition for the same base, the "alliance" just cannot last long.
And what of the reactions of the workers and associates of the parties in the field ? Consider the Maanila-Congress in Tamil Nadu. Its leaders may well have gone along with Narasimha Rao's decision to ally with Jayalalitha : they have not been known for staking much for principle. But as they explained, they were a "worker-driven" party : the Congress workers in Tamil Nadu were so furious at Rao's decision that the leaders just had to fall in line. The workers then celebrated in the Congress office itself in Madras -- they did so by throwing Rao's cut-out to the ground, forming a queue, and going on urinating on it for hours. Can the leaders of the Maanila-Congress long associate themselves in a joint-enterprise with the same Rao so soon? The case of Chandrababu Naidu's flock is not very different : several of his MPs are convinced that the one man who helped Lakshmi Parvati's candidates against them -- and with much more than mere "moral support" -- was none other than the very same Deve Gowda whom they are being asked to prop up today. Will they do so with any conviction, will they do so for long?
And then there are the strictly personal factors. First there is the ambition. In the Janata Dal not everyone feels that he deserves to be PM as much as any other person in that collection. And strictly speaking he is right : as all are equally unqualified for the job, there is no reason why one should get it and not the other. So, even if you give it to one of them on the 31st, jostling will start on the 1st.
And then there are the vicious animosities. These have been on display again : you should just hear the accounts of the determination with which Mulayam Singh blocked V P Singh, and then Laloo Yadav; of the peremptory way in which Deve Gowda shot down Hegde's name; of how so many of them were dealing behind each other's backs with their private partners in the Congress. One can scarcely imagine the animosity that the rest in the Janata Dal feel about that trio -- V P Singh, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. And who among any of these alliance parties has even an iota of trust in Narasimha Rao? A volume can be compiled -- a volume should be compiled -- about what they have proclaimed about him and his Government during the last three years. But suddenly we are to believe that all that was nothing. Indeed, why take the trouble of scanning three years? Just recall what happened the other day when the Janata Dal leaders learnt that the President had invited Atal Behari Vajpayee to form a Government. It did not take them fifteen minutes to conclude that the very man, Narasimha Rao on whom they were depending to form their Government had executed a conspiracy against them, and to proclaim this to the world. Persons who feel this way about each other will provide a stable partnership?
"And never underestimate habit," one of the most prominent among Congressmen said the other day. "For forty years these fellows have been making one speech, specially the Lohia-types," he continued. "They have just to start speaking -- whatever the subject, within two minutes they are shouting : 'These forty years have been ruinous for India, the Nehru-Gandhi family has been the ruin of India...' Now, the younger Congressmen will keep quiet for the first two or three times. But how long will they keep quiet ? On the other side those fellows cannot continue a speech without flying off on that handle."
Ambition and habits apart, the compulsions of the moment will propel them even faster in that direction. It is well known that whichever Government is in power, very harsh economic decisions will have to be taken within weeks. To take just one example, for nine months administered prices have been held down with a heavy hand -- prices of steel, of coal, of petroleum products. This holding down has already put the severest strain on Government finances -- even the oil account is already in deficit to an astronomical amount. The prices of these items will just have to be increased within weeks. How will the Deve Gowda Government justify these increases except by blaming the Narasimha Rao Government's handling of the economy? And when they start casting the blame, will that propper-up-of-the-Government-from-the-outside, the Congress be able to swallow the declamations in silence ?
The simple fact that so many parties would have got together to prop up the Government, coupled with the fact that on its own the Government would have even fewer MPs than Chandrashekhar had would mean that that many more would have a veto over what it wanted to do, that it would have to do things that so many more parties, each aiming at some particular group, would want done. Can we even imagine where all this tugging and pulling will leave policy-making ?
And what is their excuse for entering into such alliances? Secularism has to be saved, they say. Is that the real reason ? The AGP knows well what members of the Left Front used to call it -- not just communal and anti-Bengali but the instrument of foreign powers; the AGP knows well how the Left supported Mrs. Gandhi as her Government shot down 800 young boys and girls of AASU. They also know that the only political group which stood by them, the only group which has consistently kept the issue that gave them birth -- the swamping of the North-East by infiltrators from Bangladesh -- has been the BJP. They know that from the very first days of the movement, the politicians who stood by them were persons like Atal Behari Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh. Is it secularism which impels the AGP to contemplate supporting a Government propped by the very Congress that killed their comrades, by the very Communists who hurled the worst invective at them and their movement? The reason is very different, and far from principle : to get back to office, the AGP decided this time round that it needed to break some Muslim votes away from the Congress, they decided that they needed to get some chunks of the Bengali votes which have been the base of the CPI(M) in Assam. Therefore they down-played the infiltration issue, they allied with the CPI(M). And supporting a BJP Government at the Centre, they have feared, will jeopardise these sections. In Andhra the situation is the same : to eliminate the Congress, Chandrababu Naidu feels he needs to break its bank among the 12 percent Muslim voters; the more he can show himself to be in the forefront in thwarting the BJP Government the more that lot will look to him in the future.
The calculations of the Maanila Congress leaders are no higher. They realise that they cannot survive long as a mere regional outfit. They have to get back to the Congress -- when Rao is replaced, or when the anger of the Congressmen in Tamil Nadu has subsided. If they support the BJP Government in the interim, they reckon, their chances of rejoining the Congress would be impeded. Such are the calculations that account for the "secularism" of these politicians.
There is of course a lot other than these politicians -- the intellectuals and "opinion makers". Their secularism is to be explained merely by consistency -- compounded now by sheer cussedness, by zid ! No, whatever happens, we shall not allow a BJP Government to survive, they say. As the wag would say : No, there is no reason for it, it is just our policy.
All who are cheering the MPs to bring down the BJP should see therefore that the Government they will be installing will not be conspicuous for being secular. What it will be is out-and-out casteist. And it will be brazen and blatant, the way Mulayam Singh's Government was in UP, the way Laloo Yadav's Government is in Bihar -- completely bereft of any inhibition, completely unrestrained by any sense of shame : how come no paper has reported the way these leaders behaved when they went to the President to protest against his decision to call Vajpayee? More than anything else, it will be a Government which will start out knowing that it is not going to last long. Its members will therefore grab with a vengeance, and they will decree the things that in their calculation will solidify this caste or that, Muslims qua Muslims behind them for the next elections.
To push the country into such hands at such a critical time is not just cussedness, it is cussedness which borders on the criminal.
May 22, 1996
The so-called secular parties -- that is, all fifteen of them, including the Muslim League -- are continuing to insist that they shall vote out the BJP Government on the 31st. Assume that they do, and assume that a Government headed by Deve Gowda assumes office. It will be a Janata Dal Government for two simple reasons : there is nothing to the National Front except the Janata Dal; second, what was being touted as the other half of the "NF-LF", that is the Left Front has already opted out -- like the Congress, it says it to will support the "National Front" Government from outside. The Governments of Charan Singh and Chandrashekhar were "supported from the outside" by the Congress. One lasted till the day it had to face the House, the other lasted four months. But to the defenders of secularism all that is history. The situation now is different, they say; for one thing there are those experiences to warn the secular parties and leaders, they say; moreover, this time the leaders of "the forces of social change" are very conscious of the historic responsibility that rests on their shoulders, they say.
The situation is indeed different. As I said, assume that a Government headed by Deve Gowda has been installed. The Patna High Court has ruled that the agencies of the Bihar Government cannot be trusted with the investigation into the gawala loot. Will the Government of Deve Gowda try to nail the culprits who have walked off with Rs 3700 Crore of public funds from the treasuries of Bihar, when all this has been looted during the reign of the very man, Laloo Yadav who happens to be the President of the party of which Deve Gowda happens to be a member ? Even if Laloo Yadav had not been the President of the Janata Dal, he would still be in control of 15-20 MPs. Will Deve Gowda pursue an inquiry which is certain to corner such a person ? Will he ever be able to forget that the Janata Dal has only 43 MPs -- forty less than Charan Singh had, two less than Chandrashekhar had -- and that 21 of these are from Laloo's Bihar ?
Or take the cases in which Congressmen have a direct interest. The St Kitts case, the case regarding the bribes paid to the JMM MPs, the numerous affairs involving cheating by Chandraswami and his associates. In each of these not just the ordinary member of the Congress but the President of that party has a vital stake. If Deve Gowda does not stall them, the Congress will be honour-bound to withdraw support. If he stalls them, you can see where that will leave the issue which all the pollsters said was of the greatest concern to the people in the elections -- namely corruption. Not just these cases involving the President of the Congress, take even a case like the hawala one. Even if one disregards the statement of S.K. Jain that he had paid three and a half crores to Narasimha Rao, the case involves several far-from-ordinary Congressmen. If Deve Gowda does not take steps to stall the case, each of these will be pushing Narasimha Rao or whoever the Congress President is to remind Deve Gowda what "support from the outside" means. If Rao or his successor succeeds in having Deve Gowda or his successor stall the case, the corrupt get away again. If Rao fails to check Deve Gowda, resentment against Rao within the Congress swells further, the party disintegrates further, and with it the "support from outside".
That is just one illustration regarding one of the issues about which the people were concerned in these elections : the moment the "National Front" Government is installed the people can say good bye to that issue. The position shall be no different in regard to other matters. Before the BJP Government was formed, that is when the working premise still was that the NF-LF Government is going to assume office, and at a time when the Left parties, certainly the CPI expected to be a part of the Government, Madhu Trehan asked A B Bardhan of the CPI what the NF-LF Government would do about the economic policies of the Congress Government. Bardhan said the policies would be reversed. But the Congress will be supporting your Government, how will you reverse their policies?, Madhu asked, a little incredulous. That is their problem, said Bardhan, and he repeated the phrase more than once for good measure. And yet we are to believe that these parties are getting together with an agreed programme!
But it is not just policies, it is structure, it is the base itself which will put them at loggerheads. The Narayan Dutt Tewari-Moopanar-Mamta Banerjee phenomenon will be repeated all over. Assume that a Janata Dal Government is in office and the Congress has pledged to keep it afloat. But can J B Patnaik in Orissa afford to subordinate the Orissa unit of the Congress to the local unit of the Janata Dal ? Will he let go of the cases against Biju Patnaik, can he afford to let go of them ? But how can he pursue cases against such an important leader of the party whose Government his party is keeping alive at the Centre? The alliance will entail that the local unit of the Congress in Bihar must subordinate itself completely to the discredited Laloo Yadav, that the local unit of the Congress in Andhra must completely efface itself in favour of Chandrababu Naidu, that the units in Bengal and Kerala must subordinate themselves to the CPI(M).
What hope can these units then have of survival? The stains that today discolor Laloo will rub off on the Congress also, exactly as those of Mulayam Singh's Government in U.P. so thoroughly discredited the Congress in that state. In Andhra, West Bengal, Kerala the situation is even more urgent : in such states the Congress is fighting a battle of survival -- and it is fighting against well organised, rapacious adversaries. The very reason for its continuance in such states is that it is available to those who do not like the ruling parties there. Once the Congress enters into a direct or indirect alliance with these very parties at the Centre, that is in regard to the country as a whole, why would those who support the local units of the Congress do so any longer? A Narasimha Rao can afford to ignore all this : far from being concerned about strengthening the Congress, he has derived his strength in good measure from seeing the Congress weakened; moreover he cannot now have a very long horizon. But what about the local Congressman, the local Congress leader? Can he also go on looking with comparable equanimity at the subordination, and thereby the certain erosion of his platform? In a word, as these partners are in deadly competition for the same base, the "alliance" just cannot last long.
And what of the reactions of the workers and associates of the parties in the field ? Consider the Maanila-Congress in Tamil Nadu. Its leaders may well have gone along with Narasimha Rao's decision to ally with Jayalalitha : they have not been known for staking much for principle. But as they explained, they were a "worker-driven" party : the Congress workers in Tamil Nadu were so furious at Rao's decision that the leaders just had to fall in line. The workers then celebrated in the Congress office itself in Madras -- they did so by throwing Rao's cut-out to the ground, forming a queue, and going on urinating on it for hours. Can the leaders of the Maanila-Congress long associate themselves in a joint-enterprise with the same Rao so soon? The case of Chandrababu Naidu's flock is not very different : several of his MPs are convinced that the one man who helped Lakshmi Parvati's candidates against them -- and with much more than mere "moral support" -- was none other than the very same Deve Gowda whom they are being asked to prop up today. Will they do so with any conviction, will they do so for long?
And then there are the strictly personal factors. First there is the ambition. In the Janata Dal not everyone feels that he deserves to be PM as much as any other person in that collection. And strictly speaking he is right : as all are equally unqualified for the job, there is no reason why one should get it and not the other. So, even if you give it to one of them on the 31st, jostling will start on the 1st.
And then there are the vicious animosities. These have been on display again : you should just hear the accounts of the determination with which Mulayam Singh blocked V P Singh, and then Laloo Yadav; of the peremptory way in which Deve Gowda shot down Hegde's name; of how so many of them were dealing behind each other's backs with their private partners in the Congress. One can scarcely imagine the animosity that the rest in the Janata Dal feel about that trio -- V P Singh, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. And who among any of these alliance parties has even an iota of trust in Narasimha Rao? A volume can be compiled -- a volume should be compiled -- about what they have proclaimed about him and his Government during the last three years. But suddenly we are to believe that all that was nothing. Indeed, why take the trouble of scanning three years? Just recall what happened the other day when the Janata Dal leaders learnt that the President had invited Atal Behari Vajpayee to form a Government. It did not take them fifteen minutes to conclude that the very man, Narasimha Rao on whom they were depending to form their Government had executed a conspiracy against them, and to proclaim this to the world. Persons who feel this way about each other will provide a stable partnership?
"And never underestimate habit," one of the most prominent among Congressmen said the other day. "For forty years these fellows have been making one speech, specially the Lohia-types," he continued. "They have just to start speaking -- whatever the subject, within two minutes they are shouting : 'These forty years have been ruinous for India, the Nehru-Gandhi family has been the ruin of India...' Now, the younger Congressmen will keep quiet for the first two or three times. But how long will they keep quiet ? On the other side those fellows cannot continue a speech without flying off on that handle."
Ambition and habits apart, the compulsions of the moment will propel them even faster in that direction. It is well known that whichever Government is in power, very harsh economic decisions will have to be taken within weeks. To take just one example, for nine months administered prices have been held down with a heavy hand -- prices of steel, of coal, of petroleum products. This holding down has already put the severest strain on Government finances -- even the oil account is already in deficit to an astronomical amount. The prices of these items will just have to be increased within weeks. How will the Deve Gowda Government justify these increases except by blaming the Narasimha Rao Government's handling of the economy? And when they start casting the blame, will that propper-up-of-the-Government-from-the-outside, the Congress be able to swallow the declamations in silence ?
The simple fact that so many parties would have got together to prop up the Government, coupled with the fact that on its own the Government would have even fewer MPs than Chandrashekhar had would mean that that many more would have a veto over what it wanted to do, that it would have to do things that so many more parties, each aiming at some particular group, would want done. Can we even imagine where all this tugging and pulling will leave policy-making ?
And what is their excuse for entering into such alliances? Secularism has to be saved, they say. Is that the real reason ? The AGP knows well what members of the Left Front used to call it -- not just communal and anti-Bengali but the instrument of foreign powers; the AGP knows well how the Left supported Mrs. Gandhi as her Government shot down 800 young boys and girls of AASU. They also know that the only political group which stood by them, the only group which has consistently kept the issue that gave them birth -- the swamping of the North-East by infiltrators from Bangladesh -- has been the BJP. They know that from the very first days of the movement, the politicians who stood by them were persons like Atal Behari Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh. Is it secularism which impels the AGP to contemplate supporting a Government propped by the very Congress that killed their comrades, by the very Communists who hurled the worst invective at them and their movement? The reason is very different, and far from principle : to get back to office, the AGP decided this time round that it needed to break some Muslim votes away from the Congress, they decided that they needed to get some chunks of the Bengali votes which have been the base of the CPI(M) in Assam. Therefore they down-played the infiltration issue, they allied with the CPI(M). And supporting a BJP Government at the Centre, they have feared, will jeopardise these sections. In Andhra the situation is the same : to eliminate the Congress, Chandrababu Naidu feels he needs to break its bank among the 12 percent Muslim voters; the more he can show himself to be in the forefront in thwarting the BJP Government the more that lot will look to him in the future.
The calculations of the Maanila Congress leaders are no higher. They realise that they cannot survive long as a mere regional outfit. They have to get back to the Congress -- when Rao is replaced, or when the anger of the Congressmen in Tamil Nadu has subsided. If they support the BJP Government in the interim, they reckon, their chances of rejoining the Congress would be impeded. Such are the calculations that account for the "secularism" of these politicians.
There is of course a lot other than these politicians -- the intellectuals and "opinion makers". Their secularism is to be explained merely by consistency -- compounded now by sheer cussedness, by zid ! No, whatever happens, we shall not allow a BJP Government to survive, they say. As the wag would say : No, there is no reason for it, it is just our policy.
All who are cheering the MPs to bring down the BJP should see therefore that the Government they will be installing will not be conspicuous for being secular. What it will be is out-and-out casteist. And it will be brazen and blatant, the way Mulayam Singh's Government was in UP, the way Laloo Yadav's Government is in Bihar -- completely bereft of any inhibition, completely unrestrained by any sense of shame : how come no paper has reported the way these leaders behaved when they went to the President to protest against his decision to call Vajpayee? More than anything else, it will be a Government which will start out knowing that it is not going to last long. Its members will therefore grab with a vengeance, and they will decree the things that in their calculation will solidify this caste or that, Muslims qua Muslims behind them for the next elections.
To push the country into such hands at such a critical time is not just cussedness, it is cussedness which borders on the criminal.
May 22, 1996
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
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