should make every Indian very, very angry. Every Indian that cares to
call himself or herself Indian, that is, in the truest sense of the
word.
The Babri Masjid destruction issue is not about to go away anytime
soon. By no means should the issue be buried, ignored, or postponed
in its resolution, no matter how complex the process may be or how
painful the truth may be to any of us. Someone as clean in his public
image as Atal Behari Vajpayee has been found culpable to the
destruction of the Babri Masjid, and India should not just hang its
head in shame, it should take every radical step possible to ensure
justice is brought upon the wrongdoers, no matter whose name the list
of such contains, ranging from those who are proud of the havoc
unleashed upon us on the worst day in free India, to those who assume
their right to "represent" the religious majority of this country with
absolutely no sanction whatsoever. They're not elected
representatives of Hindus, so they have no authority to represent
anything Hindu. Period.
This isn't about religion. It is about righteousness. It isn't about
Ram, it isn't about Allah. It is about that pledge we undertook to
uphold the Constitution of India. It is about character, and it is
about integrity. It is about our ability to judge for ourselves
whether we want an India that lives in the present and aims for an
egalitarian future or choose to live like cavemen in an India that is
deeply entrenched in dogma, irrational thought and a narrow minded
regressive mindset.
This is not a religious issue. The debate should never be allowed to
go in that direction, for that in itself will be an admission of lack
of understanding of the situation. This is about India, the nation,
the oaths we have solemnly taken, the sovereignty of everything we
stand for as a nation, and our integrity in protecting all that is
Indian. So, if a clown like Kalyan Singh wants to keep talking about
his temple versus a mosque, he should be shoved out of the room for
showing contempt of the nation.
The matter of how the Liberhan report leaked out is one of concern,
but by no means one of such staggering importance like what the report
itself contains. With wisdom or shortsightedness, the report has been
tabled well before its deadline, and even that is irrelevant in
comparison to the gravity of what it contains. This is a clear
indictment of a party that supposedly stands for a strong, united
India. This is the BJP being shown in its truest colour - that of a
shadowy, fundamentally religious, divisive party hell bent on showing
disrespect to the Constitution of this country.
Along with the BJP are the RSS, the VHP, the Shiv Sena, and a host of
other misled and misleading outfits that fit well in the
constituencies of the "Sangh Parivar". Let them fool us no more.
This is the mindset that not only wants to turn the clock back to the
years of Lord Ram, to the glorious times of an India that might exist
only in mythology, but also one that somehow equates a few of our
women visiting pubs to the erosion of this great Indian culture.
It is the same mindset that makes them declare, completely falsely,
that Hindus of India will go on the warpath if their temple at this
"disputed" site is not allowed to come up. I can swear by millions of
Indian Hindus, right now, that this is completely a hoax and by no
means representive of even an iota of how we feel towards this stupid
idea of building a temple over the destroyed remains of a monument
protected by law - Indian law, the law of THIS land.
Our "national" media is not mature enough to ask the most important,
incisive question to the parties indicted in this report - "Do you
think it is important enough to build this temple at the cost of
violating the Constitution of India?". If the BJP answers "yes", then
they are politically dead and buried. If they answer "no", then there
is no issue. The guilty go to jail, the rest can shut up and go about
their lives, and India moves on.
The whole problem is, this issue IS that simple. It IS that obvious
to those of us who are rational. We have a nation we are citizens of.
We have certain rules, duties, obligations, and regulations that come
along with the rights, the freedoms, the privileges and the
citizenship of this nation called India. The Babri Masjid is to us,
exactly what it was on the 15th of August 1947. Every structure from
the past that we inherited on that day is a monument and a treasure,
no matter what religious persuasion is part of its history. It is one
thing to hold on to beliefs about what might or might not have
happened in a bygone era from which no historical evidence exists, but
to base an act of destruction for reversing history is outright
hooliganism.
No national debate has ever been held that put rationale, logic,
respect for the Indian flag and the Constitution, and the rule of law,
against dogma and the illicit brewing of religious sentiments that
have constantly challenged and corroded India's every move to an
apolitical maturity of its masses. Are we incapable of even so much
as setting the topic for this debate?
A national treasure has been destroyed. The Sangh Parivar's claim
that no masjid existed at this "disputed" spot should be virulently
spat at as being irrelevant to the argument. The argument should
hardly ever be skewed away from the destruction of a historical
structure that belonged to India. The fact that it belonged to us as
Indians should necessarily supercede all other arguments. The act of
destruction, therefore, is nothing but an anti-national act of
violence against the state and people of India - no less potent, no
less damaging, and no less in meaning or significance than an act of
terror or war against us.
Let us not hide behind the veil that the goons of the Sangh Parivar
who destroyed the Babri Masjid are after all "our people". They are
Indian citizens no doubt, but look just a bit further, and they are
also the rascals who desecrated a part of India that is no less sacred
to us than our flag. They have shown disrespect to our nation, and
based on their religious ideology, they are standing up against us and
telling us that they are ready to go to any length to fulfill their
commitment to carry out the construction of their temple.
It isn't enough if we tabled this Liberhan report and pointed fingers
at these anti national elements. They should be treated like the
criminals they are. It is time for us to choose whether to allow the
religious sentiments of a group of people should find any freedom of
expression, when it is directly in opposition to the interests of the
Nation of India. Are we Indians before we are Hindus or Muslims or
candidates of other persuasions? That is the question before us. If
we are not Indians first, we do not deserve an India. We deserve
something much more constraining like rule of the Taliban. The Sangh
Parivar would most certainly fit the bill for this sort of rule.
In a smaller matter of loud mouthing, but no less indicative of this
malaise, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray attacked Sachin Tendulkar for
his anti-Maharashtrian speech. Tendulkar didn't say anything
anti-Maharastrian. He stood by his firm belief that he is first an
Indian, while acknowledging that he is proud to be a Maharashtrian.
This isn't opinion, it is the truth. Anybody who understands
Tendulkar's simple English words can know this truth. Not only has
stupidity pervaded the Shiv Sena, it is celebrated. This Shiv Sena is
part of the clown brigade that brought down the Babri Masjid, let's
not lose sight of that fact. So, now we know how intelligent their
perceptions are.
We need to go beyond these issues and ask ourselves why - in the most
secular of nations on paper, in a nation whose Constitution doesn't
even mention "God", we do not have the courage to give ourselves the
sanctity of our collective as Indians, the weight of importance to our
own human spirit that subscribes to the idea of "India". It is true
that a lot many of us didn't fight for the freedom to be Indians.
This is our chance, right here.
BSK.
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