Prafull Goradia
Any conflict within India which may take place, would be for the Indians to settle. The past sins should be washed with the waters of magnanimity
It was at the Coonoor Club years ago that I came across Salman Sait. In the course of the evening, speaking chaste Gujarati, he much appreciated the cufflinks I was wearing. My instinctive reaction was to take them off and hand them over to Sait with my best wishes. When he hesitated and declined to take them, I told him that I had merely worn the cufflinks, while he had really appreciated them and, therefore, “these rightfully belong to you”. He accepted with a couple of tears in his eyes, saying how thankful he was.
To climb from the ridiculous to the sublime, while hiding in a pond after his rout in the Mahabharata war, Duryodhana offered Yudhishthira the empire of Hastinapura. The latter’s reply was: “Dear brother, isn’t it too late now?”
Sentiments of a similar kind crossed my mind on the terrace of Sita ki Rasoi in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, where stood the Babri edifice when the kar sewa was on in full swing. Poet Mohammad Iqbal decades earlier had called Rama “Imam-e-Hind”. That alone should have been sufficient for his community to gift the edifice to the Hindus.
Today, my mind has flown back to 1192 AD, when Prithiviraj Chauhan lost his final battle to Mohammad Ghori. The latter, in the company of Qutubuddin Aibak, was passing through Ajmer when they came across a triplex of temples. Ghori was taken up by the height and breadth of the complex and asked Aibak to have the triplex converted into a masjid soonest. On my way back, I would like to pray at this new masjid, he said. The obedient slave that he was of Ghori, Aibak got down to the job immediately and finished it in two-and-a-half days. Since then, the converted masjid has been known as ‘Adhai din ka jhopda’. Conqueror Ghori was satisfied that he had humiliated Prithiviraj adequately.
Since those barbaric times, we have passed more than a millennium. Only idiots remain stuck and do not change with the sands of time. When distinguished historian Sir Arnold Toynbee visited India to deliver the Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture in 1961, he had some wisdom to share with his Indian audience.
Sir Arnold said: “In the course of the first occupation of Warsaw, the Russians had built an Eastern Cathedral in the city that had been the capital of the once independent Roman Catholic country, Poland. The Russians had done this to give the Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were now the masters. After the re-establishment of Poland’s independence in 1918, the Poles pulled this cathedral down. I do not blame the Polish Government for having pulled down the Russian church. The purpose for which the Russians had built it was political and positively offensive.”
There are several points to be noted in what Sir Arnold stated. One, that Warsaw was the capital of Poland and a prestigious city. The Russians had converted a historic church to an Orthodox Christian place of worship. Three, in all the Abrahamic faiths, a place of worship is merely a prayer hall and not a residence of God.
In reverse, the people of Ajmer could argue that they had not destroyed any masjid, nor was the triplex of temples situated in a prominent place in the city. Ajmer was also not the capital city of India. Incidentally, the Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity or Islam — do not believe in idol worship. To that extent, the Polish people were justified. Several churches in England have been sold by the local parishes and rebuilt as Jain temples or secular institutions. I can immediately think of a church in Leicester.
The USSR converted many churches and mosques into departmental stores or municipal offices. I have
visited three of them during a visit to Moscow in 1973. No one objected and it happened as though in the course of business. For such a thing to happen to a Hindu temple is like crushing the heart of the devout.
Times have changed in several ways. Firstly, the ‘Adhai din ka Jhopra’ was a temple that was desecrated on the morrow of a Hindu defeat. Two, the sense of magnanimity, which is the hallmark of true royal blood, was not a virtue of Ghori. He was a lowly person who had been pardoned the previous year after his defeat at Chauhan’s hands, but showed no conscience in murdering him. Three, this happened a millennium ago.
I appeal to my countrymen to be a little more magnanimous than Ghori, as well as be realistic about human values today. Islamic rule was formally over in 1858 when the Sepoy Mutiny was crushed by the British, whose own rule ended in 1947. In short, Abrahamic rule has long flown away from the banks of the Jamuna to beyond the Thames. In any conflict within India which may take place, it would be for the Indians to settle. The Islamic flag, which had flourished for centuries, was transferred by Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah to the banks of the Indus. It, therefore, makes sense for the citizens to wash their past sins with the waters of magnanimity.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)
