In 1992, Hindu protesters destroyed a mosque at Ayodhya built by the Muslim conqueror Babur in 1527. The protesters claimed that the mosque was built on a Hindu holy site where a temple had marked the birthplace of the god Ram. The first lawsuit by Hindus to gain control of the site was filed under British rule in 1886, but the British refused to get involved:I found that Masjid built by Emperor Babur stands on the border of the town of Ayodhya. It is most unfortunate that Masjid should have been built on land specially held sacred by the Hindus, but as that event occurred 358 years ago, it is too late now to remedy the grievance. All that can be done is to maintain the parties in status quo. In such a case as the present one any innovation would cause more harm and derangement of order than benefit.Hindus filed another suit in 1950, not long after independence, and the riot that led to the mosque's destruction had originally been billed as a protest against delay in the courts.
After 60 years, a special three-judge judicial panel has ruled that the property will be divided, with Muslims getting 1/3 and Hindus 2/3:
The unexpected decision to divide the property initially suggested a political solution as much as a legal one. But Harish Salve, a former solicitor general of India, said the court had apparently based its decision on historical accounts suggesting that for centuries Hindus and Muslims had worshiped together at the site before they were segregated during British rule in the 1850s.
With this legacy, the court concluded that the entire property should be considered jointly held by Muslims and Hindus and distributed under relevant Indian property statutes, Mr. Salve said, which divide contested properties on the principle of fairness.
When in doubt, blame the ex-imperial power! It's the Brits' fault! We Indians got along wonderfully until they came along!
Well, whatever works, I suppose. The only document I have found mention of, though, is a British report from 1895 that says some Hindus had been allowed to enter the forecourt of the mosque to worship, until a riot in 1853 led to the building of a barrier to keep them out. These and other documents do show that Hindus have been agitating against the mosque since at least the 1850s. There was an archaeological dig on the site in the 1990s, which concluded that a large Hindu temple had been built on the site in the tenth to twelfth century, but by that time the issue was so political that most Muslims called the report a fraud. You can read a detailed summary of this from the Hindu point of view here, with photographs of artifacts like the 2,000-year-old idol fragments below.
My take on this is that the Hindu archaeologists seem to be right about the existence of the temple. Babur's mosque was probably built on an ancient holy site in the way of many conquerors. On the other hand, that temple doesn't seem to be that much older than the mosque, and a party of Jains has come forward to say that according to their records there was a Jain shrine on the site before the Hindu temple was built. How far back are we going to go to establish original ownership?
What you say is partly true, but only partly, no? For the fanatical, activist minority (in my view the crucial group, the sine qua non), the point of religious ideas is not that they're a way to focus current grievances, but that they're the Truth. Babur's action was not just "the way of conquerors," but (depending on your point of view) a heroic blow against darkness or a diabolical attempt to close off the light. And in religions like Hinduism and Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, for many of those who take it seriously, the truth is always true. It doesn't lapse after 600 or 10,000 years.
ReplyDeleteYou yourself wrote earlier that religion is less an opiate than a stimulant!
Of course, if everyone in India had clean running water and video games, it would probably be harder to get a big crowd exercised about Babur's mosque. But not at all impossible, and the fanatics would still be there.
Certainly there are fanatics, but my sense is that religious conflict (at least in our era) is often about something else. It was reading about northern Ireland and working with American Indians that convinced me of this. My experience with American Indians has been that most of them care a lot less about the graves of their ancestors than about contemporary problems. One shaman I worked with on a reburial project told me that he saw some spiritual value in what he was doing, or he wouldn't do it, but mainly he was there to raise money for his work on the reservation in Oklahoma, and he spent the rest of the day talking to me about drug abuse, alcoholism, unemployment, and so on.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the upsurge in anti-Muslim feeling in the US now was caused by the recession; bad economic times cause hostility toward outsiders like clockwork.
Once any group of people have gotten fixated on a certain issue, it is hard to unfix them, but I find that there is a large arbitrary element in what people fix on. I don't think there is anything about the Ayodhya site that makes conflict over it inevitable.
Let's say you are right, and the key people are fanatics on both sides who will never accept compromise. What, then, do you think the government of India should do?
Very interesting about the shaman.
ReplyDeleteAs for what the government of India should do:
1) No fair! I just like to make commentary.
2) Compromise and material improvements can certainly draw away some or many of the persons attracted to fanatics.
3) There's always a role for old-fashioned police intelligence gathering. Of course, there can be a problem if a lot of your police actually agree with the fanatics.
4) Most important, I think, is for non-fanatics to offer a charismatic alternative to fanaticism. Fanatics have a kind of in-built charisma; reasonable people need to make counteracting that a major part of their agenda.
With the scriptural religions in particular (including Hinduism), I'd say that part of the issue is that the scriptures are just there, you can't suppress them, and they say a lot of pretty fanatical things, as well as much that is not fanatical, or at least not dangerous in the way we are talking about. Some believers are going to read those fanatical things and be inspired, partly for their own presentist reasons but partly because, well, God said it, and you're really not supposed to just pick and choose, even though that's inevitably what we end up doing . . .