The demolition of pluralism
In her TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke about how children are “impressionable and vulnerable” in the face of a story. As a nineties child, if I have to point out one such story, it would be Ramanand Sagar’s blockbuster TV series Ramayana.
My family, like thousands all over India, would be glued to their seats when its episodes would run on Doordarshan. Back then I had no idea that there were over a thousand versions of the Ramayanas. Nor was I privy to the fact that the Babri Masjid demolition was closely linked to the Hindutva project of making India a Hindu Rashtra, where any deviance from a prescribed way of life would make you anti-national. The increasing possibility of this, I’m sure, is not lost on any of us.
In 2020, when the announcement was made to rerun episodes of the TV serial as the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed us, I wondered what the present government cared about most. But these reruns appear to have been a precursor to the ceremony to lay the foundation of the Ram temple in Ayodhya by the prime minister — in the middle of a pandemic.
This most-anticipated moment, the answer to Mandir kab banega? —asif anyone else except the trinity of VHPRSS-BJP was concerned about it — and the culmination of parallel histories from 1885, with the stealthy entry by naga vairagi Abhiram Das to place the Ram Lalla idol in the Babri Masjid, to its demolition on December 6, 1992, arrived on August 5, 2020.
Much has transpired between these two events, which Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, the well-known journalist, has chronicled in his latest book.
When I heard about the Ram temple ceremony, I had the same question Mr Mukhopadhyay raises in his deeply researched book: Whether “anyone amid the current crises could be concerned about a temple-mosque dispute”. Shouldn’t the government be arming people with information and resources to fight the looming health threat instead of orchestrating a full-blown celebration of capturing land unethically?
If you’re wondering how we’ve come to this — an India of “them” and “us” — then Mr Mukhopadhyay urges us to “revisit the entire socio-political canvas of the issue” which not only requires meditating on events that unfolded in the dead of night on December 22-23, 1949 or on December 6, 1992, but also the aspirations of multiple Hind Right patriarchs, which is inevitably related to the rise of Mr Modi to power.
He begins by explaining the situation that resulted in the removal of Indian poet A K Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation” from the BA History course at Delhi University. Then he relates how Hindu Right bigots celebrate the Ramayana’s unique quality of transcending “geographical and religious boundaries,” while dismissing the “diversity and vibrancy of the Ramayana tradition and the character of Ram,” before discussing multiple actors that catapulted the mandir agenda centre stage.
In re-telling this complex tale, Mr Mukhopadhyay poses a question: “Occupation of a public space is a political victory. But for whom — Ram or his politicised admirers?” He also points out that if the political funding of festivals such as Durga Puja and Ram Leela is not an example of an overlap between politics and religion then why are these events actually funded?
Mr Mukhopadhyay adroitly brings to light, yet again, the role of the state administration in a deeply communal situation. He cites the dereliction of responsibility by K K K Nair, the district magistrate, and his colleague Guru Dutt Singh, after the idols were placed in the mosque. After the placement, Nair informed his seniors that the “situation is under control”. The “situation” that was under control according to Nair would eventually, and continue to, claim thousands of lives for decades, which would become the statistics of communal riots.
One of the most interesting takeaways from this book was the role that M S Gowalkar’s successor, Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras, played in the scheme of things. It was Deoras who created a “three-pronged strategy” to expand RSS’S social base and increase direct engagement with electoral and party politics. Deoras’s strategy created an ideological fountainhead that would over the years attract a huge following, including the well-educated.
Reading chapters that lead up to the final verdict and the erstwhile Supreme Court Chief Justice and current Rajya Sabha member Ranjan Gogoi’s involvement in the issue, Mr Mukhopadhyay notes, with the benefit of hindsight, events unfolded like a political thriller.
What Mr Mukhopadhyay wants to achieve with this book is perhaps to ask ourselves what idea of India we carry in our hearts. It’s a question that should bother us, otherwise we will find ourselves complacent in the face of events. As journalist Ashish Khetan wrote in the preface to his stellar book Under cover: my journey into the Darkness of hindutva( Context ,2021), put it, “we were an inclusive, multicultural nation proud of our diversity and openness, until one day we woke up to find our we were actually small-minded, resentful, parochial and violent.”