My Chinese-Singaporean taxi driver was outraged. It was December 6, 1992, and he had heard of the Babri masjid’s destruction on the radio. “The United Nations should bomb them,” he sputtered. “Teach those vandals to respect other religions!” I was back in Singapore on January 22 this year but the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya didn’t provoke a similar explosion. Yet, this sequel to the vandalism of 32 years ago is likely to affect all aspects of life far more profoundly than the original offence.
The authorities would not otherwise have clamped down Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code throughout Uttar Pradesh and deployed at least 80,000 armed policemen when the Supreme Court’s verdict was imminent. Nor would Narendra Modi have recalled that November 9, the verdict’s date, was also the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a day for reconciling differences. “This verdict shouldn’t be seen as a win or loss for anybody,” he said placatingly. “Be it Ram bhakti or Rahim bhakti, it is imperative that we strengthen the spirit of rashtra bhakti.” A perceptibly majoritarian leader’s unexpected appeal for minority cooperation may have been a measure of official anxiety.
It’s not, however, the Muslim response that causes the greatest concern. It’s Hindu assertiveness reinforced by a sense of continuity with Rama as the harbinger of a new renascence that might pose challenges for India’s neighbours. India’s Muslims have shown they can take care of themselves. Whether it’s the sustaining memory of ancient supremacy or the confidence born of powerful friends in a global community or the assurance of an inflow of foreign funds, their beards and burqas speak of a certain sturdy ability to survive. India’s far more numerous Hindus would not have scrambled to bestow divinity on the stars of Ramanand Sagar’s TV serial if their beliefs had not needed extraneous confirmation. Indeed, the very popularity of the series highlighted the melting borderline between faith and entertainment, between puja and populism.
Television coverage of the temple consecration played up this dimension in a way that a Muslim might regard as sacrilege. The organisers were clearly masters of choreography. But in draping Modi in white and gold and making him walk endlessly against a never-ending background of scarlet carpeting, they were catering to a visual impact that can only reinforce the expected surge of triumphalism. In trying to exorcise ‘1,200 years of servitude’, we may have succeeded only in broadcasting its bondage. It was not certain at times whether the show’s focus was on the deity, the arch-priest or the audience. Perhaps on all three as elements of a composite drama which makes no attempt in Southeast Asia’s Ramakien performances to separate god from man.
Modi needs no miracle to assert that thanks to Indian mastery of genetic science “Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.” Similarly, with Ganesha. “There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.” You name it, we did it. “If we talk about space science,” Modi once told listeners, “our ancestors had, at some point, displayed great strengths in space science. What people like Aryabhata had said centuries ago are being recognised by science today. What I mean to say is that we are a country which had these capabilities. We need to regain these.”
In his earlier incarnation as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi wrote the foreword to a book for local school students which maintains, among other things, that Rama flew the first aeroplane and that stem cell technology was known in ancient India. Some allowance must be made for nit-picking. According to the former junior education minister, Satyapal Singh, the Ramayana first mentioned flying ships but an Indian (who else?) named Shivkar Babuji Talpade didn’t actually think of inventing one until only eight years before the Wright brothers. Not so, said Captain Anand Bodas, a retired pilot, in 2015; the sage, Bharadwaja, who lived about 7,000 years ago, was talking of aircraft even then. According to Bodas, the interplanetary aircraft and sophisticated radar that India deployed thousands of years ago would have been the envy of today’s engineers. “Imagine what kind of engineers Lord Ram had to build the Ram Setu that links Sri Lanka and India…” asked Vijay Rupani, a former Gujarat chief minister. “Even squirrels offered their help in building the bridge…”.
With so much piling up on the credit side, Vasudev Devnani, Rajasthan’s former education minister, might be forgiven for crediting cows with the unique dual function of both inhaling and exhaling oxygen. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation had to step in to correct him: as one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector, livestock, including cows, produce 18% of total global emissions.
It’s really Purushottam Nagesh Oak who must be awarded the palm for extolling Hindu achievements. He held that Christianity and Islam are rooted in the Vedas and ancient Hindu rituals. Also that the Vatican, Kaaba and Westminster Abbey were originally Hindu temples and the Lucknow imambaras were Hindu raj bhavans. Oak’s most spectacular claim was that the Taj Mahal is a corruption of Tejo Mahalaya (Lord Shiva’s palace). Given such interpretations, no wonder that the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act offers no final protection to a mosque or a church.
Many new claims can now be expected. Syed Shahabuddin, the diplomatist from Gaya who ventured into politics, would probably have called them Hindu intrusions into the secular order like lighting lamps and smashing coconuts. Sometimes, the innocent must be saved from their faith. Outside Puri’s BNR Hotel, we came upon a little knot of hirsute men in saffron reverentially patting their heads, arms and bodies with the stagnant water of a narrow ditch that meandered through the sands from Chakratirtha. They had been told it was the blessed Ganga-mai’.
It’s not only at the top that the craving for yesterday’s glory animates thinking. A colleague (not a journalist, I hasten to add) who argued that it was high time Subhas Chandra Bose surfaced to take up the reins of governance and “save” Bengal was not at all put out by someone saying that for all that he was dubbed Netaji, Bose might be a shade too long in the tooth for such a strenuous task. “Not at all,” he retorted sternly. “Didn’t Rama rule Ayodhya for 11,000 years?”
All roads lead to Rama. Way back in 1975, I clambered up to Shimla’s Jakhu temple to escape the suffocating Emergency gossip of Delhi and Calcutta to be confronted with an outsize footprint on the marble floor. The temple custodian swore it was Rama’s. I am told the temple has acquired a motor road since then as well as a ropeway. But I can find no record of Rama leaving his footprint on Jakhu hill although a giant 108-foot image of Hanuman, bigger even than the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, was unveiled there in 2010 by Abhishek Bachchan. The only related visitor seems to have been Hanuman who apparently broke journey at the temple while searching for the sanjeevani booti to revive Lakshmana. Had it been Rama himself, surely Dad Amitabh would have done the honours. Whether or not they ever existed, the pecking order of the Suryavamsha kings, of whom Rama was probably the 80th, is not to be trifled with. Watch out world, the warning has gone out. Rama now stands guard over Bharatvarsha.
