Ayodhya for dummies – the real ones
Mr Vir Sanghvi’s Q&A titled Ayodhya for Dummies is nothing short of a spectacle.
We wonder if this was to atone for his ‘Liberhan report is complete rubbish‘ comment. We would not be surprised if the Q&A took two passes to write. The first pass would have the right answers, and the second pass a varnish job to give it a secular shine.
2. Did Muslim invaders destroy Hindu temples?
Ans. The sad answer is yes, they did. Some of this was for the purposes of looting (temples were rich) but some of the destruction was religion-driven.
Why is this a sad answer ? If raiding of temples were only for looting, the invaders would have left the structures untouched. This was almost never the case. Looting was overlaid on what was primarily seen a religious duty. None of this of course rubs off on present day Muslims. So there is no need to get defensive about the true nature of Mughal rule.
Yes it was. There is no getting around that. Religious tolerance was not always a quality prized by medieval Muslim warriors.
But let’s keep in mind that those were different times. There was an era when Hinduism had been eclipsed in much of India by Buddhism. When Hinduism made a comeback some centuries later, Hindu kings destroyed Buddhist monasteries, more or less throwing Buddhism out of India.
I dont think people in India care about “medieval Muslim warrious” (see the dilution in action).Before the secular varnish, the sentence would have read, “…Mughal rulers of India“. Why attempt to “get around” anything either. People will then wonder if it was easy for the historians to “get around” Akbar or the Bahmanis ?
The Buddhism argument is a polemic. Also funny because it unwittingly does great disservice to the Indian Muslims and underhandedly supports the demolition. It pulls the rug from under the Muslims in the sense that it says that the actions of the kar sevaks could indeed be justified if they had rebuilt exactly one Buddhist site first. They could even take Mathura if they rebuild yet another Buddhist site. It is silly to bring Mr Abhishek Singhvi’s TV soundbits nonsense under the microscope.
Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism are all native religions to the area. Throughout history each of them have had their crests and troughs. Hinduism predates and embraces all – even giving Buddha a position in the Dasavataram.
6. Was this true?
Ans. Probably not. There are many controversies about the historical Ram, his very existence and the location of his Ayodhya. Some historians and archaeologists dispute that today’s Ayodhya is the same as the Ayodhya of the Ramayana.
Moreover, several other spots have also been claimed as birthplaces of Ram. So it is not clear that this one has any special claim. It is just one of many.
Besides, the overwhelming majority of Hindus had never heard of this spot till the controversy began. So if Ram was born here thousands of years ago, why did most of us only hear of the place in the mid-80s?
EA
Look how he sets it up. It as he suggests there is a controversy about Ram’s very existance, then that surely overtakes all other controversies, does it not ? It Lord Ram did not even exist, then it means he was never born, which also means there can not possibly be a birthplace. This is a time tested technique. The Indian opinion makers forward this as their basic position and proceed to offer each argument as a concession from their stand. How clever ?
Well, King Dasharathan did not leave a GPS receiver as proof of where his son was born. History is funny in the sense that you can dispute everything. How do we know where the prophets were born ? This is the same logic that questions the Ram Sethu.
The overwhelming majority of Hindus (rather Indians) have not heard of this because the overwhelming majority spend all their time fetching drinking water or stepping over sewage thanks to the fake socialist state imposed on them.
Mr Jairam Ramesh of the Congress party himself admitted that under the Congress Party’s 50+ year watch India has been groomed to sweep the Nobel prizes for filth and garbage. Lets say the overwhelming majority had in fact “heard about this spot”, would it then make the razing of the mosque justifiable or atleast understandable ? If that is all you have, then the BJPs Ram Janmabhoomi movement was just an exercise to make the majority “hear about this spot” and let emotion guide events.
The question should be the following:
If there was ever a Ram temple commemorating his birthplace at Ayodhya, based on what we know about the Mughals, what are the chances that they pulled it down ?
Even the answer to that is not going to help us.
Like every other issue in front of us today, I first suspect the masked man behind the curtain who everyone else in the room is trained to ignore. The constitutional benefits that can accrue due to group identity and the role of the leadership in protecting these benefits. At first glance, the Muslims of today have little reason not to agree to a relocation in exchange for real harmony. We hear relocation of mosques in routine in Pakistan. However, I can understand why they would be loathe to do so. It would seriously weaken their group identity, signal a colossal failure of the protectors, and correspondingly strengthen the other side.
A complete separation of rigid identity from benefits is the only way we can hope to take on such big issues. This strikes at the heart of the entire political setup in the country today. Yet this is our ticket to freedom away from a guaranteed identity based showdown in the near future.
Reality Check India 
Thank God the pseudo secularists aren’t asking for Lord Ram’s birth certificate to be produced…(actually to think of it, getting one may not be tough – given the corrupt system congress has built over last several decades, where u can get anything if u pay!)
> A complete separation of rigid identity from benefits is the only way we can hope to take on such big issues.
Well said.
Someone else said something similar a while ago in an interview at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
That was Arun Shourie.
Hear it here at
http://anand-g.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-q-and-with-arun-shourie-of-bjp-at.html
A KO punch if there was ever one.
I believe intellectual honesty can remove some of the rigidity of the system, but it is clearly not happening. It is easy for Vir Singhvi and it is easy for the reader, almost like reading mantras. To reflect on each line and try and understand it takes time and effort. Why bother? The people who read Vir Singhvi are not the same ones he pretends to want to help. That is aother grand asymmetry.
Mr. Sanghvi is a mere speck, a out of job editor fishing for crumbs.
the whole exercise, including libehran report, is aimed at your kids going to school now. the seventies and eithties produced a generation who could vote out the family. they will make sure this will never ever happen again.
So the only PM to rule without the family’s support will be declared a criminal with this libehran’s report. your kids will learn that from their history books. they will read ‘ a commission that laboriously enquired into this matter for 14 years deemed so’.
most of the other tripe from vir sanghvi that you quote have been peddled by our history scholars for decades now. Hindus destroyed buddhism (ambedkar wrote that it was the mughals who destroyed budhism). mughal rulers destroyed hindu temples not out of religious motives (the said rulers’ court chroniclers wrote exactly the opposite). aurangazeb’s army destroyed the temple at kashi because ‘evil brahmins in that temple were molesting women’.
Absolutely. The looting theory completely flies in the face of the records maintained by the Mughals & Bahmanis.
Like the minaret issue, this is again hindu secular weirdness. These hindu secular interlocutors tell us what might or might not offend the muslims. Radicals are only too happy to accept the pass run with the ball.
I bet the average Indian muslim gives a rats ass about the Mughals rampages. Even if they did, I’d rather hear it from a Muslim. There is no shortage of articulate Indian muslims, I am sure.
That thing about brahmins molesting women in temples is a figment of imagination of the commies/atheists. These mercenary elements in connivance with satanic christist moneybags, are trying to cook up such stories even now! This is to de-hinduise the hindus and make him/her embrace the desert religion.
It is very much proven that there WAS a ram temple and it was indeed pulled down. Please read Koenraad Elst’s research on the topic.
The idea that there was no ram temple was brough in by Marxist historians one fine day with nothing to support their argument. Since it was convenient for people like Sanghvi it got absorbed in the secularist discourse anyway.
Yeah but Koenraad Elst is right wing. Now what were you sayin again ?
No, Dr Elst is not right wing. He is reactionary.
But do labels such as “xxx wing” or “—tionary” invalidate what they say ? Or the evidence they point out ? (Someone called Dr Elst “right wing”. So what? You got to be in some wing ! 🙂
RC: You and your readers may enjoy this article on the historicity (or otherwise) of Bhagwaan ShriRam.
“Who is this Ram?”
I can bet it will not find a way in on any mainstream media outlet.
I hear that Ram is better documented in Pakistan! He is described as a hindu king that ruled in the second century.
[…] Ayodhya for dummies – the real ones […]
There was the ASI excavation. It was the most scrutinized ASI digging ever. Also very secular, to the point that ASI was required even to employ Muslim labor, just so the Hindu workmen may not surreptitiously plant temple artifacts into the trenches to claim them as discoveries. Yet, the ASI found that a “temple-like” structure existed underneath the destroyed mosque. Marxist fundamentalists like R Thapar, who invested their lifetimes in denying temple destructions by invaders and moghal rulers, were prompt on the uptake. Conspiracy! The NDA government conducted a mock excavation! And produced a fabricated report!
A true academician should be demanding that the ASI publish its findings in a reputed, peer-reviewed academic journal. Manipulated research cannot pass muster with other, competing researchers. And Ayodhya is a very interesting subject of archaeological research in its own right. Also the time is opportune now, with a government at helm that’s more interested in secular loot of the exchequer than in fabricating research findings.
So why aren’t Thapar and gang asking for papers from ASI’s Ayodhya excavators?
Look at what makes a journalist like Sanghvi use words so powerfully — “Religious tolerance was not always a quality prized by medieval Muslim warriors”.
Implying that relegious tolerance was possibly *sometimes* (=not always) a quality prized by medieval (=if not modern) Muslim warriors (=a more PC term than marauders).
Those “warriors” would practice religious tolerance, we are told. Albeit not always.
How much does he get paid to write that shoddy job, he couldn’t even hide his bias.
“Ayodhya for dummies”…i guess he should have named the article as “Ayodhya for DHIMMIES”
Absolutely!
He probably didn’t have the courage to write ‘dhimmies’!
Vir Singhvi is Christian: He has Paishachik qualities.
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