Let me begin by saying that I cannot make any sense of the excavations currently underway in Ayodhya. What was the Allahabad High Court thinking when it ordered them? How will it help if they do find the remains of a temple buried beneath what used to be the Babri Masjid? Will the Muslims then be ordered to hand over the property to the Hindus and will this then become a precedent for future disputes of this kind? What puzzles me most is why we need to go through this exercise at all. Even if the Babri Masjid was not built on a demolished Hindu temple there is more than enough evidence that Muslim invaders destroyed thousands of other temples. So, surely the only way forward would be to admit that these things happened in medieval times and should not happen any more. If only this had been the line taken by the Babri Masjid Action Committee the mosque may still have been standing, and the time we have wasted on the Ayodhya dispute could have been better spent. But, no, they insisted on historical evidence and in those early days even asserted that they would be prepared to hand the mosque over if this was found. So, in a sense the chickens have now come home to roost. Where do we go from here? Clearly, with the Sangh Parivar breathing down the Prime Minister’s neck if the excavators come up with the remains of a temple, he will have to allow construction of a new one. And, the end result will be that tensions between Hindus and Muslims already running high will deteriorate into another horrific cycle of communal violence. So, if Vajpayee is a wiser man than Narasimha Rao was, he should already be doing some forward planning. It is time to think seriously about setting up an institution similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Perhaps, the Dalai Lama could be persuaded to head it with the assistance of Muslim and Hindu religious leaders. If what the Sangh Parivar, and many ordinary Hindus, call the ‘‘wounds of the past’’ can be dealt with intellectually instead of violently we could finally move towards real peace between Hindus and Muslims. There are grievances and fears on both sides and the only way to prevent them from festering is for them to be discussed in an atmosphere of genuine reconciliation. Let Hindus explain what needs to be done to assuage their ‘‘wounds of the past’’ and let Muslims explain why they feel threatened and discriminated against and let the proceedings be held with total transparency, perhaps even on national television. It is because nothing like this was ever attempted in the past that issues like the Ayodhya dispute and Muslim personal law fell into the hands of fanatics from both communities. A truth and reconciliation commission would make the fanatics irrelevant and if South Africa’s Blacks could come to terms with the terrible things that the Whites did to them there should be no reason why Hindus and Muslims should not come to terms with what are surely lesser wounds. Another benefit would be that once these issues are in the hands of religious leaders our politicians can get back to more important things like governance. Having just returned from touring the backwaters of Uttar Pradesh, may I say that it is almost farcical that the main political issue in that state should be the temple in Ayodhya. In the two days I spent wandering about small towns and villages in our largest and most populous state I saw unspeakable squalor and governance in such a state of collapse that you cannot drive through a bazaar in a UP town without encountering small armies of pigs feeding off rotting garbage. There are, these days, all kinds of experts on waste management but when you have no governance who is going to call in their services? You see the absence of governance most painfully in the unplanned development of villages and towns so that whole tracts of UP now look like an endless, squalid slum. A pall of pollution hangs over everything and everywhere is the smell of untreated sewage. The end result is that Hindus, Muslims, Brahmins and Dalits all live in conditions that would be considered unfit for human habitation in almost any other country. Their children go to schools that are not schools by any real standard, when they get sick they are forced to go to hospitals that are too unhygienic to be places of healing and without even clean air and water it is truly bizarre that the only thing that arouses anger and passion should be a temple in Ayodhya. If we cannot bring governance back as the main focus of our politicians we can build as many temples and nuclear bombs as we like, we will continue to be counted among the poorest, most wretched countries in the world. So, can we get beyond the temple and make a serious effort to bring real communal harmony so that we can get on with the rest of our lives. Meanwhile, what fun it will be if the excavations reveal, as the Jains have started claiming, one of their temples. Will Hindus then accept that it was not just Muslim invaders who tore temples down but Hindu religious leaders who ordered the destruction of Buddhist and Jain shrines as well? There will be much to talk about if there ever is a truth and reconciliation commission. Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
