Negation At Ayodhya

[Guest guest]

N.S. Rajaram

The Ayodhya Dispute - Fact and fiction in the temple-mosque

controversy (Part 3)

 

Continued From Part 2...

 

Editor's Note: The following are excerpts from the book, The Ayodhya

Dispute written by N. S. Rajaram.

 

The Second Dispute: Negation At Ayodhya

 

The second dispute

Where the first Ayodhya dispute, over the right of possession to a

sacred site, is ancient and historical, the second dispute over the

interpretation of Medieval Indian history is recent and artificial.

It

is not much more than twenty years old. At one level, it seeks to

disprove the very existence of a temple at the site known since time

immemorial as Rama Janmabhumi. At a deeper level, it is part of an

overall negationist agenda that seeks to rewrite Indian history along

Secularist or anti-Hindu lines.

 

While the second Ayodhya dispute is entirely a recent concoction with

no historical basis, for the Aligarh school of Muslim scholars it has

been a godsend. These men whose ideas and actions had been

responsible

for the holocaust of the Partition were now gifted an opportunity to

rehabilitate themselves under the Marxist shelter. Not only were they

rehabilitated, they became part of the dominant school by joining

hands with the JNU historians. This crystallized into the

Muslim-Marxist nexus - now calling itself 'Secularist' - that came to

control the writing of Indian history with its markedly anti-Hindu

bias.

 

Thanks to this, the Aligarh hisorians could continue their

glorification of Islam not in overtly religious terms, but as

embodying humanistic and egalitarian values that were 'progressive'

and similar to Marxism. Their own crucial role in the creation of

Pakistan was swept under the rug. Islam's record of religious

fanaticism, as well as its destructiveness could be presented in

'favorable' light as a Marxist class struggle. Fanatical tyrants like

Aurangazeb, Tipu Sultan and even Muhammad Ghaznavi were turned into

Marxist heroes who fought to bring equality and justice to the

downtrodden in the caste ridden Hindu society. The more sophisticated

of the right-wing Islamists soon became indistinguishable from

Leftist

intellectuals. The AMU professor Irfan Habib is probably the best

representative of this Right-Left dual existence. (He has now been

thoroughly discredited through the exposure of his seedy activities -

including plagiarism. See Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians,

Harper-Collins.)

 

This is now the official position of the Secularist JNU-AMU nexus.

This soon became fashionable and mainstream. It became also the

favorite line of the news media, especially in English. Many of the

editors and other journalists working for the leading English

language

newspapers seem to suffer from an inexplicable inferiority complex

towards JNU scholars and willingly toe their line. Secularist

'experts' from the JNU command the Lion's Share when it comes to

having their views expressed in the media.

 

What this means is that the Secularist positions and even language

are

often echoed in the media and editorials. Until recently, and even

now

to a significant degree, the negationist version put out by the

Secularists was all but the official line. But in the last few years

there has been a distinct change with some columnists and even

editors

raising unconfortable questions for the Secularists. Some like Swapan

Dasgupta even ridicule them. As things now stand, Secularist scholars

stand on the verge of being totally discredited. (See Arun Shourie,

op

cit.) In any event we must understand what Negationism is, and see

the

magnitude of the deception that is being carried out under its

umbrella.

 

The denial of the temple destruction at Ayodhya is part of the denial

of all temple destructions, leading ultimately to a blanket denial of

the Islamic record of destruction altogether. The last is the real

agenda of the Secularists and their Islamic allies. This is what

Koenraad Elst has called 'Jihad Negationism'. Ayodhya is only a

stepping stone and a challenge. It is also just the tip of the

negationist iceberg.

 

Partners in negation

Negationism is the denial of historical crimes against humanity. In

Europe, it is generally used in connection with a specific crime -

the

Nazi genocide of the Jews. What we are witnessing at Ayodhya is part

of a similar exercise by the Secularists and their allies in the

media

to deny the crimes of Islamic vandals in Medieval India stretching

over a thousand years. This record is there for one and all to see as

we saw in the last chapter. It is not just the literary evidence, for

one has only to visit Hampi in Karnataka - the former capital of the

great Vijayanagar Empire to see the ferocity of Islamic

destructiveness. No one until recently had made the slightest effort

to deny it; far from it, its perpetrators took great pride in it.

 

It helps to understand that the great fear of the Islamic separatists

and the Secularist historians is the same: that Ayodhya might serve

as

a focal issue in bringing about a new historical awareness on the

part

of the Hindus of the wrongs and sufferings inflicted upon them in the

name of religion. It has turned them - the right-wing Islamic

clerics,

and the Leftist academics and the media - into natural allies.

 

As far as the Secularists are concerned, their fear, fully justified,

is that this historical awareness will lead to the exposure of their

venality as well as their massive dishonesty and complicity in the

crime of denial that they are guilty of. In the bargain they may also

lose their privileged positions as academics - and as court favorites

in the Nehru dynasty dominated establishment. To wit, their careers

and reputations are at stake - not merely as scholars, but as

ordinary

human beings. If the truth of their record of denial comes out, as

Koenraad Elst puts it:

 

.... negationist historians will find it difficult to show their faces

in public. They stand exposed, and only their control of the media

can

save their reputations by censoring this critique of their

career-long

efforts at history falsification. (Elst 1993: p 113. This was written

before the publication of Shourie's Eminent Historians.)

 

And what falsification! A career of whitewashing a record that bears

comparison with that of the Nazis in Europe and of the Conquistadors

and the Jesuits in the Americas. Elst highlights the great fear of

the

Secularists, and this is what we shall be bringing to light in the

present chapter. It is entirely natural that the Islamic separatists

and the Secularists should have become partners in this deception by

negation. They both have a great deal to lose from the exposure.

 

Negationism and Secular Correctness

The most extreme example of a negationist exercise can be seen in

Europe where a systematic attempt is being made in some circles to

deny that the Nazi Holocaust ever took place. In a like manner, the

Secularists in India are claiming against all evidence that Islamic

vandalism also never took place. Koenraad Elst, in his definitive

study Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam notes

similarities as well as important differences between the two

negationist exercises:

 

In my study of the Ayodhya controversy, I noticed that the frequent

attempts to conceal or deny inconvenient evidence were an integral

part of a larger effort to rewrite India's history and to whitewash

Islam. It struck me that this effort to deny the unpleasant facts of

Islam's destructive role in Indian history is similar to the attempts

by some European writers to deny the Nazi Holocaust. The goals and

methods are similar, even though its social position is very

different: in Europe, Holocaust negationists are a fringe group

shunned by respectable people, but in India, jihad negationists are

in

control of the academic establishment and the press. (Elst 1993: pp.

1-2; emphasis added.)

 

This 'larger effort to rewrite India's history and whitewash Islam'

is

of course the main agenda of Secular Correctness. India does not have

a monopoly on Negationism of the Islamic record; Elst himself sees it

as part of a worldwide phenomenon, induced by fear of the power of

oil

money and the threat of terrorism. One of his own works on Islam had

been censored and later suppressed by the editors of the Belgian

journal Inforët - a publication devoted to Asian and Islamic

studies.

The reasons given were: (1) publishing it might harm the good

realtions with the embassies of Islamic countries enjoyed by the

publisher (Catholic University of Leuven); and (2) the dominant trend

in public opinion on Islam (in Europe) might be offended.10 His

observations on the worldwide reach of Negationism therefore merit

notice..

 

This censorship is a good illustration of how effective prohibition

of

Islam criticism has become a worldwide phenomenon. When I discovered

the Islam problem during my first stay in India in 1988, and the

concomitant pressure against Islam criticism, it had still seemed a

Third World problem, far removed from post-Enlightenment Europe.

Today, after the Rushdie affair, the threatened or effective murder

of

Islam critics (like the Egyptian Farag Foda), and the threats of

administrative sanctions against Islam critics in Europe by

non-Muslim

authorities (like the sacking of the French civil servant Jean-Claude

Barreau), the taboo on a frank discussion of Islam has the whole

world

in its grip. A study of Islam negationism, i.e., the denial of its

historic crimes against humanity, has become even more necessary.

(Elst 1993: p 1; emphasis added.)

 

What Elst is telling us is that the phenomenon of 'Jihad Negationism'

in India is worth studying not merely in the Indian context, but as a

lesson for the rest of the world - to learn more about the potential

threat of Islamic terror; no less importantly, India also has a

lesson

to offer on how academia and the media can become partners in this

Secularly Correct negationist exercise. Time after time,

intellectuals

have allowed their egos and career interests to take precedence over

the well-being of humanity, behind a facade of self-righteousness.

Self-righteous posturing seems to be an irresistable urge in the

human

psyche, especially among those who consider themselves elite members

of society. It was not so long ago that the French author Michel

Foucault defended Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Among Indian Secularists, this is accompanied by a rootlessness and a

profound fear of exposure.

 

The West therefore is by no means immune to the phenomenon of

negation

of the Islamic record. In America in particular, poor understanding

of

the real nature of the problem it is faced with - the rising tide of

Islamic fundamentalism - has played also a part. Some so-called

'experts' are giving out highly self-serving versions of both the

threat and the record of Islam. Unlike Indian intellectuals, hardly

any Western scholar today has openly stated the ideological

underpinnings of Islam that make all this possible. (Elst is an

exception.)

 

To some extent at least, Western media and academia have also been

subverted by rich countries like Saudi Arabia, at least as far as

anti-Jewish propaganda is concerned. Elst tells us that the American

negationist author William Grimstad has been exposed as being on the

payroll of the Saudi Secret Service.

 

Some of them, including authors of some official reports, are aware

that Hinduism has long acted as a counter to the expansion of Islamic

fundamentalism. But this vague recognition is vitiated by their poor

knowledge of Hinduism, which, for all practical purposes is based on

anti-Hindu versions put out by Islamic apologists and Christian

missionaries and their Indian followers in academia. This applies

more

to 'official' versions than to public perception. The American public

on the whole regards Hinduism favorably.12 This is true to an even

greater extent in Britain whose knowledge of Hinduism on the whole is

superior to that in America. The missionary influence in Britain is

virtually nonexistent today. There are no British counterparts of

American politico-religious entrepreuners like Pat Robertson, Jerry

Falwell or even Pat Buchanan.

 

Unhappily, Europe and America, the latter in particular, continue to

act as though the problem of Islamic fundamentalism will go away if

they ignore its existence. The self-proclaimed 'leader of the free

world' is acting as though patronage of client Muslim states like

Pakistan will help stem the growth of Islamic terror.13 This kind of

pathetic 'policy' led to disaster in Iran, and is repeating itself in

Pakistan. (Probably the same 'experts' who advised President Carter

on

Iran are now engaged in advising President Clinton on Pakistan.) The

behavior of countries like the United States and Britain does not

inspire much confidence in the vigor and vitality of Western

civilization.

 

To take a recent example, Louis Farrakhan, the rabidly anti-Jewish

leader of the Black Muslims in America, has been promised a billion

dollars in help by Mummar Gaddafi of Libya. American officials do not

wish to see this as potential for subversion in the name of Islam.

They seem content to read it as a futile effort by Gaddafi to

influence American elections! Perhaps their own belief in the

democratic process makes Americans incapable of recognizing the

fundamentally anti-democratic nature of Islamic ideology. Once the

money does materialize, it will not be long before terrorists from

impoverished countries like Pakistan begin to join the fray in the

name of religion. (Pakistan, which the United States is holding up as

a bulwark against the growth of Islamic fundamentalism has built a

sports stadium - the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore - honoring the Libyan

dictator.)

 

Strangely, this denial is sought to be maintained despite the fact

that Farrakhan has made no secret of his true feelings. During a

recent trip to Iran he proclaimed: "You can quote me: God will

destroy

America at the hands of Islam." In saying this he was doing no more

than repeating the Muslim fundamentalist agenda. Such men should be

taken at their word, not because they are likely to succeed, but

because they give expression to how they feel about pluralism in

general and America in particular. The depth of hatred and fear which

a fundamentalist feels towards the West is to be seen to be believed.

But the West refuses to see it.

 

America and the West in general seem reluctant to face such reality.

Secular humanism, with its wholly materialistic view of the world

seems incapable of grasping the ideological dimension of the Islamic

fundamentalist threat. This is not unlike the mistake that India

itself made a thousand years ago. It mistook Islam for a religious

movement like Buddhism and failed to grasp its true nature as an

aggressive political ideology that sanctioned barbarism without end

behind a holy mask. Hindus by and large have no concept of theocracy.

The United States seems now to be repeating India's thousand year old

mistake, not recognizing that an exclusivist ideology like Islam

cannot easily coexist in a pluralistic environment.

 

With this background, we can turn our attention to Negationism which

may be seen as an exercise of last resort by Secularists and their

Islamic allies in defending the indefensible.

 

Negationism in action: whitewashing the Jihad ideology

Negationism is needed, and is indeed indispensable only when one has

a

terrible record to defend; ordinary ups and downs in human conduct do

not call for so drastic a step as blanket denial. The Secularists see

the need to resort to Negationism only beacause they are trying to

conceal and whitewash a monstrous record. This is what we need to

keep

in mind in understanding the desperate negationist exercise of the

JNU-AMU nexus. Ayodhya dispute is simply the tip of the iceberg. It

should not be seen in isolation. Nor should the Ayodhya demoltion be

viewed ignoring the thousand years of Medieval history that led up to

it. The Ayodhya dispute represents not so much a dispute over the

right of possession to the site as a struggle by a civilization

against the surrogates of defunct imperialisms that want to keep it

in

continued subjection. It is not a dispute over a piece of land, and

brick and mortar, but a struggle over the version of history that is

allowed to stand.

 

Before we get to the actual behavior of the Secularists, or Jihad

Negationists as Elst calls them, let us try to understand what it is

that sanctions such destructive behavior on the part of devout

Muslims. This of course is what the world needs to understand, and

which the negationists are trying desperately to deny and conceal. It

is truly amazing that anyone should attempt this in the face of

abundant records from every conceivable source that stare one in the

face.

 

Negationism among Muslim scholars, is a relatively recent exercise;

until quite recently they gloated over the destructive record of

their

ancestors, which is still the case with their clergy. (One has only

to

listen to one of their Friday sermons to be convinced of this.) Their

resort to Negationism was occasioned at least in part by the

Partition

of India, and a dawning recognition among Muslim intellectuals that

it

would not be in their own interests to continue glorifying the record

of Islamic vandalism where they were in a minority. They have become

partners in negation, not out of conviction but self-interest; it is

a

marriage of convenience between the Muslim leadership and the JNU

brand of Secularists.

 

As far as their record is concerned, in this century alone, the

Indian

Muslim leadership has been responsible for at least three major acts

of destruction: The Moplah Rebellion following the Khilafat Movement;

the Partition; and the atrocities of the Razakars in Hyderabad. So

they have a formidable record to defend, even setting aside the

thousand year long vandalism which their clergy still glorify.

 

In the light of all this, it bespeaks a stupefying degree of

blindness

and faith in deception, for their leaders to think that this record

can be negated. Nonetheless, they have found Secularists making

common

cause with them to negate this record. This is a forlorn hope. It is

only a matter of time before it is laid bare.

 

But the real question is not the fact of the destructiveness of

Islam,

but the roots of it. What is there in the ideology of Islam that

justifies destruction on such a scale in the name of God and the word

of the Prophet? Sita Ram Goel, who has made a detailed study of both

the record and the causes of destruction of Islam sees it as part of

the imperialist ideology of which Islam is probably the most extreme

example. He sees it in the language of imperialism itself, which

becomes a 'scripture' in the case of a theocratic ideology. In a

theocratic ideology, belief, more exactly, profession of belief is

everything. As Goel puts it:

 

.... every language of imperialism [or its scripture] equips the

believers with an immeasurable degree of self-righteousness. They are

told that the lives, liberties, properties and honour of the

unbelievers have already been forfeited by the inscrutable entity.

The

believers therefore commit no crime when they kill, enslave, plunder

and humiliate the unbelievers. This gives a good conscience to the

believers while they indulge in an endless spree of bloodshed and

vandalism. In fact, their crimes become meritorious deeds.

 

We may in this context recall the words of Aurangazeb's

grand-daughter

quoted by Mirza Jan (cited previously):

 

.... keeping the triumph of Islam in view, devout Muslim rulers should

keep all idolaters in subjection to Islam, brook no laxity in

realization of Jizyah, grant no exceptions to Hindu Rajahs from

dancing attendance on 'Id days and waiting on foot outside mosques

till end of prayer ... and 'keep in constant use for Friday and

congregational prayer the mosques built up after demolishing the

temples of the idolatrous Hindus situated at Mathura, Banaras and

Avadh ... (Harsh Narain: pp 23-24; emphasis added.)

 

In all this, it should be noted that it is not necessary for the

aggressor to possess higher moral character or even better skills.

All

that is necessary is to claim to be following a belief system that

divides the world into mutually exclusive camps of believers and

non-believers. To take an example from the Stalinist Soviet Union,

Trofim Lysenko was not after all a better geneticist than those he

sent into Siberian labor camps; he was simply a Stalinist and had

Stalin's support. He had power and authority behind him, and that was

all that counted. As Goel observes, being an unbeliever was crime

enough to merit punishment at the hands of the believer:

 

.... the unbeliever is accused of all sorts of crimes committed by

them

by the very fact of being what they are. In fact, the whole

life-history of every unbeliever becomes a catalogue of crimes. The

intention is to debar the unbelievers from any sympathy from any

quarters. At the same time, the crimes committed against them are

explained away in terms of their own crimes. (ibid)

 

The scripture of Islam - the Quran and the Hadits - leave no doubt at

all on this score. Taken together, the body of verses that condemn

idolatry and idolaters constitute the largest number, and nothing

else

in the Quran is accorded the same importance. It lies outside the

scope of the present work to examine these, but here is an

interesting

example:

 

Ay: O mankind! If you are in doubt about my religion, then (know)

that

I worship not what you worship instead of Allah, but I worship Allah

who causeth you to die, and I have been commanded to be of the

believers ... (Quran, 12.106; 4.117; 6.101-102; 59.19-23; ...)

 

There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth

distinct from error, and he who rejects false deities and believes in

Allah alone has grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah

is Hearer, Knower. (Quran, 2.256)

 

It is sometimes fashionable to cite the sentence - "There is no

compulsion in religion" - as evidence of tolerance. This of course is

reading it out of context to make it mean the opposite of what it

actually says. As Goel observes: "The complete verse, however, says

quite clearly that the unbelievers have no business to persist in

error after the right guidance has come. All commentators on the

Quran

proclaim, in unambiguous language, that this verse authorises Muslims

to wipe out all other religions." Then we have these passages that

should help remove any trace of doubt as regards Islam's attitude

towards non-believers:

 

Surely the worst beasts in God's sight are the unbelievers. O ye who

believe! fight those of the unbelievers and let them find in you

harshness. Humiliate the non-Muslims to such an extent that they

surrender and pay tribute. Then, when the sacred months are drawn

away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them and

confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.

(Quran 9.123, 29, 5)

 

The sum total of all this is: intolerance and violence that are so

much a part of Islamic history, down to the present day, can be

traced

to the scripture itself; it is not due to the aberrant behavior of a

misguided few who were acting against its teachings as some

soft-headed Hindu apologists try to make out. Such apologists offer

excuses for Muslim intolerance that no orthodox Muslim ever makes. In

fact, it was tolerant rulers like the Moghul Akbar and Ibrahim Adil

Shah II of Bijapur who were aberrations. This is exactly how they are

viewed by the orthodox who have never stopped heaping abuse on them.15

 

Nor is this by any means a thing of the past. When the Temple of

Somnath (destroyed by Muhammad Ghaznavi) was restored shortly after

Indian independence, the following Urdu verse began to make the

rounds

in Muslim circles in India. (Goel 1993: p 3)

 

mandar to somnath ka ta'mir ho gaya ik aur ghaznavi ki faqat intizar

hai (The temple of Somnath has been rebuilt; we await another

Ghaznavi.)

 

So neither the record of Islam nor its ideology admits of any

ambiguity regarding the behavior of its followers. More particularly,

the state of mind that led to destructive behavior in the name of God

- from Ghaznavi and Babar, to the Moplah Rebellion, the Partition and

the Razakar atrocities - is still alive.

 

Thus the destruction of the Rama temple by Babar, and its replacement

by a mosque was entirely consistent with both the ideology and the

practice of Islam. This is clear from their own scripture - the Quran

and the Hadits. Those who deny this fact deny also its scripture.

 

It also appears as though in the minds of the faithful, the merits of

following this ideology outweigh its benefits to themselves. Despite

promises of heaven for such behavior, it has brought little happiness

to its followers here on earth. Like in every imperialist movement, a

small elite has prospered at the cost of the rest. This is exactly

what the Secularists are also trying to preserve - their status as a

small privileged elite. Islamic societies remain among the most

cheerless and insecure in the world. This is true of even the

wealthiest of them like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; they live in daily

dread of enemies from within and without.