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Ayodhya and 'Khalistan': the link betwixt

Despite the Kashmir ceasefire, Ayodhya, as always, has edged everything else off the mastheads. This year, as always, the fracas began two days before the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition (the rest of the year, the "hurt" feelings are inconsequential). As always, the Congress led the attack, by demanding the resignations of the chargesheeted ministers, LK Advani, MM Joshi and Uma Bharti (like, they haven't been in office for three years). No matter that last year, after an identical situation in the Lok Sabha, the Congress' stand was put forth by spokesman Ajit Jogi thus: "But we leave the decision [to resign] to their conscience." Then again, if the BJP can't remember its own stances, why would its mirror party...?

However, unlike last year, the rest of the dweebs attacked the Congress. The HSS (for the uninitiated: Harkrishan Singh Surjit, the party-within-the-CPI(M)-party) led the assault with: "We had given the then Congress government at the Centre a free hand to take any step required to protect the Babri Masjid. But the government failed to do the needful. And now the Congress leaders are trying to focus the nation's attention only on the role of BJP leaders..."

Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh followed suit, albeit in my kinda style: "BJP and Congress chor-chor mausere bhai." He provided plenty of ammunition to the BJP with: "the Congress... allowed the rubble of the Babri Masjid to be removed from the site and a make-shift temple of Lord Ram constructed. Congress leaders will have to explain the reasons behind their inaction during those crucial hours on Dec. 6-7, 1992... We want the people to know that it was the Congress that got the locks of the disputed shrine opened; it was the Congress that got idols smuggled into the shrine; it was the Congress that got the shilanyas done." He enunciated what everyone realises: "The Congress cannot fool the people of this country with the drama they are enacting in the Parliament for the last two days."

On its part, Signora Mussolini's houseboys' union, finding it difficult to prove its innocence, continued to target the BJP ministers. It declared that Narasimha Rao was not involved in the demolition -- even though it had already sentenced Rao by rejecting his LS nomination in the 1998 general election on the same charge. Ghulam (what an apt name!) Nabi Azad declared that the houseboys would "continue to agitate" till the ministers resigned -- conveniently forgetting that Mrs G had a chargesheet pending against her when she became PM for the second time in 1980. (Note: neither the Constitution nor the law disqualifies a minister from holding office merely because a chargesheet is filed by the police or formal charges are framed by the court.) Also, the houseboys refuse to commit themselves on the reconstruction of the demolished structure: the Catholic dominatrix is hesitating to take panga with "the majority community."

As always, the fracas would have died down till the next December -- had the PM not chirped in with: "Ayodhya mein Ram Mandir ka nirmaan rashtriya bhavna ki prakatikaran ka kaam tha, jo abhi poora nahin hua hai." Hunh? I pondered: Are we witnessing a lucid moment from Hajpayee...? However, my recently-acquired sense of realpolitik asserted itself: Naaah, it's just a bad Mahatma day...

I suppose I could lay out my perceptions about the PM's gambit (for a gambit it is, and a dangerous one at that). But the actions/reactions of another prime player in this drama interests me more. That player, of course, is the "secular" Press. Right since Independence, India's pinko-infested newspapers have studiously kept all the "inconvenient" facts (ie, those favouring the Hindu view) of the Ram Janmabhoomi issue -- its juridical debate, its historical and archaeological questions, and the political manoeuvring it has been subjected to -- away from public consciousness. (I'm not about to delve into it all yet again; those interested should read Koenraad Elst's Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society published by Voice of India.)

Instead, we are still being doled out garbage in the mode of: "Mr Vajpayee... needs also to emphasise that a sectarian movement cannot be described as an expression of 'rashtriya bhavana' in a pluralist society... Mr LK Advani has yet to condemn the demolition or to admit that it was a deeply shameful act. Similarly, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi will not go beyond calling it 'unfortunate.' All this suggests that despite its spell in power, and despite its show of moderation, the BJP still retains the potential to become the party of the rath yatra, of the demolition and the mayhem that followed... But Mr Vajpayee must clarify. He must assure us that he was not endorsing the Ayodhya mayhem and reaffirm that the temple is not on the NDA's agenda. Anything less will be too little" (The Hindustan Times editorial of December 8).

Assertions, instructions, insinuations, incriminations. This is the orbit of the "debate" still urged by the Press -- more than half a century after the issue was first raked up.

Stranger was The Indian Express of December 10 hollering, "PM says nation yearns for Ram temple; opinion polls falsify his claim" -- with the writing dweeb quoting results of past opinion polls that supposedly disproved the PM's claim of the agitation being "a manifestation of nationalist feelings." From the very same article, I culled the following:

• "Almost half of the respondents (48 per cent) supported the Hindutva brigade, with support cutting across caste lines"; and,
• "It was not just forward caste Hindus who gave the call, but it was high even among OBCs and SC/STs": 53 per cent OBCs and 52 per cent SC/STs firmly believed in the Ram temple cause (Frontline-DB-MRAS poll of May 1991).
• "When pointedly asked if a Ram Mandir should be built, 82 per cent overwhelmingly agreed to the idea (India Today-ORG-MARG poll of August 1993).
• "Only 9 per cent agreed that a new masjid should be erected at the old site" (Outlook-AC Nielsen poll of February 1998).

Issues like price rise, the justice system, law and order, education and health will and should take precedence over religious matters. But, to use these to show "the dwindling public interest on the mandir issue" is sheer chicanery. Are people expected to say that the horrendous price of the onion sold next-door is less important than an idol miles away? Secondly, since the blot on Hindu pride exists no more, what's so earth-shaking about the dweeb's discovery vis-à-vis the January 1998 poll: "Ayodhya was at the bottom of the list of voters' priorities while stability emerged as the major concern above corruption, price rise, law and order and Ayodhya -- in that order"? Uff, what pretzel logic.

The Press will not let the storm over the PM's Ayodhya remark settle down -- now that the Shekhchilli of the eternally soon-to-be-instituted Third Front, that perpetual-PM-in-waiting, Jyoti Basu, has blessed us with his rampart rhetoric: "Unfortunately evil forces have come to power at the Centre which are bent upon completely doing away with our idea of unity in diversity and national integration. We will have to launch an ideological war against these forces and the victory will be ours." This was followed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's fears about "the country facing danger of being divided on religious lines by the BJP and RSS... What [the PM] had said goes against the spirit of the Constitution. If he meant what he said, then it would be disastrous for the country's unity." Which was followed by the HSS declaring, "First they have to aggravate the atmosphere, generate reaction and violence so that there is a communal polarisation. The process has begun but it will take some time."

From the pinkos, HAHAHAHAHAHA... My sides hurt from laughing! Ok, slam my hysterics, but in light of this: One day in September, I learnt about a recently published book, titled Siyasat Da Rustam-E-Hind written by journalist Shameel. The book reveals that, in the days of World War II, when the Soviets presented their "Thesis of Nationalities," one "Indian" pinko who was incarcerated in Deolali jail, debated the thesis with his in-jail comrades and came up with his own application to the Indian situation. The author of the book was told by the last living Gadarite, Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, that said pinko had been inspired by commie scholar Sazad Zaheer's treatise "The Muslim nation and Pakistan."

Next, the pinko put forth his calculations to the CPI politburo, which then propounded the theory to the world at large. By 1942, the pinko honed it and produced a final draft, which was then published in the name of CPI leader Dr Gangadhar Adhikari in 1944, and translated into Punjabi by the CPI's Punjab leader, Avtar Singh Malhotra, in 1946. This Red dissertation is known as the "Thesis of the Sikh Homeland," which was later propagated as "Khalistan" by Sikh militants in the 1980s. The author reveals that the CPI-M's numero uno, Harkrishan Singh Surjit himself admitted that he was indeed the incarcerated one who first prepared the balkanisation-of-India thesis.

"It looks ironical, the book says, that the Communists, including Surjit, vehemently opposed 'Khalistan' as propagated by the so-called Khalistanis in the 1990s, and the latter, too, projected Surjit as 'some kind of villain and enemy of the Sikhs.' The book also quotes CPI-ML leaders as saying that the basic conceptual foundations of 'Khalistan' are rooted in the Sikh Homeland thesis, and they describe it as the 'glorious chapter of Indian Communism's history'" (from The Free Press Journal).

Even three months on, this story has diligently been ignored by the national Press; no reviews of Shameel's book, no nothing. For it would immediately make the Indian public aware of the relation between "The Muslim nation and Pakistan," "Khalistan," and the manoeuvres of the Communists to break up India into tiny pinko-controlled pieces. Instead, what's being drilled into us are Shekhchilli's utterances on "unity in diversity and national integration"; his sidekick's spewing on division "on religion lines by the RSS"; and HSS ranting on "communal polarisation." Who, pray, planted the seeds for Pakistan and "Khalistan"? Who stresses that Muslims and Sikhs are nations sought to be gobbled up by Hindus? And, who are the handmaidens doing the pinkos' bidding?

Publicised in newspapers are the views of Nehruvian Red historians, that Babar was a tolerant and secular ruler. The invader's own words on Chanderi (a town 239 kms from Gwalior) in the Babar-Nama are: "Chanderi had been in the daru'l-harb [kaffir rule] for some years and held by Sanga's officer Meidini Rao with four or five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28], through the grace of God, I took it by force within a ghari or two, *massacred the infidels*, and brought it into the bosom of Islam."

In the Babar-Nama (Vol II), he records for posterity: "After the success, Ghazi ['victor in jihad'] was written amongst the royal titles. Below the titles entered on the Fatehnama, I wrote the following quatrain: For Islam's sake, I wondered in the wilds
Prepared for war with infidels and Hindus
Resolved myself to meet the martyr's death
Thanks be to God, a Ghazi I became."

This, then, is the origin of the obliterated structure. The Ayodhya issue is not a dispute over real estate, or even the idol/ideal of Ram. It must be absorbed by Hindus -- the few non-eunuchs that survive amongst us, that is -- as the battle for the restoration of Hindu self-esteem. The Babri wasn't built to be a mosque -- it was a symbol of Islamic triumph. And if it should rise again at the very place which the devout believe to be Ram's janmabhoomi, more than self-respect will be lost: Backing off now will ultimately herald the annihilation of Hinduism itself.

Varsha Bhosle