Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it a point to
keep visiting temples when visiting other countries. His visit to Dhakeshwari
Mandir and Ramkrishna Math in Bangla Desh were part of his itinerary (June
2015). On the heels of this he is planning to visit the oldest mosque in India. This
happens to be Cheraman Jama Masjid in Thrissur in Kerala. Contrary to the
present perception and propaganda that Islam came to India
with Muslim kings with sword in one hand and Koran in the other, the initial
Islam in India
came via the Arab traders in Kerala to begin with. It is due to this that the
first mosque in India
came up in Kerala. Wikipedia gives the brief history of this mosque. There were
trade relations between India
and Arabia. Arabian trader used to come to Malabar Coast even before the advent of Islam. With the
rise of Islam in Saudi
Arabia, the traders brought this faith with
them. “Cheraman Perumal, the Chera king, went to Arabia
where he met the Prophet and embraced Islam and changed his name to Tajuddin.
From there he had sent letters with Malik Ibn Dinar to his relatives in Kerala,
asking them to be courteous to the latter. In the 7th Century, a group of Arabs
led by Malik Bin Deenar and Malik bin Habib arrived in north Kerala and
constructed a Masjid at Kodungalloor, naming it after their contemporary Cheraman Perumal.
This interesting peep in to the history; when the issues
related to mosque, church and temple is very much in the air; should help us to
delink religion from politics. Modi’s associates within BJP and with RSS family
(Sakshi Maharaj and the like) have begun asserting that Ram Temple
will be built soon at the site where Babri Mosque was demolished. As Modi led
NDA Government came to power we witnessed a series of attacks on Churches in
Delhi, which many tried to pass off as series of thefts, despite the fact that
not much was stolen; only damages were there, religious symbols were
desecrated. The trend continues. In Atali in Haryana the violence was unleashed
and the half built mosque was destroyed. In Rajagir (Bihar)
the issue of holy place is being raked up. Subramniam Swami of BJP is facing a
court case for saying that Temple
is a holy place but mosque is not a holy place.
The communal politics has been built around the issues
related to identity. Even during freedom movement when the communal streams
(Muslim League-Hindu Mahasabha-RSS) came up the issues related to pig in the
mosque and beef in temple were made the pretext of violence. In Independent
India the story begins with Ram
Temple issue in the
decade of 1980s when BJP made it a political issue. Its seeds were sown in 1949
when some miscreants installed Ram Lalla Idol in the mosque. The rest is
history. The culmination of this has been that the Allahabad High Court gave
the verdict on the ownership of land on the grounds of faith of majority
community, and divided it into three parts. The judgment was a precedent of
sorts as faith became the base of judgment. The matters are pending in Supreme
Court but to keep the pot boiling VHP-BJP has started making noises for
construction of temple.
There is a long trajectory of incidents related to
mosque-temple-dargah. Disputes have been constructed around them
systematically. In Karnataka the Baba Budan Giri dargah was claimed to be the
Datta Peetham. In Hyderabad
near Charminar, Bhgyalaxmi temple is gradually being extended to be dangerously
close to the Charminar. In Madhya Pradesh Kamaal Maula Masjid in Dhar has been
claimed to be Bhojshala. In most of these places the campaigns were launched
and polarization around these was brought in leading to electoral benefit to
BJP at most of the places.
Historically it is amusing to see that while kings had
diverse policies towards the holy places, the communal historiography which became
prevalent looked at Muslim kings as destroyers of temples. This irrespective of
the fact the Kings were there to rule primarily for power and wealth, religion
being incidental to their policies. Emperor Asoka was the only king who worked
for spreading his religion, Buddhism. Kings also could not rule just on the
strength of sword and had to respect the faith and feelings of their subjects.
That’s how we see that Babar in his will to Humanyun writes “Son, this Nation
Hindusthan has different Religions. Thank Allah for giving us this Kingdom. We
should remove all the differences from our heart and do justice to each
community according to its customs. Avoid cow-slaughter to win over the hearts
of the people of this land and to incorporate the people in the matters of
administration. Don’t damage the places of worship and temples, which fall in
the boundaries of our rule. Evolve a method of ruling whereby all the people of
the kingdom are happy with the King and the King is happy with the people.â€
Tipu Sultan got the temple of Shrirangpatanam
repaired after it was damaged due to the attack by Maratha armies. Primary
cause of destruction of Somanth temple was the massive wealth kept there. Even
Babri Mosque has been the pretext of biggest communal polarization in recent
times. Hindu King Shivaji got a mosque built at the entrance of his fort in
Raigadh. ## The clever British policy of introducing communal historiography
and dividing the history into Hindu, Period, Muslim period and British period
paid them rich dividends and the communal streams picked this version from
their angles and this came in handy to incite the feelings of people.
Currently as India
on one hand has claims for industrial growth and the figures of GDP are juggled
to silence the critics, the fact is that India as a country is very low on
the index of human development and per capita calorie consumption by large
section is declining. At such a time the issues around temple and a mosque are
a definite derailing of the priorities of the society. Lately many from RSS
stable have been making damning statements about holy places. Yogi Adityanath
of BJP said that non Hindus should not be permitted in Haridwar’s ghats.
Somanth trust is barring the entry of non Hindus into the temple. Such attempts
will be a great detriment to our social practices which have united the
society. People from different religions keep visiting places of all the
faiths. These are practices where people overcome the religious divides in
practice. These will weaken the fraternity which is integral part of our
values.
While watching the TV debates on Ayodhya temple-mosque
issue, one can see VHP spokespersons beating their breast that Lord Ram has to
live in the tent, while he deserves to live in the Bhavya (great) temple. Here
is the question, contrary to the belief of communal forces; for most of the
medieval saints; the place of worship was within one’s own heart and soul. The
identity issues have been brought to the fore by communal forces for their own
vested interests. What we need is not the issues related to identity but
struggle for a society which wants to see that all its citizens have bare
minimum facilities, food clothing, shelter, employment health and dignity.
Lord Ram and Allah are almighty and the mortals like us,
including the breast beaters from communal formations, should prefer to see
that the housing is provided to all the mortals, ordinary people so that they
don’t have to live on the pavements-slums and suffer the ignominy. Can one hope
that rather than presenting the past in a one sided; divisive manner we look at
the story from all the angles, and put forth the rational one. We need to
cultivate our faith for well being of all our society as a whole on the lines
of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam.
