Indecent, Infamous Vandalism of the 20th Century India
By MOHAMMAD YACOOB
In the 1980s and 1990s Hindutva forces were encouraged and emotionally blackmailed by the leadership of the majority community, including several Members of Parliament belonging to the BJP, to engage in activities and agitations that they thought would force the Government of India as well as the Muslim community to hand over the Babri Masjid to the majority community. The temerity and audacity of some of the Members of Parliament who delivered anti-Muslim speeches and held rallies in several big cities throughout India was practically the same as engaging in anti-Indian activities. The following example explains how militant Hindutvawadis were incited in taking part in agitations and rallies, and finally involving them in the eventual destruction of Babri Masjid on 6 December, 1992.
“The VHP denies its campaign is anti-Muslim but some of the taped speeches, such as the best seller by Member of Parliament Uma Bharti, imply otherwise. ‘We cannot suffer anymore the descendants of Babar, who raised the sword of oppression in this country, and who now proclaiming with pride they are Muslims,’ she told a crowd in Ayodhya in October. ‘Let us build a grand temple to Ram. And if this means a bloodbath, let there be a bloodbath. For an honor, we are ready even to complete annihilation. But before we sacrifice ourselves, we shall exact thousands of sacrifices from the other side.” (Ruth Pitchford, Reuters, published in India West, 4 January, 1991, Emeryville City, California 94608)
The Los Angeles Times reported that a stage was set to spread disinformation and misinformation about Muslims and Islam by announcing, in a very subtle way, the building of a temple by demolishing and dismantling the Babri Masjid – the indecent and infamous vandalism of the 20th century India.
“Political demagogues and Hindu [read Hindutva] fanatics in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power by exploiting religious tension and calling for the creation of a fundamentalist Hindu state and the start of the Ram Rajya, the Empire of Ram.”(Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, 15 December, 1992)
On 24 December, 1949, three statues of Rama were surreptitiously installed in the precincts of the Babri Masjid by Hindutva militants with the help of some local government authorities. Next day the militants declared that Ram has descended to the earth at his birth place. The authorities sided with the militants and locked the doors of the Masjid. Political manoeuvring and pressure kept several cases pending in the courts of UP for about 37 years. In 1986, while the cases were still pending in courts, the state government of U.P. decided to hand over the Masjid to the Hindu community.
The Hindutva leaders belonging to the RSS-VHP-BJP organisations immediately declared they wanted to get control of the Babri Masjid; engaged in making tendentious and inflammatory speeches against Muslims; distributed audio and video tapes containing inflammatory speeches; stopped trains, announced names of Muslim passengers from the reservation lists, identified Muslims and killed them; engaged in search-and-select-and-kill-Muslims campaign. At the political level the Hindutva leaders engaged in hate crimes against Muslims in India and in the United States; engineered and started riots against Muslims throughout India; incited Hindu masses against Muslims resulting in burning down of Muslim houses and businesses; and finally protected police and paramilitary forces whose connivance helped them create chaos and destruction in India.
The two examples, given below, one from the United States, the greatest democracy and the other from India, the largest democracy, will explain as to why Babri Masjid was demolished by the Hindutva extremists, Muslim haters and peddlers of religious insanity in India.
Gullible tendencies of innocent people in India are always nurtured by myths and incredible stories that border on miracles. The credulous Indians follow directions given to them by the so-called religious leaders, who exploit them through established caste-system-induced racism. Even highly educated Hindus are falling prey to the games the Hindutva leaders are playing and in the process are following the path that is questionable and does not stand the test of common sense. One of the techniques used by these politico-religious leaders is to inform the credulous people that a miracle has taken place and that it demands their expression of devotion and extreme loyalty.
SIVALINGAM IN SAN FRANCISCO
In 1990, a castoff traffic barrier, four foot high and weighing 800 pounds, was moved to a site inside the Golden Gate Park in the city of San Francisco, California, by a boom operator. Thousands of people visit this park every year. It is a very beautiful and impressive park. Some Hindu park visitors referring to the former traffic barrier started making claims that sivalingam has sprung from the earth. They began worshiping the traffic barrier, offering flowers, burning camphor and incense and bathing it with water and sometimes with milk. This innocuous piece of concrete became a centre of attraction for the credulous Hindus living in San Francisco and the suburb areas, even people began coming from as far away as Los Angeles, Southern California. The number of people believing in this claim was so great that thousands of Hindus refused to believe that it was once a stone dead traffic barrier. Many Indian worshippers made requests to the Golden Gate Park officials to permit them to build a permanent shrine in the park around the traffic barrier lingam. The San Francisco Chronicle portrayed the worship of this traffic-barrier as phallic fetish.
The San Francisco Park and Recreation officials finally decided to put an end to their silent sanctioning of the traffic-barrier worship. They made the comment that continuing to allow people to worship the traffic-barrier on public property would be a violation of the law of the land. They were forced to make a decision to move the barrier after receiving a request from the Hindus to build a shrine in the park around the traffic-barrier.
Kali Dass, an Indian American, living on the 19th Avenue in San Francisco, claiming to be a representative of a large Hindu community, filed a suit on 23 November, 1993 against the city of San Francisco. He later tried unsuccessfully to get a temporary restraining order against the city to keep it from removing the traffic-barrier from the park, pending a trial.
The city of San Francisco settled the law suit filed by Kali Dass by engaging in an out-of-court settlement and removed the stone barrier from the park on 14 January, 1994 and relocated it at the 19th Avenue home of Kali Dass. This angered other Hindu groups who argued that the stone should be left in the park. Many Hindus attended the Park and Recreation meeting on 20 January, 1994 and raised the issue of the stone traffic-barrier. Many other Hindus accused Kali Dass of taking control of the stone through a calculated game plan. On the other hand, Kali Dass accused other Hindu groups in their involvement in stealing the cash left at the base of the stone in the park. He further said that the stone was relocated to his house to put an end to cash offerings and prasad, left at the stone site, from being stolen.
To take full advantage of the credulous Hindus calling a traffic-barrier a deity, Kali Dass started calling his house ‘Shiv Shakti Mandir’ and began collecting funds to build a regular temple to house the traffic-barrier stone. At the same time, other groups of Indians who had lost battle against Kali Dass filled the huge hole left by the removal of the traffic-barrier in the Golden Gate Park with a new stone and began worshipping it. They refused to give up the politics of religion. They paid no attention to the fact that their rationale did not stand the test of common sense or the law of the land. They depended heavily on the support of the credulous Indians. Finally they had to leave quietly and abandon the place.
The end result of the whole phenomenon is that decent Hindus have been taken for a ride by these self-centred, greedy and selfish people. Decent Indians were duped, deceived and lied to by these groups who continued to fight for power, money and control of the stone.
The whole affair amazed and bewildered Mr. Jim Wolford, a boom operator, in the San Francisco Parks Department, who had moved the traffic-barrier from a certain location in the city to the site in the park where the Hindus started worshipping it. Even his comment that the traffic-barrier that was transported by him, did not spring from the earth was ignored by these warring Hindu groups. (Reference: News items, 1992 to 1994, from Newspapers: The San Francisco Chronicle, India West, Emeryville City, California and L A India, Sant Fe Spring City, California)
At this juncture, the mentality of the people who are heavily involved in the control of the traffic-barrier deity must be understood. There is no country in the world, including the USA that would allow a religious group to build a shrine on the land owned by the public. In other words, public property cannot be used for constructing religious building or a shrine. Yet, the so-called Hindu leaders of San Francisco Indian community had the audacity and temerity to make a request to the city authorities to allow the construction of a shrine on public property. But thanks to the firm decision taken by the Parks and Recreation Department officials, the matter was settled.
COBRA, ‘PERSONAL EMISSARY OF SHIVA’
In India, credulous people show far more militancy and eventually break the law while following the commands of the extremist religious leaders, who are controlling the masses. The example of the activities of the credulous and naive Indians can be given by a report that follows. Mark Fineman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, dispatched this report from New Delhi, India, which was published in Los Angeles Times on Monday, 23 March, 1992. Fineman reported that a Muslim, Saleem Ahmed, living in the city of Hapur in Northern India, bought a house to improve his quality of life.
“So he saved and saved until he had a large enough stake to buy some land – 600 square meters of prime development property in this bustling Indian city, his ticket to prosperity and a new future. Then the snake appeared in his peepul [banyan] tree. The riots came soon afterward. And before the old and blind cobra managed to escape the Hindu troublemakers who had put it in Ahmed’s tree, nine would die – four from bullets and five from knives – and the old snake would shatter both Ahmed’s dreams and the ancient peace of this north India city as well…. And the destruction wrought on this city of 200,000 not long ago illustrates the depth of mistrust between India’s 750 million Hindus and 100 million Muslims – as a right-wing supremacist movement has positioned itself ever closer to power in traditionally secular and socialist India…. The people of Hapur were told that the old cobra was a personal emissary of the great Lord Shiva, Hinduism’s god of destruction, and that it had come to say a new temple should be built on the site of the tree.
“These people who started the riot, they were of the view that if this land was sold to Muslims, they would come into the Hindu areas,” Ramesh Kumar Rai, the local police superintendent explained. “First, one month ago, they put a photograph of Lord Shiva at the base of that peepul tree, and the people started worshipping there,” Rai continued. Such fears are almost universal now among India’s largely illiterate Hindu majority, the result of a successful grassroots campaign by the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s main opposition force.
“Several times, the snake tried to run away, but they would not let it. That snake was so fed up, it tried to jump into the ditch once and escape. But they just kept putting it back in the tree. Chaman Quraishi is the leader of the Muslim community near the peepul tree. He says that as Hindus began flocking to the tree, fear ran so deep among the Muslims that ‘we would not even go near that spot’.”
For the local Bharatiya Janata Party, the snake in the peepul tree was a masterstroke of political mobilisation. But by the time Rai deployed his riot squad at the peepul tree on Spring Festival day, it was too late. Thousands of naive Shiva worshippers had gathered and surrounded the tree in a shield of devotion. “The situation had gone way beyond our control,” he said. The police tried to remove the snake by force. The Hindu organisers responded by positioning women around the tree as a shield. The police fired tear gas. The worshippers responded with stones. Police charged them with canes. The Hindus went to surrounding rooftops and answered with crude bombs and homemade pistols. “We were cornered,” Rai said in relating a version confirmed by many witnesses. “We did not want to use bullets. But, as I said, we were cornered. So we opened fire. The demonstrators resisted until four of their number fell dead, then they fled. As they raced home, many armed with knives, they stabbed five Muslims to death.”
The Los Angeles Times Staff Writer has referred to the credulous people and their helpers as ‘naive Shiva worshippers’, ‘largely illiterate Hindu majority’, ‘Hindu troublemakers’, ‘Hindu supremacists’ and ‘Hindu chauvinists’. These Hindu troublemakers went to the rooftops and threw crude bombs and used handmade pistols. They armed themselves with knives and stabbed five Muslims to death. They are using the same technique to kill Muslims in India and control credulous Hindus.
On other occasions, during demonstrations, these Hindutva troublemakers go to the rooftops near a mosque and wait until the demonstrators are in front of the mosque. Then, they throw stones from the rooftops on the demonstrators. Another group with the demonstrators starts a rumour that Muslims are throwing stones from the mosque. This becomes a good enough excuse to turn their anger against Muslims that prompts them to run into the mosque, beat up Muslim worshippers, go on a rampage, start a riot and burn Muslim houses and businesses.
The same scenario, repeated many times in India, has provided a rationale to the ‘Hindu troublemakers’, ‘Hindu supremacists’ and ‘Hindu chauvinists’ to lay claim to more than three thousand mosques and masajid in India, including Babri Masjid, which was demolished allegedly by hundreds of thousands of Hindutva militants and Hindutva extremists under the order and direction of Hindutva chauvinist leaders belonging to the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh, BJP and Vishwa Hindu Parishad in the presence of police and paramilitary forces on 6 December, 1992. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe, including NRIs in the USA and Europe, witnessed on CNN and BBC the acts of vandalism by the Hindutva extremists and Hindutva militants who climbed on top of the three domes of the Mosque and used crude implements for the destruction and demolition of the of Babri Masjid.
The ‘snake-in-the-peepal tree’ style conspiracy to demolish Babri Masjid was started in 1949. On 22 December, 1949, a group of Hindutva fundamentalists and Hindutva militants conspired and joined in collusion with the police officers and authorities belonging to the local government of Uttar Pradesh, in a secret agreement to commit illegal and unlawful acts of placing three statues of Rama in the precincts of the Babri Masjid. The operation of placing statues was successful. The Hindutva leaders declared that Rama had descended to the earth at his place of birth. They further claimed that he spoke to them and informed them that his birthplace is the exact location where the masjid’s Mimbar (sanctum sanctorum or an elevated place for delivering the sermon by the Muslim Imam) is located. The leaders made demands that Hindus throughout India express their devotion and extreme loyalty to Rama because of this event.
In San Francisco, Hindutva leaders brought a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco demanding that the traffic-barrier remain in the park and not removed in order for the Indians to continue to worship it after constructing a shrine around it. These Indians were fully aware of the fact that there was no temple in the park; no sivalingam deity was found in the park and they are not supposed to worship on public property. Yet, the Indians announced to the Indian community that sivalingam has sprung from the earth and they had the courage to bring a lawsuit against the San Francisco city, USA. In Hapur, India, they told the people that the cobra was a personal emissary of Shiva. The statues of Rama were surreptitiously placed in Babri Masjid. In 1986 the decision was made to hand over the Babri Masjid to the majority community to allow them to perform pooja in the precincts of the Masjid.
(to be continued)