Live From Ayodhya
Why do we want to bind our love for each other or for
God in monuments and mansions? God is eternal, all
around us, He is within us and everywhere. So why are
we fighting over mandirs or masjids?
By Nigar Ataulla (with inputs from Yoginder Sikand)
It was a winter afternoon, way back on 6 December,
1992. Balancing my handbag and an armful of artworks,
I was walking to my office –an advertising agency in
Bangalore. My mind was preoccupied with the deadline
my client had given me to present a campaign for him.
As I chalked out the plan of action for this, I felt a
gloomy silence around: little groups of people huddled
together whispering and murmuring among themselves,
panic writ large on their faces. … The latest news
flash was that a mob had demolished a mosque in
Ayodhya.
Anxious parents were picking their kids back from
school earlier than the usual time. I got a call from
my frantic parents to reach home soon. I told them I
would wind up my work at office at once and rush back.
Almost 15 years after this incident, luck took me to
the town of Ayodhya with my husband, whom I have
nicknamed the Second Ibn Batuta for the irrepressible
travel bug that drives him. I was very eager to see
Ayodhya… the name conjured up numerous memories. In
the heydays of Doordarshan's glory and monopoly over
the air waves, the Ramayana was the most popular
serial. I would promptly glue myself on Sunday
mornings to watch the fascinating graphics used in the
serial—the arrows flying from one end to the other
and getting stuck in mid-air, strong characters that
people the epic, each with their own vivid and
striking personalities, the numerous beings peopling
the skies and land. And then, from the 1980s, Ayodhya
had been constantly in the news for less harmless
reasons, as political lines and communal divides were
drawn over a little shrine atop a mound in the town,
claimed by both Hindus and Muslims as their own.
We walked around the centre of town, which had many
temples all around. Somebody told us there were 7000
in all. Another insisted that the figure was some
12,000. Who knows? A man spotted us and offered to
guide us around for eleven rupees. As we walked
through the town, heaps of marigold flowers, boxes of
sweets of various colours and flavours, echoes of
temple bells and saffron-clad sadhus walking around
presented a picture of an archetypical temple town.
Shops sold CDs and cassettes of Ram bhajans dubbed on
pop music.
Our garrulous guide rattled off the names of various
temples in Ayodhya. Of the disputed Babri Masjid he
was unusually, though not unexpectedly, eloquent:
"Teen ghante mein, babri masjid ka naam o nishan mita
diya December 6, 1992 ko. Aap ne TV par dekha hoga,"
he said. We listened with straight faces, while
squirming at the thought of that day and those that
followed, that saw literally thousands of people lose
their innocent lives in wild communal fury.
*
From Ayodhya to Faizabad, it is a 20 minutes journey
by rickshaw. A major landmark in the town is the
sprawling, and now rapidly crumbling, Bibi Ka Makbara,
which houses the tomb of a queen of one of the Nawabs
of Awadh. A narrow path leads from the backyard of
this edifice down to a vegetable patch that borders a
lake now choked with water hyacinth. In the dusk, as
the sun retreats, through thick clouds of fog one can
trace at the edge of the patch the outlines of an
ancient mosque, called the Jinnati Masjid, its
minarets freshly whitewashed and ancient brickwork
peeping out from its low-level walls. People of all
faiths throng here to seek blessings and in the hope
of cures to various ailments.
Here I meet a teenaged lad, Raj Kumar, a resident of
Faizabad. His strong faith in shrines like this has
brought him here. He visits this place everyday to
offer respects. He says that his sister was cured of
her ailment after coming here. He is a Hindu, he says,
but that does not stop him from visiting the shrine.
'God is every where. His light is in every particle',
he muses philosophically.
I ponder carefully on what he says. My mind races to
Ayodhya. In between the clash of the azan and the
temple bells, a clash of communal egos, where is God
in all this? I wonder if the Almighty is going to ask
us in the Hereafter if we fought for a place of
worship for Him or if we spent our energies
worshipping Him alone and serving His creatures. The
latter, I am sure. I observe how Raj Kumar sits in the
mosque meditatively, his eyes closed and his lips
muttering a chant, while a Muslim woman spreads her
prayer-mat and falls down in worship.
My mind then goes back to Ayodhya again. The disputed
site, I propose to myself, ought to be made into a
hospital or an orphanage open to people of all
communities, or perhaps a shrine where people like Raj
Kumar and the woman who is still bent in prayer can
glorify God, irrespective of caste and creed.
*
The next day we get to Agra. We arrive at the Taj
Mahal and I gaze at this monument of love in wonder.
The Mughal Emperor Shahjahan bound his love for Mumtaz
in marble. Why do we want to bind our love for each
other or for God in monuments, as in Ayodhya, and
mansions, as in Agra, I ask myself? God is eternal,
all around us. He is within us and everywhere. The
whole world is a believer's prayer-mat. So why are we
fighting over mandirs or masjids, I ask, my mind going
back to Ayodhya.
Why do we want to bind our love for God only in
structures of mud and stone? Were that our love for
God be manifested in our love for all human beings—no
matter what religion, caste or community they belong
to—and, indeed, for all living creatures. So Raj Kumar
had said to me in the Jinnati Masjid in Faizabad,
while the Muslim woman in the mosque had nodded
vigorously in approval.
--------------------------------------------------
This piece is dedicated to my parents who inculcated
in me the values of tolerance for other faiths, my
husband, Yoginder Sikand, whose adventurous spirit and
courage is incomparable and my school teachers who
taught me the value of peace.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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