Rescuing Ayodhya

The author says, "history of Ayodhya is a microcosm of the history of north Indian heartland"

Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord

Valay Singh 

Aleph; 383 pages, Rs 799

Valay Singh has focused his attention on the history of the city of Ayodhya to find an answer to the eternally contentious issues: Was there a Hindu temple where the mosque stood and was the birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya? He is quick to clarify that the “book does not set the record straight” but explains that he seeks to rescue this ancient city from its current controversy. As he writes, “it is an injustice to define Ayodhya’s history to suit contemporary and often self-serving narratives”. 

Ayodhya is roughly 3,300 years old and the author divides its history into phases: the first 1,200 years, the 18th century (the East India Company epoch), and the contemporary period up to the present. Ayodhya’s ancient history, he says, demonstrates its transformation from “an insignificant outpost to a place sought by kings, fakirs, renouncers and reformers”. This antiquity has influenced generations of pilgrims but it has also provided politicians opportunities to manipulate history to suit their political interests. 

This study consists of two interrelated books. Book I offers a panoramic view of religio-cultural and political aspects of India’s multiple Ramayanas. Book II consists of five chapters beginning with Independence to the temple-mosque controversy. The author is on firm ground when he explains the story of many Ramayanas, such as those of Valmiki, Buddhists, Jains, Tulsidas, Tamil, from Thailand and so on. Commenting on the plurality of the Ramayana, the author says, “There is arguably no other epic in the world that has so many retelling and so many versions. The hydro-headed nature of the story is what lends itself to so many narratives that shift with time.” For devotees, however, “it is of little concern that the Ramayana is an epic or mythology and scripture and not a historically verifiable document”.  This is why “the epic continues to be “lived as virtually it was first imagined by Valmiki”. 

But the author makes the significant point that scripture or myth can also be used to legitimise a “perfect” past in which there is no need to challenge the statement that Rama’s Ayodhya “was the best capital in the world”. But he introduces a caveat. “Ram worship was not and is not restricted to Ram’s supposed birthplace alone. Ram has been identified with Ayodhya as a whole, not a particular spot in Ayodhya”. During the 18th century, Ayodhya had emerged as an important Vaishnava pilgrimage. The dispute over the Babri Masjid was an offshoot of a dispute over the nearby Hanuman Garhi temple, the construction of which was facilitated by the Muslim rulers of Oudh. Hanuman Garhi was completed in 1799. In 1855, a dispute over Hanuman Garhi arose between a section of Sunnis and the successors of the bairagi  (hermit) to whom the land was donated by the second Nawab of Awadh. The controversy arose over the demolition of an old mosque by the  bairagis as part of a move to enclose the area they claim was donated. In the turmoil that followed, in which the British played an infamously perfidious role, Hanuman Garhi’s mahants extended their claims to the Babri Masjid and a civil suit was filed on January 29, 1885. 

The history of the dispute over the temple-mosque, then, begins from 1885 and it is this story that the author takes up in Book II.  When the rest of the country was celebrating independence, the bairagis,  the Hindu Mahasabha and the Mahant of Hanuman Garhi had “vowed to capture, the Babri Mosque by force” and “tried to impose restrictions on Muslims offering namaz in the mosque”. 

An added layer of complexity was that Govind Ballabh Pant, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and a Hindu Mahasabha sympathiser, and the state bureaucracy played a role in strengthening the cause of the Hindu claimants. In 1948, a by-election was held in Uttar Pradesh in which Pant chose a Sadhu Baba Raghav Das over the socialist Narendra Dev as the candidate from Faizabad constituency, within which Ayodhya fell. Das led a communally vitriolic campaign and won. “This was the first time that Ayodhya’s religiosity was harnessed in a democratic election,” the author points out. 

It was not to be the last. Both Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao wielded their executive power to the cause of communal politics, taking fateful steps that encouraged the Hindu mob led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak  Sangh to demolish the mosque in 1992.  The background is this: In April 1984, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) called a meeting of religious scholars. This “dharma sansad” asked Rajiv Gandhi “to unlock the Babri Mosque and liberate lord Rama”. The Indian state surrendered and the next step was a march from Somnath to Ayodhya in September 25, 1990 to the demolition of Babri Mosque on December 6, 1992 and a country-wide bloodbath. 

The author has performed yeoman’s service in mobilising solid historical evidence to assert that that the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and the demolition of Babri Mosque were motivated by politics rather than historical facts. Ayodhya remains a pilgrimage centre that draws different strata of society but the “Hindus in Ayodhya-Faizabad definitely want a Ram Temple,” he writes. This is the cumulative impact of many centuries of propaganda that have convinced people to believe the myth surrounding Rama’s birthplace. Today, Hindu nationalist openly maintain that the matter of “faith” cannot be resolved by the Supreme Court. 

“In one sense,” the author says, “the history of Ayodhya is a microcosm of the history of north Indian heartland. In another sense, it is a history of the evolution of Vaishnavism in the Hindu consciousness”. The challenge is to rescue this history from the political manipulators who want to gain power by exploiting the religious sentiments of innocent believers.