Why has it become so inconvenient to accept certain facts though they stare in the face? Why is that certain voices are still muffled in India and denied a reconciliation? Why is that history with an agenda was pushed down the throat despite the primary, secondary sources and the local history having a completely contrary story to say? Why is it that even after centuries of subjugation, independent India is disallowed to write its own civilisation story based on the facts and well-preserved firmans? Why is a section of a society wary of the truth?
Indeed, a
manifestation of this reluctance to face the reality was first witnessed by the
entire nation, when the court-directed survey of the Gyanvapi complex was
opposed tooth and nail by a section of the society. Denied the right to pray, five
women filed a petition in August 2021 seeking to worship the deities of
Shringar Gauri, Bhagwan Ganesha, Bhagwan Hanuman and Nandi regularly.
Additionally, they appealed that the statues inside the complex are not harmed.
The court ordered a videography survey of the complex towards the end of April.
A survey of
the Gynavapi complex has brought to fore some inconvenient truths tacitly kept
under wraps. Interestingly, while every minute detail of the complex has been
recorded in meticulous detail in books the historical records which were like
thorns in the flesh were conveniently buried. The recorded history was subsequently
supplanted with academic works that totally whitewashed these incidents.
The
white-washed history which served as a vital academic tool was extensively used
to peddle a narrative while the local history which is passed over from
generations and the physical structures revealed truth to every discerning
eye. Indeed, every Indian who has his ear to the ground knew about the journey
of the Gyanvapi complex. A deliberate attempt to inject a mosque onto the walls of
the temples is clearly visible. But then a section of the community fiercely
contested this. Disinclined to stir a communal pogrom for decades, the
aggrieved party waited for a day of peaceful reconciliation.
Indian
history replete with foreign invasions and inhumane plunder of civilisational
wealth is a well-known fact. Though the liberals continue to justify these
attacks, especially on the temples through creative theories, the decimation of
the native civilisations by the Abrahamics across the world is an indisputably
established fact. Every trace of the pagan culture has been successfully wiped
off by the Abrahamics. Right from aborigines in Australia, Aztecs and Incas,
Egyptians, Greeks, Romans to the Persian civilisation abutting the boundaries
of Indian-subcontinent, indigenous people were subjugated and all their
civilisational symbols were annihilated. By and large, the faith of indigenous
people who worship nature, mountains, rivers, trees, animals, feminine and
masculine aspects of deities referred to as “pagan culture” were largely stamped
out by Abrahamics.
India is the
oldest surviving indigenous culture that has withstood the onslaught of these
attacks. The inexorable quest for vanquishing the natives, an undeniable
attribute of the Abrahamics was very well recorded by the Muslim scholars
themselves. Works of Turkic and the Arab travelers who recorded acts of plunder
and desecration of temples with aplomb, and the generous epithets showered on
the idol breakers unmistakably hint at the zealotry and fanaticism of the
Islamic invaders.
After
independence, though efforts to chronicle these events were thwarted by a
secular government, independent scholars still painstakingly compiled attacks
on temples. Sita Ram Goel’s- Hindu Temples: What happened to them? puts
together details of around 40,000 temples which were either converted to
Mosques or other Islamic structures, demolished without a trace of existence
and some used as materials for building Mosques.
The Gyanvapi
Mosque which is erected over the walls of Kashi Vishwanath Temple, considered as the
most sacred of the Jyotirlingas stands out for the sheer humiliation that it
seeks to evoke. Indeed, the same template was replicated in the Keshava Dev
Temple, the Sri Krishna Janamasthan at Mathura. With the very places that
symbolise the centuries of faith, timelessness of the civilisation still
shackled in the chains of subjugation, how can wounds of the centuries of
humiliation be ever healed?
A wounded
civilisation can never aspire to be a superpower. The pride and self-esteem in
civilisational roots can alone drive a nation to occupy its coveted place in
the World. It is incumbent on the people to reclaim their civilisational
identities to transcend transgenerational trauma and throes of the centuries of
subjugation.
Unfortunately,
the Academica and the liberals which are overwhelmingly considerate towards the
suffering of the Abrahamics deny the centuries of oppression of the
non-Abrahamics. The classic indifference to the pain of the Hindus and abject
mockery of their faith and civilisation flooded the social media in the
aftermath of the discovery of the Shivling the Gyanvapi complex testimonies to
the same.
Media corps
and liberal academic corps who steered the Black Lives Matter and supported
defacement, defiling and pulling of all symbols and statues of racism and
slavery didn’t bat an eyelid when Hindus are striving to reclaim their places
of worship. Their unflinching support for the rights of desecrators is not only
puzzling but hypocritical. Indeed, the liberals of the West who jumped in to
rewrite the history to put an end to racial injustice suffered by the
Africa-Americans are denying the Hindustheir right to reclaim and conserve
the remnants of their civilisation.
Justifying
the atrocities of the invaders, Hindus right to worship is now sacrilegiously
labelled as fascism or majoritarianism. Even as the centuries of the brutality
continue to stare in face, they are expected to forget centuries of atrocities
suffered and genocide endured. While symbols of invasions, oppression and
imperialism are pulled down across every nook and corner of the world to
facilitate reconciliation, Hindus are forced to still live through the
centuries of gory past. They are expected to maintain a status quo. Even as
Holocaust victims are empathised and monuments are erected pledging to never
allow any such incident to occur and to immortalize their pain, Hindus who went
through barbaric episodes of ethnic cleansing are denied of their lived
reality.
Indeed, this
despicable insensitivity was out in theopen when they refused to even acknowledge
the presence of Shivling and began denigrating their aastha with impunity that reeked of visceral hate. Abominable hate that refused to
empathise and sought to rake old wounds. Across the board, the native
civilisations had to face such deprecation. Humans embrace different religions,
ideologies but humanity and empathy are the connecting bonds that keep people
together.
But the
intransigence of a section towards Hindu efforts to reclaim sites of faith can
potentially throw a scanner into the touted bhaichara. Across the world,
there is a new awakening among the indigenous who are standing up to reclaim
their history. This resurgence which is now palpable among Hindus is now
rebuked. To stem this tide, liberals and academia are indirectly
castigating Hindus and terming Hindutva as fundamentalist. Clearly, the
burgeoning Hinduphobia and Hindumisia is an attempt to silence this
revivalism among Hindus.
Obscurantist
posturing of Abrahamics by seeking refuge in the whitewashed history can
harden the Hindu stance and breed conflict. An open discussion and acknowledgment of facts can offer an amicable solution. More than ever, a sincere apology to
the wounded civilisation can go a long way in boosting the self-esteem of this
inherently pluralist civilisation. The persistent dogged “my way or the high
way” approach can be suicidal.
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