There has been profound outrage and outcry among the left-liberal sections in India over former Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud suggesting that the erection of Babri mosque over a temple was itself an act of desecration. He made this remark in an interview to a news portal, while replying to a question on the Ram Janambhoomi verdict by the Supreme Court of India. He was part of the SC bench, headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, which gave the verdict in favour of the Ram Janambhoomi.
It indeed needs the courage of conviction to speak out the truth in India, that too when you are judged harshly. Quite contrary to the perception being built that the establishment has been gagging the voice of the opposition, it is mostly the other way round. There is always a collective and group effort to gag the voices of truth and damn these as bigotry. Justice Chandrachud has already been pronounced guilty of bigotry, as how could he make such remarks even when these were based on historical truths and archaeological evidence.
A senior Congress leader of a national party, that wears “secularism” on its sleeves, once made some adverse remarks about the Ram Janambhoomi. He was duly countered by many of his own party colleagues, some of whom were not even Hindus, that if one cannot talk about the Ram temple in India, then where else on earth?
You don’t need to be an RSS or a VHP supporter to talk about Ram Janambhoomi. You only need to be rational, reasonable, and sensitive towards the sentiments of over a billion Hindus living across the globe. The same way former Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi was. Not many people today know that the locks of the ‘Ram Janambhoomi’ were ordered to be opened by him on February 1, 1986, after 37 years. The ‘mosque’ had been locked in 1949 after the idols were installed there.
There is still a debate going on in the country whether “historical wrongs” can be and should be “corrected.” Well, some can be while some cannot. It is a universally accepted and acknowledged fact that the victors, whosoever they may be, irrespective of their faith or religion, anywhere across the world, would subjugate the people by subduing their faith. They would destroy and desecrate the symbols and places of worship of the subdued people.
Justice Chandrachud quoted archaeological evidence that a temple existed at the same place where Babri Masjid was erected. In the same context, he suggested that the erection of the mosque over the temple was the first act of desecration, which indeed it was. Ram Janambhoomi was not the first and the only place that was destroyed and obviously desecrated by the Islamic invaders, some of whom also became permanent rulers.
We have the historic Somnath Temple in Gujarat, which was destroyed by Mahmud of Gazni. Then there are umpteen number of examples across India in different regions where temples were destroyed and mosques built. Kashmir is a live example of how the Islamic rulers/invaders destroyed the Hindu temples.
One live and existing example is that of the Sun Temple in Martand (Mattan). It was built by the famous King Lalitadatiya Muktapida in the eighth century, between 724 to 761 AD. It was destroyed six hundred years later by Islamic zealot Sultan Sikandar Shah Miri, also known as Sikander ‘Butshikan’ (destroyer of the idols). That is how most of the Islamic rulers/invaders treated the Hindu places of worship.
When Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodhi in 1526, in the First Battle of Panipat, he established his seat of power in Agra. Within two years of his victory, he reportedly ordered his commander Mir Baqi to construct a mosque in Ayodhya, about 450 kilometers from Agra and about 700 kilometers from Delhi.
It does not need any super-intelligence to make out what prompted Babur or his commander Mir Baqi to construct a temple so far from the seats of his power, Delhi and Agra, in Ayodhya. It was simply to destroy the place of deep faith to enforce complete surrender and subjugation of the subjects they had conquered. Babur was not known to be a religious bigot. But it did not require any bigotry to destroy the symbol of faith of the subjugated natives. It was apparently more for asserting absolute authority.
That Babur was not a bigot is no guarantee that he did not order a temple to be destroyed for the construction of the Babri Mosque. Or it is quite possible that his commander Mir Baqi destroyed the temple on his own to build the mosque. Babur could rule India for just four years. After defeating Lodhi in 1526, he died a premature death in 1530, apparently due to poisoning on account of court intrigues. It is quite possible that the Babri Mosque was built in his memory after his death.
The Mughals continued their acts of vandalism and desecration of the non-Muslim holy places of worship even up to the late 1740s, when their rule was in complete decline. Zakariya Khan, the Mughal Governor of Lahore, had ordered desecration of the holy Durbar Sahib through his official Massa Ranghar, who not only stopped the Sikhs from worshiping in the holy temple but organised dance parties within the holy precincts. It was the brave Bhai Sukha Singh and Bhai Mehtab Singh who beheaded Ranghar and restored the sanctity of the holy shrine.
That is how the Mughals and their officials would treat the holy places of worship of the non-Muslims. This is historically recorded and documented. Still, there are people who want to deny and negate it all as if nothing happened.
Construction of Babri Mosque at the holy site of the birthplace of Lord Rama was certainly an act of desecration. When Justice Chandrachud said so, he said nothing wrong, but the truth. This is high time that the denial of historical wrongs is made an offence the same way denial of the Holocaust is an offence in several countries.
There have been thousands of mosques constructed across the country during the last seven hundred years of Islamic rule. There has not been any objection or any case made against most of the other mosques, except a selective few, while there is irrefutable evidence that the mosques were built after destroying the temples.
Why then did the Hindus fight such a long legal battle for the restoration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya? Only because they had a strong case based on truth and evidence, which Justice Chandrachud quoted and for which he is sought to be gagged and silenced.
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