by JAWED NAQVI
The legend of Hindu deity Ram straddles the geographical stretch from the Caspian Sea to Southeast Asia and beyond. There are myriad lores and countless tellings of the ancient narrative. That many such legends are being pulped or have been airbrushed has a political purpose.
It doesn’t help Hindutva that Ram has been worshipped in different ways or that his name surfaces to the accompaniment of lament and exhilaration in folk music. “I lost my precious pearl around here, O Rama. Help me find it, or I’ll die of grief.” So goes a beautiful kajri sung by Rasoolan Bai.
Muslim actors in Indonesia are applauded daily for enacting the stories of Ramayana with a fusion of poetry and music. Ancient Hindu temples abut Buddhist meditation centres on the island of Java where most citizens are otherwise Muslim, many with names suggesting a Hindu link, the former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, for example.
An edge Hinduism had over other religions was its malleability and cross-cultural reach. Burqa-clad Muslim women thronged movie halls in Lucknow, whenever the Parsi filmmaker Homi Wadia released his new story of Ram and Sita. The spiritual baba in the neighbourhood temple smoked the chillum most evenings in the company of curious college students of different religions and assorted sadhus bathed in sacred ash. Every flame leaping from the smouldering marijuana was dedicated to Lord Shiva. “Bambam Bhole,” went the chorus.
In modern India, as in other enlightened nations, matters of faith were deemed non-justiciable. Nobody asked a judge if God existed. Nor could courts claim to have the answer, anyway. There are countries with Sharia courts and other religious equivalents where matters of law are interpreted in the light of religion.
The Indian constitution accords enough leeway to believers and agnostics alike. The corpus of Hinduism’s multi-layered beliefs would lack heft without the nastikas or the naysayers of ancient India who enjoyed the same respect with the masses (or notoriety with the elite) that Socrates commanded in his sphere of influence by questioning the supremacy of the priestly class.
The late Justice Haider Abbas investigated the temple-mosque row in Ayodhya for several years at the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. He shared a nugget with me shortly before fellow judges decided otherwise. The case in Ayodhya could only be tackled as a land dispute, with the help of registered documents, Justice Abbas had believed with an air of staunch neutrality.
Eventually, the Supreme Court, headed by a chief justice on the eve of his retirement (and days before he would be made a member of parliament in the upper house) handed the verdict in favour of those that had violently opposed its orders against destroying the Babri Masjid. Since the secular courts weren’t supposed to offer views about deities as real people, how should the state position itself in the debate?
Indeed, in another context, the Manmohan Singh government was asked for its opinion by the Supreme Court. The straightforward answer that any secular government would give was given. It said it was not aware of any historical person like Ram. The BJP pounced on the government, accusing it of blasphemy. It’s an invention in Hinduism — the hitherto Semitic idea of blasphemy.
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