Hindu-Muslim amity can’t be built on the basis of denial

By the end of today, India will face one of its toughest tests as a nation. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court will deliver its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, and whichever way it goes — pro-Hindu, pro-Muslim or a politically-correct middle path — the maturity of India’s politicians, religious leaders and ordinary citizens will be on trial.

A few things can be surmised about what will follow. One, the mainline political parties,
including the BJP, will probably adopt a cautious stance. Two, the main parties to the
dispute may move their battle to the Supreme Court. Three, fringe elements in both the Sangh Parivar and the Muslim groups will be gearing up for trouble. Four, the tone and tenor of card-carrying secularists will determine the negativity of the Hindu response.

First, let’s understand what the courts can never resolve: historical baggage. They can
decide on the Ayodhya title suit, but not on the partly flawed narratives Hindus and Muslims have chosen to believe about themselves.

The fundamental reality is that both Hindus and Muslims have different narratives about their past interaction. While Left historians want to gloss over this past and claim that
coexistence was the norm rather than strife, this is not what vocal Hindu leaders want to believe. Muslims have been less vocal about what they believe, but it is clear what they don’t want to believe: that Muslims rulers went about destroying temples out of sheer iconoclasm.

This is where the Ram Janmabhoomi issue sits squarely in the midst of divergent communal memories. It is also why the courts cannot solve the dispute. Hindu zealots would like to pretend that a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is a matter of faith, but that is not really true. While every Hindu believes that Ram was born in Ayodhya, it does not follow that he was born in one specific place.

Moreover, even if that were true, most Hindus would probably be willing to adjust their faith to modern reality provided there were sincere efforts to build a broader understanding with Muslims.

This is where our secularists have not only failed, but actually done damage. In the false
belief that Muslims are a helpless minority and need to be protected from any recollection of the past, they have tried to create a rose-tinted
version of Muslim rule, driving some moderate Hindus towards hard line positions.

A genuine secularist should be neutral on historical memories and the past. He or she
cannot wish away the truth by creating a false narrative of past amity — when the truth was somewhere in-between — occasional trust and distrust. They believe that they are serving the cause of secularism by shielding Muslims from the truth of Islamic iconoclasm and pretending all of it is Hindu communal narrative.

A modern example of this is the phony
secularist’s approach to Gujarat and Kashmir. For him, Gujarat is the big communal event of independent India, not Kashmir’s ethnic cleansing. So much so that moderate Hindus hesitate to mention the injustice meted out to the Pandits by Muslim separatists for fear of being branded communal. Result: the plight of the Pandits has been erased from the nation’s conscience to protect Muslims from having to face this truth. The Congress will be allowed to forget its massacre of Sikhs in 1984, but Hindus will never be allowed to forget Gujarat by the secularists.

A new, stronger relationship cannot be built between Hindus and Muslims by working your way around the truth. But this is exactly what our secularists have been doing.

If the two communities have to work towards a new future, they have to start aligning their narratives by a genuine acknowledgement of the past.

This is not to say that present-day Muslims have feel guilty about an Aurangzeb or a Babur, but how can they move on without
acknowledging it? Can Hindus move on by
refusing to acknowledge the damage done by caste prejudices? Hindus are also in complete denial that Muslims are among the very poor, and that they have to be brought to the mainstream with policies of inclusive growth.

The failure of our secularists is staggering: by presuming that Muslims need to be shielded from history, they have helped create an
impression among Hindus that Muslims are a favoured lot.

While the Sangh Parivar talks of Muslim appeasement, ordinary Hindus are
unhappy about why secularists are always on the side of Muslims.

The crux of the matter is this: mature
Muslims need no protection from secularist
contortions of the truth and mature Hindus need no lectures from them on how Muslims are poor and need help today. The way to communal amity lies here: Muslims must not be in denial about the past and Hindus about the present (plight of Muslims).

The Ayodhya verdict will do little to drive home this message. But how we handle the post-Ayodhya fallout will change us forever. We can't move on by being in denial.