The Gods of Ayodhya, Babri and of smaller things

The Gods of Ayodhya, Babri and of smaller things.

Here goes a hearsay account of a story about us:

"Once upon a time in a country in the Asiapacific region where the good countries have built a military base at Diego Garcia to tame the unruly uncultured third world colored folks, there was rural landlord, who called himself the king. The lord had 3 wives, all alive (how mean!). The lord did not have children, and since he did not have a proper insurance cover as he probably missed a premium, so he was forced to take help from a quack to solve the problem. Thanks to the occult sciences prevalent in these medieval countries, it worked (this country is a country of such quacks and beggars, and some terrorists - the country actually belongs to the third world even now, though it claims otherwise). His wives gave birth to four children - one each for the first two and twins for the third.

The eldest was the brightest. He probably had a congenital heart disorder as all the paintings show his skin color to be blue. He used a social networking and matrimonial mechanism, then run by the Sadhus, to come across a beautiful girl and married her by pleasing and greasing her father. One of his stepmothers did not like him marrying so early, so she used a service provider, similar to our Monica, to force him to be sent to a forest camp for 12 years. In those days, we did not have Abu Ghraib, so sending to a forest camp was the toughest sentence possible.

So the prince left for the forest with his wife and one of his step brothers accompanied him to give company to his wife. While camping at the forest, the prince was away for hunting a rare species of deer that could make sounds similar to humans (not be shocked please - these people still live at the stone age and they have not heard about PETA). A king of a neighboring island nation saw his wife and forced her to elope with him. He was the only person to have his personal jet in those days, so he used the same to fly her to the island nation. Enroute, the aircraft faced a bird hit, but the king could still manage to maneuver the aircraft and reach safely, while the bird was killed.

The prince did not have a second option - there was no way he could find another girlie in the jungle and since he did not have too much of inclination towards homosexuality or bestiality, he decided to make an attempt to recover his only wife. He made friends with two aboriginal tribes, one originating from the monkeys and the other from the bears. Since the prince did not have his own aircraft, he decided to build the first ever bridge across the sea to reach the island. Some part of this bridge is now submerged and known as the Palk straight.

The action started. His head monkey made the first impact through a terror attack by putting large sections of the capital city on fire. Then his army of aboriginals used their crude power to fight out the islanders and then destroyed the country totally, killing the king and recovering the prince’s wife. He finally returned to his hometown using the Island King's aircraft (meaner, isn't it? That is how these uneducated people behave) and took over the throne.

The king was planning to “live life happily ever after” when moron struck once again. His friends told him his wife must have been forced to have unsafe sex by the island kind, so it would be better to either separate or have an ELIZA test done before they continue a conjugal life. His wife was shocked with this and committed suicide. Since then, people have forgotten his wife and have started worshipping him.

In his hometown, they probably built a memoral later. More recent history says that the ancestors of Mohammed Atta and Bin Laden demolished the temple and built a super structure over it. The British took pity in the state of affairs of this country and decided to make them civilized. Despite all odds, the spent a patient 200 years there, recovered jewels like the Kohinoor diamond and put it in the safe hands of the British museum, taught the countrymen to cultivate indigo, trained the country on ways to easy solution by mass termination at a place called Jalianwallabag, and helped the countrymen enlighten themselves as writers in different government offices. The foolish countrymen were still not happy and started creating human rights issues by standing in front of running bullets and killing themselves. Fed up with this, the British finally decided to leave the country in mid of last century. They however ensured that before they leave, the country have enough reason to segregate between themselves by splitting the country into two parts. At least one of the countries are still buying a lot of weaponry from us and the other one have recently started doing so since our friend Gorbachev disassembled Stalin’s union.

Back to current times. Back to reality from folklore. This same country of greedy folks has now forced a business invasion on the US and taking away jobs at throwaway rates. We earlier gave away thinking we are doing favor by way of letting these poor people earn some greenbacks. Now, we are finding the situation as hopeless – a $5 an hour person is giving better productivity that a $40 American, and since we do not have the culture of having Sadhus here, we are seeing more and more beggars and burglars. This needs to stop. We as a country will do whatever is needed to stop this, or at least let this happen but earn more money out of it.

Irony is, while our president is using all his might and political correctness to stop this invasion and loss of votes, he does not have much control over the infighting happening inside these terrorist infested countries. I have been told that like our twin tower zone, where we now are managing a situation such efficiently, in that country too, they have a situation. That they are still a uncivilized country is apparent as they are unable to manage this, though they were able to take Kashmir from Pakistan and NEFA from China.

It really beats me as to how, people who are capable of taking away our jobs, are not able solve this simple problem. They should seek direct help from Obama and they should take necessary military help from Diego Garcia to resolve this. I have heard they are buying military equipment worth billions from us in a recent news item (good, as that will create some more jobs here), but they should ideally use those weapons on these unruly folks to reduce the population (remember Jalianwallabag) - there are too many folks in this country where girls do not take pills and boys do not use condoms, and they would surely eat up the little left oxygen we have for ourselves if they are allowed to grow.

The black days are on the horizon. We will soon be forced to ground our SUVs as they are telling the use of gas needs to be limited and stupid rest of the world is supporting. We will have to stop building cozy wooden floored houses as that seems to be against their nature. Very unjust, all these, but we are still patient because we are still able to make money by using their cheap labor and we do have gas reserves for the next 40 years and we have destroyed Iraq and Qatar. But sure I am that we cannot continue to let them grow like this.

I am pretty sure that Obama will soon take a step like Iraq to resolve this and bring sanity back there. If we are able to restore peace there, there will be many benefits. There are too many terrorists, Sadhus and beggars there at present. While the Sadhus should be saved as their occult ways help us in getting some hashish and indulge in free sex at Rajnish’s ashram, only the poorest of the poor beggars should be spared, as they make good photographic subjects. The terrorists were good earlier, but they are now linked with Cuba and Libya to attack us - so capture all of them and put them in Abou Ghraib /surgically neuter them through castration."

This is not meant to hurt any religious or other sentiments, this might seem light hearted, vulgar, over-emotive et all, but this is what 90% of the common man in the so called "developed" nations knows and thinks about our dear motherland. And we are doing nothing to prevent it.

The latest one is the Babri Masjid related controversy. Hindus had a temple at a site that they thought as sacred, Babar’s Mughal army destroyed it and superimposed it with a mosque. We are talking 400 years here – nothing less. The urge to be in power is such great that humankind has always produced the Hitlers and Stalins and Chengiz Khan’s in the past. Here, in India, it is crude and it is naked show of animal like urge. Our politicians did not find a Monica, the best they could find was a Harshad, which was not enough to get them into power. So they are now restoring to dig out dirty linen that was buried for 400 years, and trying to use the sentiments of the not-so-learned common man in the country to gain access to the ruler’s chair. We are aware of Suresh Kalmadi and his antecedents, but still he is the OC Chairman, spending merrily from a seventy thousand crore fund on stuff like broken bridges and dog shit among many things.

Where is the common man?

In India, the common man comes in various forms. The first type are the blue collared folks who work the whole day, booze the whole evening, and after a little wife bashing, goes to bed cursing the government and his father in law. His daily routine is disturbed only when the political might in his area forces him to visit the city to attend a show of headcount. He likes it, as it comes with free lunch and a visit to the zoo as well. This common man is now a worried lot, as the learned in the village is saying their God may be under attack, which they can't afford, as God is the second entity after booze that they look up to for reigning over their daily pains and agonies.

The second type, the grey collared, are a tamely lot. They work in government and private offices, suffer mostly from dyspepsia, smoke a cigarette in good times and a bidi in bad time, call Mcdowell's No 1 whisky as wine, do puja shopping as if it is mandated and spend their lives paying back loans. They occasionally go on a vacation to a hill station or a beach and try to shoot night shots of the hills or the sea using the in-camera flash and curse the lab for the results - this common man is having tea at roadside tea stalls discussing about how much of impact this verdict today will have on their transport back home, and also about what impact it may have on their expected increase in the dearness allowance. They are also in a hurry as they plan to store enough ration for the next couple of days to avoid any impact on their daily routine. Some of them are even anticipating a day off which they are planning to use to visit a friend's home which is long pending.

The third lot are the small time business owners, who are worried about the loss of business they would incur if any disturbance happens, and are lying low. They do not have an option but to wait and watch.

The white collared ones are those who were forced to work from home today and their US office was informed that there may be minor hiccups to the services provided today due to a religious tension apprehended, though things are otherwise under absolute control and all measures have been taken to ensure customer satisfaction is not at all hampered.

The third lot includes me, and I am not liking this at all, and I am breaking my disquiet. Not just because it is creating an unwanted disruption in my smooth routine, not because I am bland, blind or too insensitive, not because I am so very self centered that I tend to ignore the contributions of our freedom fighters to the independence that we are so very possessive about. I am worried because I hate this from my heart.

Babar invaded India and destroyed the Ram Mandir among other things. He constructed a Mausoleum there in place of a temple. Kar Sevaks invaded Ayodhya to destroy the Mausoleum. Both are history, - one is 25 generations back from now – at a time when Thomas Alva Edison was not born to enlighten us at nights. The is from a time when many of the current generation college goers were not even born. Can anyone really take a call on which one of these two destructive events was more crude? Why do we feel this is a problem? Who has given us the right to fix this?

Here is what I read - another interesting portion from history: The first litigation on Ayodhya was as old as in 1885, lodged in the court of Judge Colonel J E A Chambier. Followers of history would read the obvious message quite clearly. Once you are convinced that Bahadur Shah Zafar's family is surely going into oblivion, you see a believer in Christianity in power and understanding that you are safe from any religious monarchy, you start litigation. Thankfully, the plea was dismissed, and a portion of the verdict read:

'I found that the masjid built by Emperor Babar stands on the border of the town of Ayodhya... It is most unfortunate that a masjid should have been built on the land specially held sacred by the Hindus. But as it occurred 356 years ago, it is too late now to remedy the grievance. All that can be done is to maintain the parties in status quo.'

I salute this Englishman, yes, I do salute despite all the atrocities that our countrymen have faced for over 200 years under them. I salute him because he dismissed this unnecessary thing. We are a country that voted the Taj Mahal into the 7 wonders of the world. Whatever controversies may be around the origin of the Taj in terms of who started building it, the world today knows the Taj to be the signature of love of emperor Shah Jehan for his wife Mumtaz, not really as a structure built by a person from a particular religion. Most importantly, I am aware, through a very informed source who was holding an important portfolio in the bureaucracy in the sixties, that the controversies were not absolutely baseless and the ASI indeed had some important findings that might at least create a confusion in people's mind on whether it was actually a Hindu temple. However, the good part is, our government had the will to take a decision to curb the right of people to know about these facts, as it was unnecessary. We do not, do not, absolute never think of whether we should demolish it - as it is a pride for the country.

We talk about Qutab minar. Who built it? We talk about Gol Gumbaz, about Humayun tomb, about Golkonda fort, about Shravanbelagola, about Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Do we ever think of whether a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jain built it? Compare this with the Babri Masjid issue - we are still not sure if Ram ever existed or even if he did, whether his deeds that we Hindus feel so very religiously proud about, were indeed the imagination of a great novelist of ancient India. But still, we could mobilize enough people to destroy the structure around it 400 year henceforth just to get a wee bit of political mileage by agitating the uneducated youth. It is all about satisfaction of political and ego by showing might, nothing else.

Here is a bit of personal history here on the days the Babri Masjid was demolished. Those days I used to share a small apartment in one of the so called “Red forts” in Kolkata, with a couple of distant cousins on sharing basis with food being home delivered by a local food joint. It was a Sunday and we came to know about the incident at 10 pm and then there was curfew. We just had 50 bucks with us, and we had to spend 2 days eating only puffed rice that we could buy from a half open shop. Two days later, the curfew was relaxed and we had to walk 8 kms before we could get transport to the southern-most fringes of the city which was not covered under the curfew. We had to stay at a friends place for 3 days before we could return. We did ever ever see a L K Advani, a Narsimha Rao or a Jyoti Basuor any of their hands to help us out – fend for yourself was the keyword. Same is the keyword even today, while our political leaders feel we are actually insensitive. How uneducated can a country be?

20 years since then, we were consciously trying to forget it and get over the trauma, and now we are, awaken, hell bent to create the same thing over again. The political will is lost for ever, and I do not see the media creating enough furor over this - why do we need a verdict on whether there was a temple or a masjid? Do we have anything left of those? Why do I split the place? Are we not following what we hated the British doing to our country? I would like to support what my friend Manpreet told the other day - could we not have built a factory or a university there instead?

When your clothes get too dirty, you cannot wash them further to restore - you need to replace. Enough of communalism in the name of religion - we need growth now. The country that invented the decimal system cannot sit and watch this happen. Instead of still dreaming that God is good, we should now realize that Good is actually our God – that is the almighty power that is within us and around us – let us use that. Jai Ind!