Why Grieve over Babri "Masjid"?

Somnath Day on December 5

How About Somnath and Thousands of Other Temples?

- Dr Tripuraneni Hanuman Chowdary

On the 6th of December 1992, tens of thousands of exasperated, frustrated emotionally insulted at the existence of a humiliating structure on the very site where hundreds of millions of Hindus believe Lord Rama was born, tore down the dilapidated structure going by the name of Babri Masjid where for decades there had been no prayers of Muslims. Ever since 1528 when one Mir Baqui, a soldier of the invading foreigner, Babur built a mosque after razing to ground an existing temple, Hindus have been trying to take posession of the sacred site repeatedly and many were the dead in the process. Various Hindu organisations had since before Independence and thereafter tried to convince their Muslim brothers that they should allow Hindus to re-construct the Mandir on the Ram Janmasthan and that they would help and assist Muslims to relocate the "mosque" elsewhere. Muslims did not and even now do not, agree. On the other hand, outrageous questions like the following are posed.

2. What is the proof that there was a historic person called Rama; proof that the spot claimed to be the Janmasthan was indeed so; proof that there was a temple, proof that the foreign soldiers of Baqui pulled that temple down; proof that on the very foundations of that temple, the mosque was built. These questions insult the faith and belief for thousands of years of hundreds of millions of people. They are unlike no Hindus questioning the historic existence of any Prophet or their miracles like being transported from a particular place on a horse by a messenger to a god and that he brought a Holy Book etc. Prime Ministers and men of goodwill tried to settle the Rama Janma Bhoomi issue amicably but in vain. The failure was not only due to the unreasonable stand of some Muslims but the passionate support that Marxists, self-styled "eminent" historians and intellectuals and peculiarly Indian "secularists" arguing on behalf of unbending and un-compromising Muslims that the Hindu mythology about Rama and temple was false. It does not occur to the opponents of the Hindus that in 1527 there could not have been a large number of Muslims in Ayodhya, that there was no space for a mosque excepting that either on the very site believed to be the Janmasthan of Lord Rama or adjacent to it; that the structure was built solely with the aim of incessantly humiliating the vanquished Hindus and to tell them that they are impotent.

3. It may be recalled that Spain was once overrun by Muslim armies and ruled for over 700 years by them. All the churches there were razed to the ground and on those very foundations, mosques were built. And people were converted, mostly by force from Christianity to Islam. In the 15th century, a number of Christian kings and knights united together to attack, defeat and drive away the Moors, the Muslim rulers from Morocco. The Christian rulers pulled down all the mosques and restored the churches which existed before the Muslim conquest. Besides, they also told the people that if they did not reconvert to Christianity, they would have to leave Spain. Over 95% reconverted to Christianity and the unwilling people went away to the lands from where their conquering, converting ancestors came.

4. When Russia conquered Poland, a cathedral was built in Warsa for the Russian Orthodox church. When Poland gained independence, the cathedral was pulled down and a Catholic church was built as the Poles did not want to be reminded of the humiliation of defeat and destruction. After the communist rule was ended in Russia, the cities that were named after Lenin and Stalin got rid of those names and restored their original names, St. Petersburg for Leningrad and Volgograd for Stalingrad. Almost all the statues of Lenin and Stalin had been pulled down. Similarly, countries in East and Central Europe which were subjected to imperial Soviet communist rule, the national governments that succeeded the dissolution of the communist rule pulled down all monuments which reminded them of the humiliation of imperial domination and national shame. The most telling act of tearing down a monument for national humiliation is the pulling down of the infamous Berlin Wall on the 9th of Nov 1989. This wall was a standing monument to the inhumanity, cruelty and destruction of freedom practised by the erstwhile Stalinist communist regimes. This wall was in particular built to prevent the fleeing of the oppressed East German people under Communist dictatorship to the freedom and democracy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

5. People who have gained independence and thrown out the shackles of foreign imperial exploitation and rule have, in assertion of their self-respect and national pride, discarded the memorials of the conquering hordes. For example, the people of what was called Gold Coast, the name given by the British colonists, renamed their country as Ghana; Rhodesia became Zimbabve; Burma became Myanmar; Ceylon became Sri Lanka; Cambodia became Kampuchea; Siam became Thailand; Madagascar became Malagasy; Peking has become Beijing; Canton has become Guangzhou and so on. Uncharacteristically, it is we in our country that are retaining the name of India whereas for millinia we called our land Bharat and our people Bharatiyas. Without any self-respect, we are describing our country India, that is Bharat, instead of saying Bharat that was India.

6. As though some calamity has happened to Muslims and some monstrous act had been perpetrated by Hindus, many Moslem organisations various brands of Marxists, Communists and fellow-traveling, self-styled "eminent" historians, sociologists and fundamentalist secularists and de-Indianised people of this country are observing 6th of December as the Babri Masjid Destruction Day, wanting to tell the world that Hindus had destroyed a famous place of worship belonging to a minority community. It is incomprehensible as to why it does not occur to them that thousands of temples had been razed to the ground by Muslim invader as recorded by Islamic scholars and historians and scribes who accompanied those invaders. It does not occur to them as to why just by the side of Krisha temple in Mathura, there should be a mosque; why just by the side of Lord Siva's temple in Varanasi, there should be a mosque. Were there no other sites available for the construction of mosques in those cities? Why had they to be built just by the side of and even encroaching upon the temple lands of Lord Krishna and Lord Siva? Was it not to remind the defeated Hindus, of the humiliation that they had suffered, their impotence and the might and invincibility of the Islamic conquerers? Can any selfrespecting nation and people suffer the continuance of such monuments to their humiliation, to their subjugation and relegation as second class citizens? Hindus had been prepared to forget about the thousands of temples that had been razed to the ground and the mosques built on them: Rama, Siva and Krishna are the most venerated divinities of Hindus. On the very places where temples had been built for them, the existence of mosques built by invader conquerors, iconoclasts, is an insult, continuation of wounds inflicted upon their civilization, their faith and their psyche. Without absolutely any concern for their sentiments and beliefs, Marxists, Muslims and the Macaulayans (people who are only in blood and colour Indian but unIndian in all other respects), and "secularists" are observing the 6th of December as the Babri Destruction Day to tell the world that Hindus have done some unpardonable act of destruction, of sacrilege.

7. This type of vilification of Hindus shall not go unanswered, unchallenged and rebutted. We would like to remind our countrymen of the most unpardonable barbarism, and brigandage that was indulged in by some Islamic rulers of foreign origin and native converts in this country. We would not talk of the tens of thousands of temples as destroyed; of the hundreds of thousands of heads of defeated Hindu soldiers that had been exhibited pyramids; we will not talk of the lakhs of defeated soldiers and their children taken to the slave Bazars of Bagdad and sold as slaves; we will not talk of the thousands of Hindu women who had been abducted, molested, forcibly converted and consigned to the harems of the conquerers; we will not talk of the thousands of proud Hindu women who immolated themselves lest they should fall into the hands of lascivious and ravishing victorious soldiers of a foreign faith. Since Babri mosque has become to the detractors of Bharat, an instrument of calumny against Hindus, we would like to take up just one instance, namely that of the destruction of the hallowed Somnath temple in the year 1026AD by Sultan Mohammed of Ghazni. There is absolutely no denial of this fact. It is near this place in Prabhasa where Lord Krishna cast off his mortal remains near Dwaraka. The fiendish, sacrilegious, blood-thirsty and looter deeds of Md. of Ghazni were recorded by the historians accompanying him. Somnath is one of the most revered Jyothirlingas sacred to Hindus. The Somnath Temple was constructed no one knows when. It was getting renovated for hundreds of years before . Tens of thousands of devotees assembled there every year to worship Lord Siva. Thousands of priests and Sadhus who were standing in its defence were slaughtered like sheep. Immense quantities of gold and diamonds and other precious stones had been looted and transported by caravans of camels out of India to Ghazni.

8. The Somnath temple so sacred to Hindus and so much a part of their psyche was first destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in Jan (6 to 8th) 1026. 50,000 Hindus defending it were slaughtered. The Shiva Linga was broken to pieces and taken to Ghazni where the pieces were laid as steps to a mosque so that could be contemptuously trodden upon by Moslems. Immense quantities of gold, diamonds and other precious wealth was looted and carried off on a few thousand camels. Abi Raihan-Ali- Biruni; the noted Arab chronicler vividly described (1030 AD) the iconoclastic zeal of Mohamed. He wrote, "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country and performed there wonderful exploits by which Hindus became like atoms of lust scattered in all directions ... their scattered remains cherish the most inveterate aversion towards Muslims". (Romila Thapar and "eminent" historians of the Marxist Madrassa, innocuously known as Jawaharlal University negating the truth say that Mahmud's assault on Somnath was motived by loot for treasures rather than Islam and iconoclasm). The defenceless Hindus offered ransom if Mahmud saved the temple; Mahmud refused. Here is the record:

"The Linga he raised was the stone of Somnath, for soma means the moon and natha means master, so that the whole word means master of the moon. The image was destroyed by Prince Mahmud, may God be merciful to him! AH 496. He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghazni with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part I of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze, that had been brought form Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somnath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghazni, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet. "

- Al Biruni's India by E.C.Sachau

Obviously, the tribe of "eminent" historians of Marxist faith and "secularists" are indulging in the crime of negationism of history.

9. The Somnath temple was rebuilt soon after the fury of Mahmud dissipated itself after his hasty retreat to Ghazni by a devious route via Sindh, Kutch and Sindh in fear of the onslaught of Param Deo, "one of the most powerful Rajas of Hindustan had to be met on the way (he came by); he (Mahmud) did not consider it to be advisable to fight with him at that time under all circumstances";...as noted by the historian Ibnul-Athir. The temple was reconstructed in 1169 A.D by Kumarapala (emperor of Gurjaradesha who ascended the throne in AD 1144). Somnath was destroyed a second time by Alaf Khan, a General of Alauddin Khilji. It was rebuilt again between AD 1325 and 1351 by Chudasama, King of Junagarh. In AD 1469, Mahmud Bedga (Sultan of Gujarat at Ahmadabad) defeated the King of Junagarh, Mandalik (who shamelessly converted to Islam to save is life), removed the Shiva Linga from the Somnath temple and converted it into a mosque (Just like the Babri in Ayodhya). Soon after, Hindus replaced the Siva Linga there and continued to worship it. In AD 1706, under Aurangzeb's orders, Prince Mohammed Azam (the 39th Vice-Roy of Gujarat) destroyed the Somanth temple (4th destruction) "beyond possibility of repairs". From 1705 the Marathas attacked the Mogul power in Gujarat; in 1758, they took Ahmedabad. In 1759, Saurashtra too came under Maratha Power. In AD 1783 Ahalya Bai Queen of Indore, finding the ruined temple unfit for restoration, built a new temple to Somnath, a little distance from the original site. The original site and structure was converted to a mosque under Aurangzeb's orders and it remained so till the time of Independence August 1947. The Marathas lost to the British. The Maratha paramountcy over Junagarh was taken over by the British. Dwaraka, Prabhasa (where Somnath is) remained part of the Junagadh state.

10. The Nawab acceded to Pakistan at the time of Independence in 1947. The people rose in revolt. The Nawab and his Dewan Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto (the father of Julfikar Ali Bhutto) fled to Pakistan. He sent a request through a British officer Mr. Harvey Jones to Sri M N Buch the Regional Commissioner of the Government of India for Saurashtra States, to take over the administration. After a referendum it was integrated with India. Sardar Patel who was the Dy. Prime Minister and in charge of the integration of Indian states visited Prabhasa and Somnath and declared that Somnath Temple so sacred and so much a part of India's memories and legend and song and story and life, would be reconstructed and restored. Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet took a decision that Somnath should be fully rebuilt and reconstructed and brought to its greatest glory. Then Gandhiji advised the government that not a single rupee of the tax payer's money from the budget of the government should be spent upon the reconstruction and restoration of Somnath. Then a Trust was formed and tens of millions of rupees were donated to the trust for the restoration of Somnath temple. This is in contrast to the same Gandhiji insisting that the Government of India should spend money from its budget to repair and renovate the mosques that were damaged or destroyed in Delhi in the aftermath of Independence.

11. Sardar Patel died before the reconstruction and consecration of Somnath Temple was completed. Kulapati K M Munshi, a Minister in the Cabinet of Nehru was directing these operations as Chairman of the Trust. Jawaharlal Nehru accused Sri K M Munshi of Hindu revivalism! Munshiji wrote a devastating and disarming letter, to Nehru. The substance was that Nehru was calling the patriotic, self-respecting, nonviolent actions of Hindus as communalism while he himself was promoting Muslim communalism by various measures of appeasement. Justifying his work for Somanth's reconstruction and defying Nehru, Sri Munshi wrote to Nehru, "It is my faith in our past which has given me the strength to work in the present and to look forward to our future. I cannot value freedom if it deprives us of the Bhagavad Gita or uproots our millions from the faith with which they look upon our temples and thereby destroys the texture of our lives. I have been given the privilege of seeing my incessant dream of Somanatha reconstruction come true. That makes me feel, makes me almost sure-that this shrine once restored to a place of importance in our life will give to our people purer conception of religion and a more vivid consciousness of our strength, so vital in these days of freedom and its trials."

12. Despite Nehru's displeasure, the crumbling mosque (just like the Babri in Ayodhya) which was sitting on the very site of the destroyed temple of Somnath was removed to a near-by place and Somnath temple was reconstructed. K.M.Munshi invited the President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad to come and ceremonially consecrate the deity, Lord Siva. He also told the President that he should think of Jawaharlal Nehru opposing his visit of Somnath before agreeing to his request. Rashtrapati Rajendra Prasad disregarded Nehru's objections and went to Prabhasa and carried out the consecration of Somanth. He made an excellent speech explaining as to why he did that and that India is a secular state but not an irreligious state. He said, he would gladly go to the reconstruction ceremony of any mosque or church with the same reverence as for Somnath. To Dr Rajendraprasad and Sri Munshiji and to true Hindus and Bharatiyas, secularism means either equal treatment of all religions or the state not having anything to do with any religious activity. Jawaharlal Nehru, the "secularist" ordered that President Rajendra Prasad's speech should not be printed in any government publication or broad-cast over All India Radio! On the death of Sardar Patel in December 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru ordered that no minister or government officer should attend the funeral of Sardar Patel! N V Gadgil, Munshi and Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant defied Nehru and went to the funeral in Mumbai. Nehru also saw to it that Dr. Rajendra Prasad was not cremated or a memorial built for him in Delhi. No wonder that Nehru's successors did not allow a memorial for P V Narasimha Rao in Delhi). That is Nehruvian "secularism" and decency!)

13. We are reproducing Kulapathi K M Munshiji's short narration of the Somnath Affair in his book, "Pilgrimage to Freedom".

"When Junagadh fell, Sardar Patel, as Deputy Prime Minister, pledged the Government of India to the reconstruction of the historical Temple of Somnath. The Cabinet, Jawaharlal presiding, decided to reconstruct the Temple at Government cost. But Gandhiji advised Sardar not to have the Temple reconstructed at government cost and suggested that sufficient money should be collected from the people for this purpose. Sardar accepted this advice.

The government of India appointed me as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the reconstruction of the Temple, and I had also a hand in preparing the trust Deed and participated in implementing the scheme.

Jawaharlal, more than once, criticized me for working for the reconstruction of the temple, and I had to point out to him in a long letter that everything was done from the very beginning in accordance with the decision of the Cabinet taken under his guidance.

My correspondence with the Prime Minister was no secret to Rajendra Prasad. He promised that he would come and install the deity, whatever the attitude of the Prime Minister, and added: "I would do the same with a mosque or a church if I were invited". This, he held, was the core of Indian secularism. Our State is neither religious nor anti-religious.

My foreboding proved correct. When it was announced that Rajendra Prasad was attending the inauguration of the Somnath Temple, Jawaharlal vehemently protested against his going to Somnath. But Rajendra Prasad kept his promise.

His speech at the time of the installation of the deity was published in all the newspapers.( Under direction from Jawaharlal Nehru the speech was cut out from the official organs like the All India radio) The speech is a masterpiece of literature by any standard. It briefly traced the role which the Temple had played in the past, analysed the true role of religion and took a pledge for the future".

I shall give here only two passages which I have translated from the original Hindi:

"Even as the Creator of the Universe, Brahma, resides in the navel of Lord Vishnu, similarly in the heart of man reside the creative urge and faith, and these surpass in power all the armaments, all the armies and all the emperors of the world.

In that era, India had been a treasure-house of gold and silver ... centuries ago, the major portion of the gold of the world was in the temples of India. It is my view that the reconstruction of the Somnath temple will be complete on that day when not only a magnificent edifice will arise on this foundation but the mansion of India's prosperity will be ready- that prosperity of which the ancient temple of Somnath was a symbol."

Historian Muhammad Nazim in his book: The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Cambridge 1931.

What motivated Mahmud of Ghazni to destroy Somnath:

The destruction of the temple of Somnath was looked upon as the crowning glory of Islam over idolatry, and Sultan Mahmud as the champion of the Faith, received the applause of all in the Muslim world. One poet outdid another in extolling the iconoclasm of Mahmud. Shykh Faridu'd Din Attar said that the Sultan preferred to be an idol breaker rather than an idol seller. While rejecting the offer of the Hindus to ransom the idol of Somnath with its weight in gold, Mahmud is supposed to have said, "I am afraid that on the Day of Judgment when all the idolaters are brought into the presence of Allah, he would say: bring Adhar and Mahmud together, one was the idol maker,the other idol seller". Adhar or Ezra the uncle of Abaham, according to the Quran, made his living by carving idols.

"Secularist" Jawaharlal Nehru negates truth:

On the other hand, Jawaharlal Nehru, in a speech at Panjim, now Panaji, Goa in 1963, observed that the conflicts with Islam in north India specially were not religious conflicts, but political conflicts of kings wanting to conquer India. Religious conflicts were hardly any and Islam also began to be accepted as a religion of India!

In a letter dated 26-04-1932, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to his daughter, Indira:

"You will find that after Islam began for many hundred years Musalmans lived in all parts of India in perfect peace with their neighbours. (What a lie! Muslim-Hindu riots and battles raged in India for hundreds of years, when Nehru was writing his "Letters to his Daughter). They were welcomed when they came as traders and encouraged to settle down.

The works and views of Prof. Nazim as well as those of Al-Beruni leave no doubt that Mohmud Ghazni was driven by religious fanaticism. That greed and cruelty were only accompanying motives. Why should Nehru, a Hindu and a Brahmin to boot, conceal the fanaticism of an invader, whose own people like these scholars are candid in their praise of the desecration int eh cause of Allah? Surely Nehru' contention was anti- Hindu.

(Source: Hindu Masjids by Praful Goradia, former Rajya Sabha Member)

14. The question that must be now asked is how was the restoration of the Somnath temple considered self-respecting and a matter of historic justice then and why is the restoration now of Sri Rama's temple at his Janmasthan in Ayodhya facing so much obstruction and difficulty. The reasons are simple. The Muslims then ie soon after Independence (1947) were clearly seen as guilty of asserting that they were a separate nation and that India should be partitioned to create the Islamic state of Pakistan as a home-land for them. They could not deny the fact of desecration by Islamic rulers in this country of thousands of temples, the most living one being Somnath which was repeatedly razed to the ground by Muslim rulers as repeatedly as it was restored and resurrected by resolute Hindus. At that time, the great patriot and strong national leader who was not shy of saying that he was a Bharatiya, a Hindu Sardar Patel was alive and was the Deputy Prime Minister and the entire Congress Party stood by him despite Jawaharlal Nehru's vacillations and doubts bordering on hostility to the reconstruction of the temple. Mahatma Gandhi also blessed this project as a matter of national honour. Secondly, at the time of the Independence, communists and their fellow travelers were discredited for the support they gave to the two-nation theory and creation of Pakistan. Much worse, they took to arms to overthrow the newly independent Government of India, characterizing it as a stooge of Anglo-American imperialism. They could not dare to oppose the restoration of Somnath. That was why the "mosque" that was built on the very site of the idol could be removed and relocated at another place and the Somnath Linga could be reinstalled and the shrine reconstructed with glory and love with contributions from all over India. Sardar Patel's death (15 Dec 1950) and the progressive debasement of the idea of secularism to one of pleasing and appeasing Muslims for their votes and the rise of the casteist regional parties all of which are competing with the Congress party for the votes of the minority, the hostility of Muslims to Hinduism and to the true statement of their history and their restoration of the desecrated and destroyed temples, are the reasons why Hindu Masjids (i.e temples on the destroyed sites of which Masjids had been fashioned from some of the temple parts themselves) are still standing, as memorials to the conquests of Islam and defeat of Hindus. Also, although the communists are splintered into eight or more parties and groups, they are entrenched in several universities, electronic and print media and in government departments and some of them have infiltrated into some Ministries. They are consistently with Muslims in everyone of their actions opposed to Hindus heritage, culture, dharma and nationalism. That is why the reconstruction of Rama's temple in Ramajanmasthan in Ayodhya has become difficult and delayed. The report on the deep penetration radar survey of the ground on which the "Babri" structure once stood, carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India is with the Allahabad High Court. It is believed to establish the existence of ruins of temple(s) below the floor. If the court ventures to bring the report into public view, then the monstrous deed of Mogul soldier Mir Baqui will go to condemn the desecrators and the falsifiers of history and the treacherous stand of "secularists" and resident non- Indians (RNIs). As surely as Somnath was rebuilt, so would a glorious temple for Rama come up notwithstanding the black flag demonstrations and breast beatings of some elements in this country.

15. As long as Muslims and disintegrationists go on observaing 6th of Dec as Babri Mosque Day, we would want the people of this country, the hundreds of millions who believe in dharma and have respect for Bharath, for native faith, belief and culture to observe 5th of Dec as Somnath Day so that we will not forget the injury that has been inflicted upon Hindus not only at Somanth but in tens of thousands of places. A nation that does not recall its history and learn right lessons from it, will be doomed to disintegrate. Hence is this observance of the 5th of December as Somnath Day. We hope that loyal and patriotic citizens of this country will realise and remember the enormity of the crimes that were committed by the invaders in order to destroy the native faith, belief and culture.

16. Disintegrating forces and resident non-Indians (RNIs) are at work to negate history, to fictionalize facts and establish falsehoods as truth. The same old attitudes and belief and purposes which propounded the two-nation theory and the descendants of Direct Action (Aug 16, 1946) for the division of this historic land of Bharat and Razaakars who wanted to turn Hyderabad into an Islamic state and the same Marxist and communist faithfuls, then and now too allies of Muslim separatism and their fellow traveling "eminent" historians, "progressive" writers and human (Maoist) rights advocates are at work to denigrate Hinduism, Bharat, its culture, its heritage and destroy its integrity. Somnath is a symbol of our very existence. Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Rama and Krishna are the breath of our life. Babur was an invader; he belonged not to this country; he did not want to be buried here; he was, by his wish buried not in our Bharat but in his land of birth, outside India. Have we to memorialize such a person or his progeny and his desecrating deed? We can't, should not, memorialise those who conquered us, who desecrated and destroyed our temples, who looted our wealth, who imposed Jizya (see Wikipedia on Jizya) on us for not converting to their faith, whose converts disowned our nation-hood and still place their faith above the good of this country's people and their land which they derive their sustenance. We hope and pray that all who are born in Bharat; irrespective of their faith and past history of their forefathers, do not repudiate or denigrate their millennial heritage and acclaim Sri Ram as Imam-i-Hind and allow the restoration of Sri Ram's temple and do not glorify a foreign invader who didn't even want to be buried here.

17. May the undying spirit which repeatedly frustrated the alien, iconoclasts' resolve to root out our temples and our Dharma, the spirit that inspired us to rebuild and restore Somantha, the Shrine Eternal and the spirit of resolve that defied even Jawaharlal Nehru (who characterised Somantha's restoration as Hindu revivalism), inspire us to preserve Bharat, to protect Dharma and remember and revere our heritage to build a prosperous, powerful, intellectual and ethical nation as a Jagatguru once again.

Jai Somnath! Jai Sri Ram!

http://www.votebankpolitics.com/topics/secularism/index.html