A recent interview of alleged historian Ramchandra Guha by leftist journalist Karan Thapar was published on 20 December 2023. The entire conversation is around “Hindu-fication of political discourse”, following an article Guha wrote in the Kolkata newspaper, Telegraph.
Talking about the “tamasha” around the Ram temple construction, Guha says, “The tamasha around the Ram temple in Ayodhya should worry Indian citizens who believe in democracy and pluralism.” He also adds that the size and scale are signs of “megalomania” and the temple is “a monument to the supremacy of Hinduism”.
Describing the Babri masjid, Guha said, “The Babri Masjid was constructed in the 16th century, so it was a symbol of military and religious triumphalism consistent with the morales of the medieval period. The Ram temple is being constructed in the 21st century, it’s a symbol of religious and indeed political triumphalism inconsistent with constitutional values, I think that’s very very important to underline. When the Masjid was demolished, there were various, in my view quite honourable and creative alternatives offered. Someone said that given the enormous loss of life that had preceded the demolition of the masjid and all the riots in all, the India which we may talk about, some people said, there should be a hospital there for the poor. Others said there could be a children’s park, yet others said I think this was a proposal of the late philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi, that there should be a Ram Raheem Darwaza symbolising peace and harmony and fraternity between Hindus and Muslims. Now all those in my view quite admirable suggestions were rejected in favour of a temple for shall we say the victorious and the triumphant side uh and again the choice was, what do you do, you have a small shrine, you make it a public spectacle, you call thousands of people including as we are now seeing the richest industrialists, the most famous film stars, etc, you telecast it to all of India.”
Calling the reshaping of Hinduism for politics, he said, “This is an important point one must make. What the BJP and Hindutva are doing is the reshaping the nature of Hinduism. Hinduism is not a congregational faith. It is not, we do not have a holy text like the Bible, we do not have a holy city like Mecca. We don’t all have to congregate in our thousands to show how devout we are. Hinduism has been historically a disaggregated decentralized faith with people can worship in their homes, in their Puja room, in the local temple, to a local God, to a village deity, to a family deity. Now this is an attempt to make a consolidated Hinduism for the political benefit of the BJP.”
“We don’t have to congregate in thousands to show how devout we are” says @Ram_Guha – he further adds – we are not a congregational faith.
Ok सीडीए बाबू, कुंभ का मेला सुने हो क्या? pic.twitter.com/uxIceQI0ci
— Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) December 21, 2023
Guha surely is a Hindu in Name only, as he is unaware of the congregations of Hindus during Kumbh Mela in the north or the Mahamaham in the south or the recent festivals of Karthikai Deepam at Tiruvannamalai which saw lakhs of Hindus participate in the festivities or the Surasamharam festival at Tiruchendur.
Throughout the video, both Karan and Guha are seen melting down with Guha saying, “Hindu Faith does not require a huge monument worship”; Karan Thapar’s meltdown over the Ram temple being bigger than Jesus’s birthplace is very visible. He says, “Something else is very apparent about the Ram Temple, it’s going to be the biggest grandest monument to Ram ever built in India that is the clear expressed intention of the BJP and that is very different as I noticed to the Church of the Nativity which is the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem nothing is likely to outshine the ram temple in India but the Bethlehem Church is a small and architecturally unimpressive compared to say St Peter’s in the Vatican to the Hagia Sophia in Old Constantinople and indeed even to the Pisa Cathedral built in Yamoussoukro in far away Côte d’Ivoire. Those are huge monumental pieces but this will be even grander and very different to the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was born, so that’s another contrast, isn’t it? Jesus’s place is small inconspicuous and hardly noticeable; the Ram Temple will be very different.”
Guha “cautions” India, urging the nation to steer clear of the divisive majoritarian trajectory that has caused turmoil in Sri Lanka, where Sinhala Buddhists sought to establish dominance over Tamil Hindus. He said, “India’s example is somewhat akin to Sri Lanka. It had an educated professional class, it had very very high rates of literacy, low infant mortality, excellent indicators of health, education, fabulous destination for tourists, with its ancient sites as well as its coast and then the Civil War happened. Why the Civil War happened, because the Sinhala speaking and Buddhist afferring Buddhist faith afferring majority said, we must put the Tamils who are the Hindus in their place and imposed their language Sinhala, and their faith Buddhism on the whole of the island. If that Civil War had not happened, I am convinced that Sri Lanka would have become one other South Asian Southeast Asian tiger, it would have had the levels of high standards of living and a free society of the kind that South Korea and Taiwan now enjoy. It may even have been the case that the software boom that has occurred in my hometown Bangalore could have happened in Sri Lanka because of the high level levels of education, because of their high degree of gender equality. So that is really the cautionary example we should think about. “
Towards the end of the interview, Thapar quotes Guha’s article where Guha states that he cannot celebrate the new temple. He states: “As a Hindu myself, I cannot bring myself to celebrate this new temple.” The article cites two reasons for this – “he lived in North India during those bloody years when the Babri masjid was destroyed and thousands of innocent people, mostly Muslims, lost their lives in frenzied rioting.” When asked about it, Guha explains, “I lived in North India from 1988 to 1994. This was a time when the Ayodhya movement was at its most intense, its most active, its most passionate and it spawned a series of riots all across northern and western India. It polarized as you know families communities Villages and I visited Bhagalpur after the 1989 riots and that was, I think it remains the most troubling and traumatic experience of my whole life and I’ve had others too I mean I’ve been in Bastar in the midst of the civil war between naxalites and the Indian State and the kind of Insurgency and the suppression by the state. I’ve seen tribals squeezed by both sides and all the suffering and so on but that was really troubling and traumatic and the slogans during that the rioters who were wanted, the people who wanted the Ram temple built and angry young men were going around looking for Muslims to attack shouting Pakistan ya Kabristan. That was the slogan of that time. You run away to Pakistan or we will off with your heads. We will kill you, we will send you to the graveyard. Now this is the background to it. It, of course, it mystifies me how the Supreme Court could reward the party that had led to this bloodshed and mayhem, not just the destruction of a particular structure, I mean I don’t mourn that structure that’s evidently unmournable the Babri masjid but the thousands of lives lost, the hundreds of thousands of people displaced, families that poison suspicion hatred communal antagonism in the minds of millions of people tens of millions of people across Northern and Western India, that’s and what will this do to reconcile any of that so I can’t see it, I mean I can’t welcome it frankly.”
The second reason he wrote in the article as to why he would not celebrate the temple, was, “I do not believe that to affirm or proclaim my faith I must do so in front of, or inside, a colossal edifice costing thousands of crores of rupees to build.” In the interview, when asked about it, Guha said, “I think faith is a personal thing, but it comes not just from growing up in the family I did but being also from being a lifelong student of Gandhi and his ways and Gandhi was deeply religious.” He also adds an aesthetic reason for his not wanting to celebrate the temple, he says, “We go and visit the Brihadeeshwara temple a thousand years later for its beauty, for its architectural beauty, you don’t have to be Hindu. Will people be going to this temple a thousand years later? One can’t say, I won’t be around, my descendants won’t be around. And then I say it a democratic concern that this is not the country, this does not represent the country that the makers of our Constitution, that the leaders of our freedom struggle wished to build.”
As for Ramchandra Guha, it is ironic that someone with Bhagwan Ram’s name can have such bizzare thoughts about the temple being built itself, goes to show the rot leftist ideology can have on someone.
The entire interview gives the impression that Guha and Thapar used the platform to express their frustration and apprehension about the growing popularity of the temple and the Hindu awakening, evidently because they, as Hindus In Name Only (HINO), do not align with the more pronounced Hindu identity embraced by the majority of the country.
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