Mass of Faith

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF Ayodhya has two major dimensions to it––a historical one and a psychological one. The two are not unconnected, but it is still analytically use­ful to distinguish between the two.

The assessment of the historical signifi­cance of Ayodhya requires a few words of introduction.

There can be several perspectives on the history of India: a Hindu perspective, a Muslim perspective, a British perspective, a secular perspective, and even a communist one. Even more perspectives could be identified, but we will restrict ourselves to these five for now. I shall revert to the Hindu perspective later, and would like to begin by presenting the Muslim, British, secular, and communist perspectives first.

According to the Muslim perspective, India was a benighted land before the arrival of Islam, where people were wallowing in ignorance and paganism. Islam brought true religion to the subcon­tinent, and Islamic rule over India enabled the country, not wholly but substantially, to be brought within the Islamic dispensation for about 800 years. The British intervention prevented the natural con­summation of Islamic rule over India, which is now concentrated in the east and west of the subcontinent. This geographical retreat is suggestive of the migration of the prophet from Mecca to Medina, and Islamic rule is destined to prevail over the Indian subcontinent.

According to the British perspective on Indian history, the Brit­ish came to India to trade but, when they found the country in a chaotic state in the 18th century, they gradually established their rule over it, and modernised it. They continued their rule until the Indians were ready for self-government. By the time they were ready for it, however, the two major religious communities in India, the Hindu and the Muslim, were at odds, so the country had to be partitioned when the British left India in 1947, having ful­filled their historic role in creating a modern nation called India.

According to the secular version of Indian history, India has been a palimpsest. Various peoples have entered it at various pe­riods of its history, and have contributed equally to the evolution of its religion and culture over time, right from the coming of the Aryans to the arrival of Islam in medieval times, and the arrival of the West in modern times. All these threads have been woven into the tapestry of Indian culture, which is essentially secular in nature. This was decisively affirmed in the Indian Constitution, when it was adopted in 1950.

According to the communist perspective of Indian history, India had been a feudal society until the coming of the British, who laid the basis of a modern economy. This would gradually lead to a class struggle in which the Communist Party hopes to prevail as the representative of the proletariat.

The point of these thumbnail sketches of the Muslim, British, secular, and communist perspectives is that one cannot appreci­ate the significance of Ayodhya from any of them. In order to truly appreciate Ayodhya’s significance, one has to look at the events, currently unfolding there, from a Hindu perspective.

According to the Hindu perspective, Hindu religion and cul­ture constitute the underlying framework of the country, which has been periodically enriched and enlarged by the arrival of various peoples. All these people found their place within this culture until the eighth century. The arrival of the Muslims, how­ever, from the eighth century onwards, constitutes a glaring ex­ception which continues to this day. India lost political control over its destiny after the firm establishment of Muslim rule over India around 1200 CE and, from then onwards, Hindus remained a subject people for the next 600 years, over the course of which they were subject to several atrocities and humiliations. The loss of actual political power by the Hindus led them to embrace the figure of Ram as their psychological saviour during this period of subjugation. The demolition of the temple at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya, in 1528 by Mir Baqi, in the wake of the Mughal invasion of India by Babur, epitomised the blow to their psyche.

It is telling that when the Ram temple was destroyed, members of the warrior class who hailed from the surrounding villages, and traced their ancestry to Ram, foreswore the use of leather shoes, para­sols, and headgear until the temple was restored. This phenomenon represents the tip of the iceberg of the Hindu sentiments which were involved and shared more broadly by the people of India.

The rebuilding of the Ram temple, therefore, is not only a vin­dication of their vow after almost 500 years (496 to be exact!), but also the redemption of the Hindu community from the trauma of Muslim rule to which it had been subjected during this period.

We started by probing the historical dimension of the ques­tion, but such an examination has led us to the door of the psy­chological dimension.

The psychological dimension of the study of these events has often been ignored in the study of India, because the accounts of the various historical vicissitudes of Indian history tend to be narrated in an almost clinical manner. It is striking that, when Pandit Nehru describes the effect of the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene in 1920, he highlights the psychological impact of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian people. He writes: “And then came Gandhi. Political freedom took new shape then and acquired a new content. Much that he said we only partially accepted or sometimes did not accept at all. But all this was secondary. The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth … it was a psychological change, almost as if some expert in psychoanalytical method had probed deep into the patient’s past, found out the origins of his complexes, exposed them to his view, and thus rid him of that burden.” (The Discovery of India, p 311)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impact on the Hindu mind is probably comparable to the impact of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian mind. Thus, it is arguable that the rebuilding of the Ram temple at Ayodhya has assuaged, in some way, the trauma of Muslim rule over the Indian people, and that this might be the true significance of Ayodhya.

Further psychological examination of the situation offers more potential in­sights. It could be that, after almost a thou­sand years of foreign domination, the Hindus, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are now ready to become a success-oriented people, after having been a sacrifice-oriented people for centuries. It is obvious that, when the political odds were against the Hindus, they had to remain a sacrifice-oriented people in order to continue their un­equal, but ultimately successful, struggle against foreign rule down the ages. But now, when they can feel that the period is finally over—a feeling they were de­prived of in a secular India—they feel freer to work out their destiny.

Perhaps this point could be elabo­rated in the light of the different psychologies associated with the pursuit of piety and the pursuit of power. Hindus had become a piety-oriented people over the past thousand years, as a result of the loss of political power under foreign rule. The establishment of the Ram temple at Ayodhya could well signal a psychic shift towards their becoming a more power-oriented people as they celebrate their transition from India to Bharat.

About The Author

Arvind Sharma

Arvind Sharma is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Montreal. He is the author of , among other titles, Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought and Hinduism and Its Sense of History

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