The other day in a public forum in a topic related to BJP bashing, I wrote – BJP is saying that they will build both a Mandir (Temple) and a Masjid (Mosque) at Ayodhya. Now why should anybody have a problem with that? This should cool down the animosities between both the Hindu and the Muslim Communities forever. I know the matter is in the hands of the Supreme Court but it makes sense for the top personnel of both the communities to sit down at one place and negotiate everything peacefully.
Well those who read what I wrote were stunned; they screamed that we will have to be reborn to see if the BJP leaders will ever make such statements. I felt a bit foolish about myself, was that my illusion that I watched a senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh saying – Mandir banega aur saath mein masjid bhi (Temple will be built and so will be a Mosque)? For most of the people feeding knowingly or unknowingly on the biased English News Channel take it for granted that the BJP is a party of religious bigots, given a chance they are happy to call them as terrorists, Taliban or whatever.
I was determined to search for the Mandir and the Masjid statement and with great difficulty I could prove that I was right. And that the BJP is truly secular (or should we say ‘not communal’ as it’s only the Congress that has the exclusive rights for the tag called ‘secular’) and not what it is perceived to be by a large section of the public if you go by their statements. Here I quote the BJP President Rajnath Singh – “You may go anywhere in the world, Ram was born here. Let Ram Mandir be built in Ayodhya, after that we will work towards building a mosque (Babri Masjid) wherever you wish. We will get it done.” What can be driven from this is that the BJP has made a promise to build Ram Mandir and also the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
One more statement regarding the same is from Venkaiah Naidu, here I quote him – “The party (Congress) which had opened the locks of Ayodhya is now adopting double standards on the issue. A debate on whether there existed a Ram temple or not is frivolous as the entire world knows that the birthplace of Lord Ram is Ayodhya. We want that a Ram temple be constructed at the disputed site and a mosque by its side.”
The greatness of our media is that they will never bother to play the recent Rajnath Singh sound byte (the one that says Mandir bhi banega aur masjid bhi) repeatedly which would have only boosted communal harmony in our great country. But look at the way the same media showed the Mangalore Pub Attack (clearly an orchestrated one) and even the alleged hate speech of Varun Gandhi. The Pub attack could have lasted just a minute but it was shown in a loop as if the entire drama lasted for many hours. Don’t you think that the Media just goes overboard and directly or indirectly adds more venom than what is required?
Hindus have just one big country in India in the entire world, but the fact is that they have to suppress their feelings even here, stay under the lid, fold their hands and say that they are secular. Remember how they got humiliated with regards to the Amarnath land? Remember how the Kashmiri Pandits have been driven out? I have a strong thinking that Hindus by default are Secular; they never proselytize their religion unlike Christianity or Islam. For centuries together they have been tolerant to other religions and will remain so whether they like it or not as there is no choice.
The tag for BJP is ‘Equality for All, Appeasement for None’. If this is communal then we have got to change the meanings of all words in the dictionary. One thing looks certain that some people want ‘Problems’ to exist, so that they can drive maximum advantage of that, they will never bother about working towards the Solutions. The problem here is the Mandir-Masjid controversy which the Congress would love to see exist for a long period so that they can keep on demonizing the BJP on the same. I think it will be brilliant if we can have the grand Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and along with it the Masjid to show what real Secularism means.
Leave a Reply