The August 5 ceremony that will take place in Ayodhya is the inauguration of the first significant monument of the Hindu nation. The BJP and Sangh Parivar are determined to create their own history and monuments, writes Saba Naqvi senior journalist and the author of ‘Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi’ in The Indian Express.
She writes, “It would be a mistake to see the Ayodhya ceremony as a mere diversionary tactic in the midst of a pandemic and a sinking economy. For the architects of the Hindu Rashtra, it is a day to blow the conch shells and rejoice. The fact that this will happen on August 5 that marks the anniversary of the abolition of Article 370, that they have viewed as an abomination, is a matter of celebration and not a cause of concern for them.”
Ms. Naqvi quotes V D Savarkar, “It was the “Prince of Ayodhya” who established the Hindu nation. “The day when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable… that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu people,”
Savarkar would say that a Hindu was someone for whom India was both the pitrabhumi (land of ancestors) and punya bhumi (holy land), by which definition Muslims and Christians were excluded, says the senior journalist in her articles.
Ayodhya lies in the region once known for a cultural effervescence often described as Ganga-Jumni tehzeeb, that sounds like an outdated cliché today. For one, more rivers run through the region besides the Ganga and Yamuna. There is the Saryu along which Ayodhya stands and the Gomti that cuts through Lucknow. Faizabad, the town to which Ayodhya is attached, was the first capital of the Nawabs of Awadh, who patronised music, the arts, the dance form of kathak, and made donations to many temples. Ayodhya’s pre-eminent temple to date has been the Hanumangarhi, whose construction was supported with several revenue land grants by the nawabs.
Recalling her first trip to Ayodhya in November 1992, weeks before the Babri mosque was brought down, Ms. Naqvi says it was in the backdrop of the Ram janmabhoomi movement, that she began her reporting career travelling across India searching for the survival or death of syncretic traditions and a composite culture.
The Awadh region, she says, has birthed many cultures and contesting memories, from a nawab who would compose a dance drama called Radha Kanhaiyya ka Kissa, to the great singer of thumris and ghazals named Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, whom we know as Begum Akhtar.
Now the metaphorical Prince of Ayodhya returns and a grand symbol of the recast Hindu nation shall dominate the skyline.
