The politics of phobia

The politics of phobia
Bharat Gupt

Harbans Mukhia’s `Politics as frenzy' (December 28) is the usual plea for the great need to whitewash history and to blame politicians, the BJP in particular, of arousing frenzy for mobilisation. How else could he proclaim that "historical evidence regarding the existence of a Ram Temple beneath the Babri Masjid is not the issue: it is one of political direction and social vision."

For all these years we have been told that India never recorded facts but churned out myths, and now a search for facts is to be abandoned for new social myths based on suppression. How many histories are we going to push under the carpet? The subjugation Australia, Americas and Africa by colonial Europe, of Druids by Romans, of Greeks by Turks and so on and on.

The solution lies not in suppressing historical wrongs, but in admitting mistakes and also strongly emphasising that nobody can seek compensation for the ancestral misdeeds from people of the present day. However, when suppression becomes the order of the day, it invites the inevitable reaction, even as frenzy.

Whatever mobilisation the Sangh Parivar has been able to manage on the Ayodhya issue is a result of the unfounded phobia created by the Congress Party and the Left that any public discussion, even in academic circles, about the history of Islamic iconoclasm against Hindu temples and culture cannot but result in witch-hunting of Indian Muslims.

This phobia gave ample cause for the BJP to term it as Muslim protectionism and cash it for the consolidation of the Hindu vote. The unfortunate thing is that the Congress and the Marxists still persist in whipping up this phobia just as they believe that talking or teaching religions (please note there are no religious studies here from school to universities) can only lead to riots.

Islamic iconoclasm, which does not mean historical plundering only, but also the present day Islamic fundamentalist ideology knocking at our borders day and night, of not accepting iconophilia (not just of Hinduism but of all kinds in its broadest cultural and philosophical sense) needs to be addressed, discussed and engaged in India.

This does not at all mean seeking revenge, compensation or demonising the Muslims but it certainly means acceptance of a modernity and plurality that respects idolatry. The Marxist lobby with its own prejudice against religion as "the opium of the masses" finds no utility in such discussions and continues with the usual phobia-mongering.

If in the past decades, a calm scrutiny of Islamic iconoclasm and its doctrine of exclusivist theocratic statehood had been undertaken without the generation of this politically motivated fear-syndrome, results would have been much better for an ideological adjustment between the Muslims and Hindus because neither the majority of Indian Muslims support iconoclasm (or even wish to ostracise the Hindu modes of worship as so many of them have already accepted these in Sufi syncretism) nor are the majority of Hindus so moved by the ancient sites to become vengeful.