A suggested stance on Kashi & Mathura

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*** Extracts from Koenraad Elst’s “Ayodhya & After”, re. Kashi and Mathura (emphasis added)

The Hindu struggle is about cultural self-awareness and self-esteem, not about brick structures.

However, there may be a case for insisting on the hand-over of two central sacred places, those of Krishna and of Shiva, that are occupied by mosques, and the very special case of the Ram Janmabhoomi.

People with a very short historic consciousness think that everything that happened before the Indians said goodbye to the British and installed a British legal-political system for themselves, should not have any consequences today. It is time-barred, they say. But who are they to rule that history should be held to be of no consequence? Perhaps the Hindus do think that certain historical wrongs have been so vast as well as profound, that they need righting even today. Especially because the ideology that motivated these wrongs is not yet a part of history.

…Some gesture of finishing this history of temple-destructions and attempted destruction of Hindu Dharma, should be made. 

In my opinion, the Hindus should not demand the handover of the Kashi Vishvanath (Shiva) temple site and the Krishna Janmastham temple site from the state. But they may demand it from the Muslim community.

And they should make it a demand not for a building, but for a gesture. There should be not a trace of a threat of forcible take-over.

…..The same would have counted in principle for the Ram Janmabhoomi. However, there the situation has been slightly more advanced : in 1949 it already became a Hindu temple again. And it is not the Hindus who have been demanding a hand-over, it is actually the Muslim groups like BMAC, BMMCC, IUML, Jama’at Islami. It is unbelievably arrogant that some Muslims could be against the hand-over of even one of the thousands of stolen Hindu places, and still have dared to demand the hand- over of that one mosque that they let slip through their fingers in 1949. …

To sum up : on the Ram Janmabhoomi, the Hindus should concede nothing. It is their own temple again since 1949, and if they want to architecturally redesign it along the lines of traditional Mandir architecture, then that is an entirely internal affair of the Hindus. On Kashi Vishvanath and Krishna Janmasthan, the Hindus may choose to leave it at the present compromise situation (temple rebuilt next to mosque), but it is not unreasonable and they are within their rights if they make a moral demand on the Muslim community to return these two sacred places.

..For the rest, these places are occasions for a thousandfold generous gesture of forgive and forget.

***

You can read the full chapter here: 3. Righting the wrongs of history (Kashi & Mathura). Summary of the historical question (Ayodhya) .

The chapters are from Koenraad Elst’s “Ayodhya And After” (Issues Before Hindu Society) Koenraad Elst, published by Voice of India, New Delhi, India