The decade of the 1980s saw a drastic downturn in the direction of peace and progress. The communal forces found a new tool to instill hate by misusing the history related to India's ancient holy places. There was a Rath Yatra led by Lal Krishna Advani for building a "grand temple"  for Lord Ram, precisely at the spot where Babri Masjid stood for over five centuries. In the light of rising tempo of this divisive issue, the Indian Parliament passed an act as per which the places of worship’s nature and character could not be changed as it existed on August 15 1947.

The Supreme Court judgment on the Babri Masjid dispute case appreciated this law as the basic part of India’s Constitution as an important step in maintaining peace in future. The act of demolition of Babri mosque was declared as a crime and also judgment opined that there was no evidence of a temple below the mosque. An  article in Sabrang  says “A top-notch archeologist, Prof Supriya Varma, who served as an observer during the excavation of the Babri Masjid site in early 2000s along with another archeologist, Jaya Menon, has controversially stated that not only was there “no temple under the Babri Masjid”, if one goes “beyond” the 12th century to 4th to 6th century, i.e. the Gupta period, “there seems to be a Buddhist stupa.”

At the time of demolition led by the Hindu right wing, the mob shouted that “Yeh to kewal jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura baaki hai” (This is just  a teaser, Kashi- Mathura will be next). A couple of years ago the Kashi- Mathura mosques were brought to the fore for surveying despite the The Place of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991 being in place. Former Chief Justice of India D V Chandrachud opened the floodgates by opining that the Act does not cover surveys and Hindus have the right to know the ancestry of the place. This came as a big boost for using distorted and make-believe history to further the communal agenda.

Distorting history 

The forces, which had stated that if Ayodhya, Kashi (Varanasi) and Mathura are given to them, they will close their demands for other places of Hindu worship lying under mosques. Currently over 12 survey cases are pending in the courts. The other issues like Kamaal Maula Mosque, Baba Budan Giri Dargah, Haji Malang Dargah and many more mosques are being pursued for claims by Hindus. There is a long list. As Sambhal Jama Masjid came under hammer, the centuries old Ajmer Dargah is also being claimed by Hindu Sena, which has sprung up to claim more and more sites to be given over to Hindus.

There have been numerous examples of distorting history and multiple reasons for destroying temples, plundering wealth, humiliating the rival king being the main.

If we go a bit back in history the major cause of destroying Buddhist vihara was religion. Swami Vivekananda shared the fact that, “The temple of Jagannath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them…”. Swami Dayanand Saraswati while describing the contribution of Shankaracharya in Satyarth Prakash wrote: “For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are nowadays dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole here and there under the ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken.”

The Buddhist narrative 

According to the Buddhist narrative of ancient Indian history the last of Maurya dynasty’s Buddhist king (Ashoka being one), Brihadratha was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin in 184 BCE thus ending the rule of a renowned Buddhist dynasty and establishing the rule of Shunga dynasty. DN Jha, outstanding ancient Indian historian, referred to Divyavadana, a Buddhist Sanskrit work from the early centuries which described how Buddhist and Jain religious places were destroyed by Pushyamitra Shunga, a great persecutor of Buddhists.

“He is said to have marched out with a large army, destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing monks as far as Sakala, now known as Sialkot, where he announced a prize of one hundred dinars for every head of a Shramana (opposed to Vedas).”

Jha tells us that at Mathura, a flourishing town in western Uttar Pradesh during the Kushana period, some present-day Brahminical temples, such as those of Bhuteshwar and Gokarneshwar, were Buddhist sites in the ancient period. 

The history which has been made the part of popular common sense is the one propagated by Hindu nationalist forces. The roots of this lie in the British policy of ‘divide and rule’ which promoted communal historiography. In this the kings are presented as representatives of their religion. The focus is mainly on the medieval period where many Muslim kings ruled. During this period many temples were plundered for wealth and many others were demolished to humiliate the defeated kings.

Opening a Pandora's Box

What is forgotten and erased from memory is that even Aurangzeb gave donations to Hindu temples (Kamakhaya Devi temple and Mahakal temple in Ujjain, being few of them) and Hindu kings like Raja Harshdev appointed a special officer (Devottapatan Nayak) to plunder the wealth of temples (Kalhan, Rajtarangini). Maratha kings destroying a temple in Srirangapatna are put under the carpet. During this period religion had very little role to play unlike the post Mauryan period when to wipe out Buddhism the Buddha Viharas were destroyed.

Indian polity and judiciary have opened a Pandora’s Box which is deepening the religious divides in society. What is the need of the hour? To search for temple underneath every mosque or to build the ‘temples of Modern India’ as defined by Jawaharlal Nehru, “while starting the construction of the Bhakra Nangal Dam to describe scientific research institutes, steel plants, power plants, dams being launched in India after independence to jumpstart scientific and industrial progress.” Which direction India will choose will define its destiny.

(The writer, a former IIT Bombay professor, is Chairman, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai. Views expressed are the author's own.)