Yes, it would seem so, if you believe what the Organiser – the official news-magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh wrote in an editorial signed by Prafulla Ketkar, ‘From Somnath to Sambhal: The Quest for Civilisational Justice’ on December 24, 2024.
This is what he wrote:
“The issue that started with a petition to survey the Shri Harihar Mandir, now structured as Jama Masjid in the historic town of (Sambhal), Uttar Pradesh, is now opening up a new debate about various Constitutional rights given to individuals and communities. Instead of limiting the debate to the Hindu-Muslim question from the pseudo-secularist prism, we need a sane and inclusive debate on the quest for ‘civilizational justice’ based on truthful ‘Itihasa’, involving all sections of society”.
This is a new term – ‘Civilisational Justice’.
A grievance masquerading as a Right.
What exactly does it mean?
How, whereof and from who does a civilisation seek justice? A civilisation is a common and shared inheritance of a community that imagines itself to be a nation. Can one political party and its cadre arrogate to themselves that they are the sole custodians of the civilisation and decide to set right its perceived or mis-perceived wrongs?
Our civilisation is essentially our history – ‘itihasa’. And what is true itihasa? Whose version of itihasa is true, and who do we believe? Yes, of course you can re-write itihasa based on new evidence? But who is digging up the evidence? There are state agencies to dig up our past and the Archeological Survey of India is the authorised agency to dig it up, not any religious bigots.
The fact that the Union government and the government of Uttar Pradesh, both of the Bharatiya Janata Party, are not only permitting the bigots but are actively encouraging them to dig up mosques, shows the perversity of the project. One more mosque destroyed, one more communal riot and more bloodshed is a badge of honour to these self-appointed custodians (‘thekedars’ is the right word) of Hindu religion who hope to remain in power as long as the Hindus and Muslims keep fighting and not ask for jobs or raise questions of livelihood.
And what kind of ‘justice’ is being talked about here. If destroying one place of worship and replacing it with another is justice, then Hindus have much to answer for, for all the Buddhist and Jain places of worship they destroyed centuries ago, before the birth of Islam and the ‘Muslim invaders’ had heard of Hindustan.
Justice, as enunciated in the Preamble to our constitution talks only in terms of ‘social, political and economic’ forms and nothing more. Fulfilling that promise is a huge challenge to any government but if you insert a new clause like ‘civilisational justice’ then the state’s job is much easier, it can let loose the dogs of war and incite people to fight for their own misconceived notions of civilisation and justice.
Obviously, it doesn’t make any sense for ‘the present to take revenge on its past’. But it is a hugely profitable industry for political parties and leaders who can provide neither social nor economic justice, as mandated by the constitution. Nothing works better than fear and hatred in politics and the masses will always believe what scares them most is not the fact that they will be hungry and jobless tomorrow and the day after.
Let us go back to Prafulla Ketkar, the proponent of this term and ask, so what after you destroy the Jama Masjid in Sambhal and re-build the Shri Harihar Mandir in its place; does the newly restored god provide food, shelter, clothing, and jobs to all the poor and destitute Hindus in that town? How exactly will the new god provide justice to anyone?
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Let us assume that the Hindus in Sambhal succeed in destroying the mosque and put their own god, will it be a just god or a vengeful god who will be demanding more blood in many more disputed sites. Already the Gyanvapi Mosque in Kashi, the Krishna Janmabhoomi site in Mathura, the Mazaar of Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer Sharif have become flash points of dispute. Some activists claim that there are about 30,000 disputed sites but a committee of the Sangh Parivar led by Arun Shourie has reportedly trimmed it down to 18,000 sites. One must be grateful for small mercies these days.
What kind of a civilisation is that which seeks to destroy thousands of places of worship and rebuild new temples in their places?
Firstly, one wonders whether the editor of Organiser has any idea about our civilisation, our Hindu dharma. Most scholars proficient on that subject believe that translating ‘dharma’ as ‘religion’ is a poor and inadequate expression of that vastly rich and layered notion. Dharma does not refer to any god or revealed religion but refers to a morally self-sustaining universe. If this is our dharma, how can we seek it in some temple or in some stone-god? Destroying mosques and building temples is a banal desecration of our dharma. But it has become a matter of pride and conquest over a community that once ruled us, not the immediate past rulers – the Britishers – but the ones before them, not all of them, not Shivaji but Aurangzeb, because all the Muslims of India are Aurangzeb’s aulad (children), from Kerala to Kashmir, and from Punjab to Assam. And pray, who are the children of Ghaznavi and Ghori? How long back will you go to seek justice and from whom?
It’s necessary to remind ourselves, for the one-hundredth time, what Atal Bihari Vajpayee advised his chief minister in Gujarat in 2002, “Rajdharm se badkar koi dharm nahi hai (there is no greater dharma than rajdharma)” and that dharma requires the ruler to protect everyone irrespective of their religion or caste. When you have no sense of that supreme Dharma or morality, what religion are you trying to protect? What ‘civilisational justice’ are you seeking, for justice is inherently a moral act.
Secondly, whose civilisation are we talking about? Is this heritage a truly shared one? Does the nation’s collective consciousness feel that it belongs to them? Does the majority, that is left out of the ‘Savarna’ category, feel any sense of pride in this heritage? Read Kancha Ilaiah’s book Why I am not a Hindu – A Shudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy. That’s an important voice the Hindus cannot ignore, particularly the custodians of Hindutva.
Finally, let us not forget that our civilisation hardly offered any justice to the majority of Hindus, the Shudras, and Ati-Shudras, that they should now stand up and fight for it.
Ravi Joshi was formerly in the cabinet secretariat.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
