Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Much has been said and written by religious zealots, including maulvis and mahants; a great deal has been conjured up by politicians; loads have been unleashed by the media, which only knows how to tease a festering sore.
Is the Ayodhya issue so intractable, so complex and so unyielding, that it eludes an honourable solution for all? To find a solution, one has to question the misgivings we harbour about the religious practices of others. One has to discard the repugnance one nurses for a fellow being born into a different faith.
What if Prophet Mohammed was born into a Hindu and Christ into a Moslem household? Could it ever happen that Muslim parents gave birth to Hindu and Hindu parents to Muslim offspring? What abridged Hindu God would that be who barely controls a hundredth fraction of our small little planet? The answers, my friends, are blowing in the wind.
A solution is possible only if a religion as a solute has the impulsion to dissolve itself into a universal solvent that has power to embrace any other solute to dissolution. Would we, therefore, be wise as Hindus to confine the boundless powers of Ishwar, as embodied in Lord Rama, to a supposed underside of Ayodhya within which other solutes fail to dissolve into? And does the Allah, as a solvent into which one such solute of Islam dissolves, possess powers enough to dissolve such other solutes to a solution?
It is not usual that a difference of opinion within one’s household would bring a quarrelsome couple to divorce. Would it, therefore, remain possible in today’s global hamlet to live in a watertight compartment based on a singular sect or faith without compassion for the other human being, merely on the ground that one’s perception to reach the Almighty has an edge over the other? The world has indeed been reduced to a village. Yet, what is amazing is that the same entity that the Almighty happens to be, continues to be viewed with perspectives so wide apart and modes so varied in attainment.
The need of the hour, therefore, is to hoist at Ayodhya an architectural marvel that is bonded as a singular edifice with a spectacular facade, a new expression of the world, with different dominating religious works of art. Integrated within its core would be a massive over-shadowing central dome of brotherhood, to symbolise the converging of the entire world into a global village. The structure would attract visitors from the world over. While its Masjid segment could face Mecca, the Mandir could face the Sun.
Can all those strident voices for once abandon primitive attitudes and pull themselves out of the present impasse by reconciling themselves to just about the only solution?
