Opinion Suhas Palshikar writes: The erasures that made January 22 possible – collective amnesia of December 6, 1992

The first, in tune with the more general social tendencies at work currently, is about the erasure of plurality. Ram as an icon, as a myth, and for many, as a deity, often constituted many images, meanings and pathways. No wonder, there could be a treatise on ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas,’ which we have abandoned to amnesia. In older times, devotees and poets felt free to shape their own Ram. From a daunting Prabhu Ramachandra to a more affectionate Siya Ram, many Rams glided the cultural imagination and religious ideas that emerged from the deity.

Not just the geography that he was supposed to have traversed, even the appreciation or criticism about his deeds — such as the killing of Shambuka or the treatment of Sita — varied from place to place and from generation to generation. Today, a brand new Ram which perhaps does not have any connect to this long history of the mythology associated with him is being presented. The grand temple and its new occupant are de-contextualised and cut off from the vast plurality of ideas that both critics and devotees associated with Ram. This then is the primary erasure so that the new Ram can become the representative of something that refutes the plural cultural inheritance of the Ram of yesteryear.

This spirit of plurality is actually not being denied. In fact, sometimes it’s trumpeted, superficially but vociferously. Yet, it’s being exorcised. Once this spirit is erased, it becomes easy to create a collective psyche that automatically begins to uphold homogeneity and produces suspicion about the coexistence of difference and the possibility of syncretism. It is unthinkable today to imagine the acceptance of a critique such as Ambedkar’s The Riddles of Hinduism. We are also a long way away from Gandhi’s Ram. The coexistence of different ideas of religion and god that Gandhi’s Ramdhun proudly propagated is now alien. Literally so. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the Hindu Ram is clearly demarcated from the mosque that is said to be coming up at some distance.

The Allahabad High Court ruling that the SC set aside, its legal limitations notwithstanding, had the courage to ensure the coexistence of faiths despite their history of acrimony. The apex court, while delivering a not-so-legally convincing ruling, ensured that it would rather swim with the tide of separation instead of reminding the nation of the constitutional obligation to respect coexistence. The new Ram represents a new era of official and conveniently legalised ghettoisation rather than the challenge of coexistence with a possibility of a connect not just between ideas but also between communities and religions. The second erasure is the erasure of coexistence — as reality, as a dream, as a constitutional objective anda democratic challenge.

This erasure was already in the air for some time. Stories of non-Hindus being hounded out of Garba celebrations had been trickling in. We have been witnessing fierce campaigns against co-mingling of youth from different religious communities accompanied by occasional reports of economic boycotts or appeals for the same against the minority community. The new Ram unfortunately builds on this legacy. The salutation “Jai Ram ji ki’ was long replaced by the more militant Jai Shri Ram. With the electrifying celebrations of the new temple, that militancy now constitutes the core platform of identity associated with Ram.

Since the 1990s, spaces of coexistence have been shrinking from our public sphere and private conscience. The temple celebrates the exclusivity of the “Hindu” identity — its superiority over anything else.

That takes us to the third and perhaps most tragic erasure. The collective amnesia of December 6, 1992: Nobody vandalised a structure that day. The new temple is historic in this respect. It not just absolves the society or any group or party of criminal vandalisation, it simply erases that fact from history. Public opinion surveys after 1992 — even up to 1996—showed that among Hindus, there was a sense of guilt, an admission that something wrong was done, although they would want the Ram Temple at the disputed site. As time passed by, our politics made sure that the guilt was softened and then pardoned. But if there is any single most effective instrument that makes the new temple guilt-free, it is the SC ruling. What was being politically managed, the Court put a stamp of formal approval to it by granting permission for the temple construction. For today’s supporter of the temple, there is nothing legally wrong with its construction. After all, the highest court has not only allowed it but suggested the mechanism for it — a separate trust.

But let us leave the Court out of this for a moment. What does the new temple mean for someone who is persuaded by the aura of the temple and the arrival of the new Ram? It is the erasure of guilt. A society that witnessed the vandalisation of a disputed structure and sustained violence is happy that the temple now outshines many other places of worship, that it will become a new attraction for international tourism. Huge resources were generated by a community to avenge the past and unimaginable political investment was made into an exercise that should have been a matter of spiritual pursuit and religious learning. All this, without guilt. Some democracies are built on reconciliation, some trudge on the debris of conscience. Ours will be an outlier to have a formal democratic mechanism decorated with sumptuous erasures.

The writer, based at Pune, taught Political Science