Jerusalem and Ayodhya by Koenraad Elst

In the Ayodhya debate, the comparison with the Jerusalem Temple Mount controversy has been made only sparingly. And when it was made, it was mostly turned upside down. It was assumed that in both cases, a mosque is threatened with a takeover by non-Muslims, and that is the relevant similarity. Stefan de Girval has put it this way : "(The Jews) want to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans in the first century AD. But they face the same problem and dilemma that the Hindus are facing at the Ram Janmabhoomi site." The non-Muslim communities involved in these two temple- mosque-controversies do indeed have things in common. They both have voluntarily and unilaterally set up a secular state. Their creations, upon departure of the British, were both at the same time partitions into a secular and an Islamic state. In both cases, the partition was immediately followed by an invasion from the Muslim neighbour (here there is a remarkable difference : Israel gained territory in the ensuing war, while India lost Azad Kashmir). They both live with a Muslim minority, which does encounter problems but is still treated far better than minorities in the surrounding Muslim countries. On the other hand, after their creation both Israel and India have had to receive many refugees, Jewish and Hindu respectively, who had to flee intense persecution in Muslim countries. Both communities have been persistently targeted by the same Muslim-Communist combine : Israel by the Arab-Soviet alliance, Hindus society by the Leftist and pro-Muslim Nehruvians and by the China-Pakistan alliance.¹¹ But all that does not make for a strict parallel in the two controversies. The differences include the following. In Jewish theology, there is a belief that only the Messiah, when he comes, should rebuild the Temple. No such belief is involved in the Ayodhya controversy. In Jerusalem, the disputed area is a sacred place to both religions involved; in Ayodhya, the Muslims have never attached any religious importance to the site of the Babri Masjid, which was built only to humiliate the Hindus. In Jerusalem, the Muslims built their mosques in all innocence on a wasteland, where the Romans had destroyed the Jewish Second Temple centuries before; whereas in Ayodhya they most probably destroyed the temple themselves before building a mosque over it.

But the most important difference is this. In Jerusalem, a sacred place of a religious community is being used for regular worship by that community, to the exclusion of members of the other community, but it is being claimed by fanatics of this other community; in Ayodhya, exactly the same situation obtains. However, in Jerusalem the tenant community is Muslim, in Ayodhya it is non-Muslim. In Jerusalem, the fanatics who want to grab the other community's sacred place are non-Muslim, the Faithful of the Temple Mount, in Ayodhya they are Muslim, the BMAC and BMMCC.

This important factual contrast is compounded by a political difference. In Israel, a truly secular government is proud of Israel's policy since he liberation of Jerusalem in 1967, which has guaranteed freedom of worship to Jews, Christians and Muslims in their respective sacred places, in contrast to the ban on Christian and Jewish access to the sacred places under the previous Islamic regime. This secular government has given the Jewish fanatics no chance to challenge the status-quo, and is not ready to make any concession to them, or to force a compromise with them on the tenant Muslim community.

In India, by contrast, some governments have been succeeding each other, that have not been all that secularly impartial in religious controversies, in spite of their comprising vehemently secularist parties. These governments have amply lent their ears to the fanatics who challenge the functional status-quo and intend to snatch the sacred place from the tenant community. For clarity's sake, it may be repeated that the tenant community is, since 1949, the Hindu community. And the Hindus want to keep the functional status-quo, viz. the Ram temple remains a Ram temple, even while its architecture may be changed from a mosque-like domed structure to a traditional Mandir structure. But instead of unflinchingly upholding their right to their sacred place, the government pressurizes them to give in to the BMAC and BMMCC demands, or at least to accept a mid-way compromise.

So, the Temple Mount is not a Jewish Ayodhya¹² rather a Muslim Ayodhya. We should of course not take the comparison too far, for that would only lead into distortions. Yet, it so happened that there is one more analogy. In both places the autumn of 1990 has witnessed a bloodbath among the tenant community, inflicted by police bullets. In Jerusalem, police killed around twenty people when, according to the official report, they were throwing stones at Jews praying at the Wailing Wall (the only leftover of the Second Temple).¹³ In Ayodhya, police killed sixteen, or one hundred and sixty- eight, or five hundred, or who knows, people who were unarmed and singing Ram Dhun. And this similarity is again compounded by a stark difference : the Jerusalem shooting triggered as much as a UN resolution against the Israeli government, but the Ayodhya shooting triggered absolutely nothing as far as the Human Rights professionals are concerned.