Name of the Book: Ayodhya�Sanjhi Sanskriti, Sanjhi Virasat [Hindi]
(‘Ayodhya: Shared Culture and Traditions’)
Author: Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Publisher: Books for Change, New Delhi
(mani@actionaidindia.org)
Pages: 115
Price: Rs.70
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

Ayodhya, which literally means ‘a place free of war’, is today a veritable battle-field. Hindu supremacist forces have used the Ayodhya issue to unleash a trail of terror and bloodshed, resulting in the tragic loss of life of thousands of people, mainly Muslims, and causing a sharp deterioration of inter-communal relations in India. According to Hindutva ideologues, Ayodhya is a Hindu town and must be ‘cleansed’ of all Muslim presence. Yet, as Vidya Bhushan Rawat shows in this remarkable book, Ayodhya is not a holy place only of the Hindus. Rather, for centuries it has been home to a variety of non-Hindu traditions, some of which predate the presence of Brahminical Hinduism in the region.

According to available evidence, Rawat says, Ayodhya was for long a Buddhist centre. The seventh century Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang noted the presence of several Buddhist temples in the town, but by this time Buddhism, the religion mainly of the oppressed castes, was rapidly declining in the face of Brahminical revivalism. Rawat tells us of how numerous Buddhist temples in Ayodhya were forcibly taken over by the Brahmins and turned into Hindu shrines, some of which, such as the Dant Dhawan Mandir, still stand today. In addition to its Buddhist link, Ayodhya also has a Sikh and Jain connection. A gurudwara in the town commemorates the visit to the town of Guru Nanak, and five Jain tirthankaras are also said to have been born in the town. Likewise, the region of Awadh, of which Ayodhya was a part, was also a great centre of the Kabirpanthis, followers of Muslim weaver-saint Kabir, who was bitterly critical of the Brahminical religion as well as of the legalist approach of the Muslim ulama. In short, Rawat argues, the notion that Ayodhya has always been a principal center of Brahminical Hinduism, so central to contemporary Hindutva discourse, is grossly erroneous. Buddhism, Jaininsm, Sikhism and the Kabirpanth have all been fiercely opposed to Brahminical hegemony and their association with Ayodhya points to the significant presence of anti-Brahminical movements in the region.

Ayodhya has also been a leading centre of Muslim Sufis, Rawat writes. He tells us of the popular belief of Ayodhya being the ‘Khurd Mecca’ or ‘little Mecca’, owing to the number of Sufis who are buried in the town, many of whom arrived there much before the Mughal Emperor Babur, who Hindutva ideologues claim was responsible for constructing a mosque in the town, allegedly on the ruins of a temple. Local lore has it that the prophets Noah and Sheth are buried in the town. In addition are the literally dozens of Sufi saints whose names Rawat provides. Many of their shrines or dargahs were destroyed in 1992 by Hindutva terrorists along with the Babri Masjid and numerous other ancient mosques in Ayodhya. Yet, Rawat says, even today large numbers of Hindus visit these shrines, revering the buried Sufi saints as men of God and as powerful beings capable of providing succour and help. Rawat mentions one such shrine as being looked after by a Hindu, and he quotes a Hindu woman who regularly visits a dargah as saying that the Sufi buried there ‘is no less than any Ram’.

For numerous Dalits, the dargahs provide a sharp contrast to the Brahminical temples, where they face routine discrimination. A Dalit respondent tells Rawat that the current Hindutva wave is the latest phase of Brahminism, a conspiracy to strengthen the caste system and further strengthen Brahminical hegemony. Understandably, then, Rawat says, the free access that the dargahs provide to people of all castes, Dalits included, and the egalitarian message of the Sufis, exercise, as they have historically, a special appeal for the oppressed castes, many of whom continue to visit Ayodhya’s dargahs in large numbers.

Rawat provides other such instances of cross-community interaction to press his point that the Hindutva claim of Ayodhya being a purely Hindu town is erroneous and to counter the Hindutva agenda of pitting Hindus against Muslims. Thus, he says, in Ayodhya Muslim artisans sell flowers to people visiting temples and manufacture wooden sandals that are used by some pilgrims and sadhus. In 1992, when the Babri Masjid was torn down by Hindutva terrorists, and more than 250 houses and shops belonging to local Muslims were burnt down and 13 local Muslims were done to death, some Hindus and Dalits saved Muslim lives. In Ayodhya’s twin town of Faizabad, the Lal Begis, a sweeper community, continue to maintain a liminal identity, not quite Muslim but not quite Hindu either, but somewhat in between. And, as in Ayodhya, large numbers of Hindus flock to the Sufi shrines in Faizabad despite the relentless anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Hindutva brigade.

Rawat links this to Ayodhya’s rich cultural past, which witnessed a remarkable cultural synthesis under the Muslim Nawabs of Awadh. Several temples in the town, he writes, are built on land granted by the Nawabs, under whose reign there is no record of any major Hindu-Muslim conflict. Rawat refers to Tulsidas, author of the Hindi Ramcharitramanas, who wrote his work while living in a mosque in Ayodhya, probably because he was not allowed by the Brahmins to live in a temple because he dared to defy the strict rule of not sharing their religious scriptures with the ‘low’ castes. Closer to our times, Rawat says, other charismatic figures in and around Ayodhya played a key role in the struggle against British imperialism and ‘upper’ caste hegemony, bringing together people of diverse faiths. These included Baba Ramdas, Acharya Narendradev, Ram Manohar Lohia and Ashfaqullah Khan.

In the struggle for social justice and against Hindutva fascism, the little-known aspects of history and the invisibilised voices such as those that Rawat has recorded urgently need to be highlighted. Hindutva’s mythical history must be countered with the histories of these dissenting voices and traditions that defy power and authority and articulate a humanitarian tradition that goes beyond narrowly inscribed boundaries of caste and religion.