Skip to main content

Left out of Ayodhya


I just received a query from a friend on WhatsApp.

Have you received an invitation to visit the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha?

I responded with a lot of laughing emoticons.

Then I thought

Is it a matter for laughter?

I am a citizen of India whose Prime Minister is going to inaugurate the temple. As a citizen, I deserve an invitation. Otherwise, the inauguration (whatever name one may give to it in local languages) should be carried out by anyone other than a government official. What has the government got to do with a place of worship without involving the citizens?

I’m grateful to my friend for provoking me to write this.

I’m reminded of a parable I read in a cynical novel a few years ago.

Some crows were sitting on an electricity cable as they always do in India as if they were mocking our entire systems. Even our electric power can do them no harm, let alone the semiliterate politicians.

Then came a dove, pure white dove, from somewhere and sat a few feet away on the same electricity cable.

One crow said to the next one pointing out the white colour of the different one, “Saala, convert kar liya.” [The bastard has been converted.]

Anyone who doesn’t look like us is a traitor in India today.

Religious conversions are the worst crimes.

You can rape in India. You can plunder. Kill. You can do whatever you wish. As long as you belong to a particular religion, a particular political party. Wear a particular robe of a particular colour. Worship a particular god - not the heavenly one, you know.

Even if you do all that, you won’t get the invitation to the inauguration [Pran whatever] of the Mandir. Because the god there suffers from an acute sense of insecurity.

I have no problem about not being invited though I do feel let down as a citizen of India. But my friend who sent me the WhatsApp message seems to have a serious problem somewhere. He is a diehard fan of the god who suffers from the most terrible feelings of insecurity in the world of ordinary mortals.

 

Labels:

Comments

  1. ashokJanuary 18, 2024 at 11:02 PM

    Agree. Thoughtful post

    ReplyDelete
  2. Priyabrata NandaJanuary 18, 2024 at 11:15 PM

    You wrote:
    "One crow said to the next one pointing out the white colour of the different one, “Saala, convert kar liya.” [The bastard has been converted.]"
    The translation of text within the square brackets, honestly is:
    [The brother-in-law has been converted.]
    Now Sir, never ever call bastard to anybody's brother-in-law, even if he is a convert or pervert or whatever and/or has not been invited to go to Ayodhaya or Vadodara etcetera, because this may lead to a mini Mahabharat war.! 😂

    ReplyDelete
  3. peppylady (Dora)January 19, 2024 at 12:52 AM

    I was going to say I hate to say, but I'm clueless what an "Whats-app is. I really don't hate to say. But I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 19, 2024 at 4:56 AM

    Hari OM
    Yeah, there's a reason I don't app, what... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. Liz A.January 19, 2024 at 6:53 AM

    You probably don't want to be there, anyway. Sure, you should have a right to go. But it sounds like it'll be filled with people you'd only argue with.

    ReplyDelete
  6. magiceyeJanuary 19, 2024 at 7:08 AM

    The wedge digs deep.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Baby SebastianJanuary 20, 2024 at 2:36 PM

    The growth of Hindu fanaticism is the product of Islamic threat - cruelty.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2024 at 7:09 PM

    THE TEMPLE WILL BE DESTROYED

    100% ! NO MATTER WHAT ?

    WHETHER BEFORE OR AFTER CONSTRUCTION IS DONE - IS THE QUESTION !

    THE WORLD HAS TO NOTE THIS VERSE IN THE GRANTH ! WHO IS REFERRED TO HERE ? dindooohindoo

    Bhai Gurdas Ji Vaaran - Pannaa 33

    ਦੁਹ ਵਿਚਿ ਦੁਖੀ ਦੁਬਾਜਰੇ ਖਰਬੜ ਹੋਏ ਖੁਦੀ ਖੁਆਰਾ।

    Out of these two, the mongrels-apparently sadhus but internally thieves--are always in wavering state and, suffering for their ego, go astray.

    ਵਾਰਾਂ ਭਾਈ ਗੁਰਦਾਸ : ਵਾਰ ੩੩ ਪਉੜੀ ੧ ਪੰ. ੨

    ਦੁਹੀਂ ਸਰਾਈਂ ਜਰਦਰੂ ਦਗੇ ਦੁਰਾਹੇ ਚੋਰ ਚੁਗਾਰਾ।

    Such double-faced thieves, backbiters and cheats remain pale-faced due to their bewilderment in both the worlds.

    ReplyDelete
  9. sunilMay 15, 2024 at 2:33 PM

    nice post, thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some
8 comments
Read more