Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

It's The Psychology, Stupid!

Kalyan Singh has a problem on his hands. This is it: what does he do about Buniyad Mehmood Ansari? Now the good Buniyad might have remained the obscure figure he seems to have been so far. But that hope vanished after Kalyan Singh took over as chief minister of UP some days ago. You see, the first thing Kalyan did -- the first duty of any CM, didn't you know? -- was to stroll down to Ayodhya to offer his respects at the makeshift temple to Ram on that site. That Site, I mean. In his "personal" capacity, said Kalyan. Not as CM. Of course.

Anyway, that little stroll got Buniyad, a BSP minister for something or the other in the UP cabinet, going. He announced that he was going to set off for Ayodhya himself, to offer namaz at That Site too. If Kalyan Singh can do a puja there, said Buniyad, he should be able to offer namaz. Naturally, he would be doing it in his personal capacity too. Not as minister. Of course.

Kalyan says Buniyad can't do as he plans. No one can offer namaz at temples or perform pujas at masjids, he is sure; and besides, nobody has offered namaz at That Site since 1936.

Which might well prompt Buniyad to ask: and what about before then, Kalyanji? Besides, there is an infinity of things that have not been done since 1936, does that mean they can all never be done? Besides two, why is 1936 so sacrosanct? If one lone Muslim had offered namaz at That Site in 1937, say, would Kalyan then have no objection to Buniyad's journey today? Looked at in another way, if Buniyad succeeds in his personal -- they're always personal -- mission to offer namaz there, would Kalyan then think it is OK for Farooq Abdullah and Syed Saba Karim to follow in his footsteps?

Ah, but I'm the silly one, for trying to apply logic where it certainly does not belong. I'll let Kalyan and Buniyad sort out their respective personal obeisances; if they come to personal blows while they are about it, I'll try very hard to shed a single personal tear for them.

This conundrum relates to just one issue that's raised by Kalyan Singh'sreturn to the post he last held on That Day in 1992. There are others.

Take the assurances Kalyan Singh made, as UP's CM, through 1991 and 1992, to the National Integration Committee and to that venerable institution, the Supreme Court. Madhav Godbole, home secretary in New Delhi at the time, recently listed some of those assurances in an article, and I quote:

* "All efforts will be made to find an amicable solution to the [Babri Masjid] issue.

* Pending a final solution, the government of UP will hold itself fully responsible for the protection of the disputed structure.

* Orders of the court in regard to the land acquisition proceedings will be fully implemented; and

*Judgment of the Allahabad high court in the cases pending before it will not be violated."

As for the Supreme Court, it was paying close attention to the worsening situation in Ayodhya, and Godbole reminds us of Kalyan Singh's role in that as well. Hearings were held nearly daily: "on November 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 30, and December 1, 3, 4, and finally 6, 1992." Godbole explains that at every single one of these hearings -- except, of course, on December 6 after the mosque was destroyed -- "specific assurances were taken by the court to pin down the state government to the protection of the disputed structure. All these assurances could not have been given without the specific approval of Mr Kalyan Singh."

"It is a matter of record," Godbole writes, "how these assurances were flagrantly flouted."

A year later, the CBI filed chargesheets against Kalyan, and nearly 40 others, for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Four years later, the court has decided that those chargesheets must be pursued: that there is reason enough for Kalyan and his mates to be prosecuted.

This is the man who has become chief minister of India's largest state; this man who, fully intending that the Babri Masjid would turn to dust, promised the Supreme Court that he would protect it. This man with demonstrated contempt for the law, for the Supreme Court. For his own word. And yes, this is the representative in UP of the party, the BJP, that beats its breast most self-righteously of all about its principles, its cleanliness.

"From whatever evidence the Commission has been able to collect," the Inquiry Commission of the Citizen's Tribunal on Ayodhya reported in February 1993, "the various State authorities from the Governor and Chief Minister downwards ... seem to have failed to adequately perform their duty." The return in 1997, to the same post, of this man who failed to perform his duty in 1992, we have no choice but to believe, is the magnificent Hindutva we hear so much about. The one that must resort to random dates like 1936 to shore up its case on Babri Masjid.

But, of course, the Babri Masjid stood on that site where Ram was born, did it not? For Hindus, that's a matter, not of laws and courts and logic, but of faith, is it not? The Masjid was a symbol of India's slavery and humiliation, was it not? And we secular types -- or pseudo-secular types, much better -- can't be expected to understand that particular psyche of Hindus, can we? Especially not if we have names like D'Souza. (And Godbole? He, if I may use the memorable words of an abusive penpal, must be no more than a "scumbag Hindu" who is "like a mole, destroying from within.")

In short, a good friend wrote recently, the whole issue is "a matter of psychology, period." Nothing to which logic and laws and evidence applies.

Fine. So let's look at this matter of faith, "of psychology, period."

One point, small but important, is this: your faith and psychology are fine as long as they stay with you. Whether it's Christ's resurrection or Ram's birth on that very spot, if your articles of faith become reason to inflict harm on others, if they begin to step on my toes, they must and will be challenged. That's when "psychology, period" is no longer a good enough reason.

And I don't know about you, but the one lesson my so far short and miserable life has taught me is that my psyche is, in the end, my own. That is, I make it. I take responsibility for it. If it breaks, I fix it. I don't blame the outside world. Not because that blaming is in some sense a "wrong" thing to do, but because that just doesn't fix it. Certainly that young lady I went out with in moments of madness left scars. But I had something to do with them too. Much more important, as long as I blamed her, as long as I wanted to claw at her for revenge or redressal, the scars stayed stubbornly in place. When I tackled them myself, they went away.

Hindu society's "negative self-image and utter lack of self-respect" is at least as much Hindu society's own fault as it is that of Nehru and Marxists and the barbaric invaders throughout our history. Much more important than whose fault it is, self-image and self-respect will come when Hindu society fixes its own scars.

Dipak Gyawali, an engineer from Nepal, addressed some of what I'm stumbling to get at in a stunning article in Himal magazine last year. "In the last 1,000 years of Hinduism," he wrote, "Hindus have not come up with a solution to social ills and contradictions from within the religion's mainstream." And later: "When modern Hindus finally wake up to the need for religion to have a livable ethics ... when hundreds of thousands of modern Hindus express their individual outrage against the way their religion languishes ... at that time we will have begun the real Renaissance of Hinduism in South Asia."

To which I might add: you stand tallest when you stand tall. Not bent over, but clear-eyed and straight. Not on the rubble of a destroyed mosque, but on your own.

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