by S L Bhyrappa
~
Udaipuri Mahal Sahiba asked me to narrate details of the Holy Deed I had witnessed. I was tempted to tell her it was the most dastardly deed done in God’s name. However, I knew the fate that awaited such a frank admission. So I described the destruction in brief. It was routine on her part as well—she had listened to hundreds of such accounts and wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about yet another one. ‘May the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) grant you a fine place in Heaven,’ she said in the end.
Some days later, a very excited Hamdullah Sahib said, ‘Have you heard? The badshah has issued a farmaan to demolish the Keshavaraya temple…the one in Mathura! And that’s not all. There’s more good news. His vassals in Rajaputana are challenging his authority by building new temples. He has drawn a plan to teach these scoundrels a solid lesson. You just wait and watch; in the coming days a whole lot of temples will be razed down in Jodphur. And the temple right in front of the Udaipur palace will be brought down. Think what that will mean for that Rajput king! Also the three temples on the bank of the Udaisagar lake and some…no, wait…172 temples around Udaipur, sixty-three in Chittoor and sixty-six in Amber. This is the badshah’s plan. I have no doubt how meticulously he will finish the task. If he sets his mind on something, he’ll go after it with single-minded discipline and won’t rest until he either converts or wipes out the last kafir in Hindustan! Mark my words, my child: Allah has already built him a grand—the grandest palace—in heaven.’
~
Long years of experience told her that the professor had indeed come to chair the workshop. This one, like the others, had the standard markings—a large gathering, debate, immense opportunity to show off his oratory and the fact that others were paying for it. He typically stayed in one of those sprawling VIP guest houses. He needed that kind of space to address his fan following, to look at the stars they had in their eyes when he spoke, all of that. Invariably, only government or government-aided institutions could afford to build such massive guest houses. In this case, it meant the university guest house. She decided to visit him. And this university wasn’t new to her. Many years ago, she had been here as a student, his star student under his guidance and leadership. The All India Progressive Students’ Association, a union of sorts formed by the students of this university, had organized a seminar. The whole university playground was covered with shamiana. The professor’s Marxist speeches on the timeless conflict that existed in India between castes and the horrible exploitation that went on in the garb of spirituality in the fields of art and music and so on. He spoke, thundered and roared from morning till evening and he knew no fatigue. This was the seminar that catapulted him into permanent stardom. She didn’t miss any speech and internalized the fire that his words ignited. In the evening, she participated in plays and folk dances woven around these themes. It was organized by the Delhi-based Progressive theatre group called The Caucasian Chalk Circle. She didn’t step into the city of Kashi even once. There was nothing there except the remnants of exploitation. Innumerable temples and bathing ghats—all built by squeezing the sweat and blood of poor people, by feeding them the heady opium of spiritual deliverance.
‘Kashi is the surviving symbol of a rotten civilization.’ She recalled the closing line of Dr Ramswarup Yadav’s speech. She had asked him why he hadn’t changed his name if he hated his religion with such passion.
‘To remind myself of how foolish my parents were,’ was his response.
~
‘That’s right. Professor Sastriji from Bangalore is here. Suite 2. He’s in the workshop right now. Social Science Block,’ the guest house manager told her. She thanked him and asked for directions and as she walked towards the Social Science Block, she noticed that all classrooms were empty. It was as if today was a holiday.
In a very large hall in the interiors of the Social Science Block she noticed a gathering of more than a hundred students. She watched the proceedings from the window. She hadn’t been invited to this seminar. She guessed that the three other men on the stage were the resource persons. Professor Sastri was seated on the middlemost chair, the chairperson, resplendent in his red kurta. The absence of facial hair and the prominent baldness bestowed a special revolutionary glow to his personality. She stood outside the hall and observed the proceedings through the window.
The question–answer session was in progress. Students raised their hands in turn and waited for the chairperson’s nod. A student was allowed to ask a question if the chairperson nodded yes, a procedure familiar to her. A young man asked, ‘Is there a special significance for holding this workshop in the Benares Hindu University?’
The resource person seated to the right, wearing an ash-coloured half-shirt and trousers, got up to respond.
‘I’ll answer this,’ Sastriji said. The other man sat down.
‘The answer is in your question. The full name of this university is Benares Hindu University established by that reactionary, Madan Mohan Malaviya, with funding from reactionary kings and Marwari businessmen and, fittingly, established in the ultimate reactionary hub of India—Kashi. It is also fitting that the arch-capitalist Birla built a large Vishwanath temple right in the middle of this university, an appropriate symbol of regressiveness. Isn’t it suitable then, that we must burn down the so-called Indian culture—that decayed, stinking mass of garbage—starting with this place?’
‘But this university is also renowned for its science, technology and medical departments,’ the student persisted.
‘Yes. We have no argument with those. But then the professors that teach these subjects hold the same regressive ethical and social views. It’s our duty to reform them. A majority of students —and some professors—from these disciplines are in the audience, a live testimony to the success of this workshop.’
The hall exploded with applause. As it died down, a student stood up and raised his hand.
‘Yes.’ The professor nodded.
‘In that case, the Aligarh Muslim University, quite close by, must equally stink. Why don’t you organize a workshop there? Or is that your next destination, professor?’
This met with absolute silence. It was as if the audience was suddenly suspended. The professor bored into the young man with his glowering eyes, which it seemed had the power to induce guilt in the questioner. And then, ‘Hahahaha! We have a reactionary here! See how this lad, when I spoke about the rot of our culture, points his accusatory fingers at our innocent minorities, our poor brothers! But he’s not alone. There are millions like him…oh, and I’m sure you have a RSS background. Tell us the truth, because it’s quite curious that despite attending our workshop, you still harbour such questions. Come on, tell us the truth! Has the RSS sent you to spy on us? None of us are afraid of you but you must understand a fundamental truth: the majority is always fundamentalist. The minorities, struggling as they are for mere survival, don’t have time or resources or inclination for fundamentalism. A system that doesn’t allow minorities to freely practice and nurture their faith has no business calling itself a democracy. Fundamentalism of the majority is the biggest threat to any nation. This is a timeless, universal truth that we must never forget!’
This time the explosion of applause came in torrents and the sweat that broke out on the student’s face was evidence of his clear defeat.
Lakshmi wanted to barge into the hall and call the professor’s bluff word-by-word with solid evidence, but she refrained. She was uninvited. And then, now, he was directly related to her. But after what she had heard, she was in no mood to meet him.
~
And the story ended thus. What could Khwaja Jahan do after he returned to Delhi? There was no way he could murder Aurangzeb getting past the bodyguards. I’m not writing fantasy fiction. Aurangzeb lived for thirty-eight years more after he demolished the Vishwanath temple. I can’t let Khwaja Jahan kill him prematurely. I mean, it’s silly to let Khwaja Jahan to do something that outlandish. There was no way he could reach Aurangzeb after bre
aking the formidable cordon of bodyguards…this isn’t a work of daydreaming where I can write anything with a view to entertain…a historical work should express historical truths through the feelings, emotions of the characters it contains…I can’t tamper with history. Or I can trash this whole novel and write dry history like Father had planned to. But even there, you can’t put an abrupt stop to history at some random point that strikes your fancy. Logic. Flow of events, etc. Inflicting this kind of abruptness in historical fiction will ruin feeling. Tabassum…Shyamala Devi…needs some logical closure.
These thoughts tortured Lakshmi for two full days. She was in Kashi for a little over two months now and had written the portion about the Vishwanath temple destruction. The rest house manager had done his bit. He allowed her to stay there for so long by registering her under different names and addresses, and he couldn’t take this risk indefinitely. He spoke to people of the neighbouring rest house and had her shifted there.
There was nothing left for her to write. The events related to Kashi in the novel were complete, but her fascination with the history of this place continued to exert a compelling force. Now she spent her time in the university library, collecting material and making notes about the history of Kashi after Aurangzeb. She convinced the librarian that she was a research student. The librarian allowed her to read all she wanted. And then suddenly one day, something struck her. She made notes:
Mohammad Ghazni’s invasion forced all the scholars of western India… Sanskrit scholars of Punjab and Kashmir fled in large numbers and landed in Kashi and made it the only centre of scholarship and learning in north India. Aurangzeb didn’t demolish just the Vishwanath temple. He destroyed all the centres of learning. In a way it was sad. These scholars of Kashi still retained the memory of what Bhaktiar Khalji did to Nalanda, the biggest and the pre-eminent centre of educational and scholastic excellence. Bhaktiar Khalji had smashed that sprawling university and burnt its mammoth library and butchered the Buddhist gurus and bhikkus. Despite this, these scholars in Kashi went ahead and built massive educational centres. They were now ripe for Aurangzeb’s picking. After he ruined them, these scholars imparted education to students in the fearful privacy of their own homes. This system continued over generations and in the twentieth century, Madan Mohan Malaviya worked tirelessly and managed to found a large university. And now, people like the professor want to destroy it by conducting workshops. Is it appropriate to call him the sentimental descendant of Aurangzeb?
Nothing of the original Kashi remains today. Temples, ghats and even graveyards that we see today were built by the Marathas. Without exception, every Maratha king, general and commander relentlessly fought to reclaim the temples and ghats destroyed by Muslims, who had replaced them with mosques. They used every craft, art and trick. But then, once a mosque was forcibly built on the site of a temple they had destroyed, it was over—no Muslim king ever agreed to give up such mosques and allow the Marathas to rebuild the temples. And then Benares fell into British hands. The Marathas entered into treaties advantageous to the British—they helped them with money and forces with the hope of reclaiming the original site of the Vishwanath temple. On their part, the British had quickly learned the route to their success in India—counterbalancing the Hindus and Muslims. They denied the Marathas their ‘Kashi request’. All that the Maratha peshwa, Baji Rao I, wanted was to recover the Gyanvapi Masjid and rebuild the Vishwanath temple. But then Balaji Baji Rao (1740–61) was more ambitious. He decided to bring the whole of Kashi under his control. In 1742, he marched with a massive army till Mirzapur. Nawab Safdarjung learned of this and sped to Benares. He rounded up all the Brahmins there and issued them a warning that unless Balaji Baji Rao desisted from his foolish adventure, he would order the massacre of all Brahmins in Kashi. The frightened Brahmins sent a delegation to Balaji Baji Rao and the Maratha king went back. Nine hundred years ago, the Muslim marauders had threatened the tough Hindu defenders in Moolasthan that they would destroy the Surya temple if they continued to fight them. The Hindu defenders had retreated. The same threat, the same principle was used to browbeat Balaji Baji Rao. Kashi’s Brahmins knew of—and had presevered—the noble tradition of the thousands of Brahmins who had sacrificed their lives to uphold their faith. Yet, they turned out to be cowards. What was the root of this cowardice? In a way, the objective of the Muslim kings was accomplished—the Brahmins had internalized timidity.
In a letter dated 23 February 1759 to the Scindia’s Diwan Ramji Anant, Balaji Baji Rao wrote, ‘We must decide on a couple of important matters with Shuja-ud-Daulah. Try and take Benares, Ayodhya and Allahabad from him. He had given word to my father (in 1757) to hand over Ayodhya and Benares. I’m still in talks with him over Allahabad. If he agrees over this without much fuss, take it without delay. [Yadi, et al., Historical Padre, pp 166]’.
But Shuja-ud-Daulah’s mind was filled with different calculations. Outwardly, he cordially agreed to hand over Ayodhya and Benares but he had the firm assurance of the vazir in Delhi who told him that returning lands after it was won was equal to backstabbing Islam.
With the sole exception of Akbar, every Muslim king imposed pilgrimage tax on Hindus who wanted to visit places sacred to them. Aurangzeb increased it to extortionate rates with the express intent of ensuring that Hindus would find it impossible to pay. The badshahs and nawabs after him maintained the same rate. But the Marathas didn’t give up. They kept trying to recover Kashi, Ayodhya and Allahabad—Prayag—so that Hindus could painlessly undertake their pilgrimages. No matter how many wars they won and how many mountains of gold they paid, Muslim kings refused to hand over these cities. Meanwhile, the English, who had become powerful both militarily and politically, took the side of the Muslims. Nana Phadnavis offered his army in support of the British in the war against Tipu Sultan on the condition that the British should hand over the control of Kashi to him. The British refused his offer, which soured the Maratha-British relations.
The Vishwanath temple ceased to exist from 1669, the year Aurangzeb demolished it, up to about 1775 when Ahalyabai Holkar managed to build the tiny structure that we see today: this structure, adjacent to the Gyanvapi masjid is what is worshipped as the Vishwanath temple. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Muslims attempted to plant a green flag atop this tiny structure that Ahalayabai had built. This move only helped the British.
Post Independence, India’s political leaders constitutionally sanctified the policy that the British had cultivated in order to preserve their political power. This led to the Muslims hardening their stance—that the Constitution itself armed them against returning the temples, which their ancestors had destroyed, back to the Hindus. Lord Valentia, 1803: ‘…I felt myself sufficiently a Hindoo when viewing the lofty minars [of Aurangzeb’s mosque], to wish that hereafter, Government may restore the spot to its original owners, and remove this cruel eye-sore from the holy city.’ (George Viscount Valentia, Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, Part 1, London, 1811, pp 90). Municipalities of Hindu pilgrimage centres continue to impose pilgrimage tax despite the fact that Muslim rule ended centuries ago. I fail to find the proper term to describe this despicable mindset of our own people who continue to perpetrate the unjust, discriminatory traditions of alien invaders.
Lakshmi felt a sense of contentment. She doubted if the Kashi portion of her novel would have been as effective if she had merely relied on her father’s research and her own notes. She intuitively knew that writing this part in her father’s home in the village would have severely impaired her imagination. Plus, she wouldn’t have learned what she learned about Kashi after Aurangzeb. She was glad she wrote it here, in Kashi. Books, travelogues by European travellers, research papers, history journals, translations of the Peshwa official records…she mentally thanked the assistant librarian Sarala Pant, who had painstakingly retrieved everything she asked for. Lakshmi thought she had had a revelation.
She wouldn’t leave Kashi for the next
five or six months. At the end of five months, she still didn’t feel like leaving it.
14
My visit to Kashi earned me an enormous degree of freedom. I was bored of zenana duty. Hamdullah Sahib’s recommendation got me a job in his own office. I was tasked to copy out the Mughal Empire’s official documents. Although there was no change in my status as a slave, I now began to earn a salary. I shifted my residence to Hamdullah Sahib’s house and ate my meals there. I gave half my salary to him to cover my food expenses. At office, I was regarded as one of the most loyal servants of the Mughal Empire and that got me a good deal of respect. Not a day passed without someone congratulating me on the good fortune of going to Benares for the sole purpose of witnessing the destruction of the most sacred place of the kafirs. But I spent my days fancying a plan to chop the roots of Aurangzeb’s empire. I visualized myself cutting single-handedly through hundreds of thousands of fierce warriors and felling Aurangzeb’s head in one swift blow. And every time, in the end, I would feel ashamed of such fruitless daydreaming.
