COMMON SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, TRANSPORT - HOW ABOUT COMMON TEMPLES?

As the nation, well not quite the nation, a large part of the nation rejoiced the inauguration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, there are multiple narratives floating around. The first and ubiquitous one is of the victorious Hindutva narrative which had once struggled for its existence but is today basking in the near-complete unity of people, media and Government towards a justice that the inauguration seemingly instilled. The second narrative is of the threatened minority and another part of the majority that does not think this is entirely right. The third narrative is from the indifferent gang that asks, "If only a temple or mosque could have made our lives better!"

But then, what should the nation's conscience be?

The majority Hindu population has been subjugated for at least a millennium from continuous invasions and inheritors of those invasions. There are enough reasons for pent-up Hindu anger which should certainly not be trivialized. But then it's also true that this subjugation itself is not uncommon across the world, it's true even within the land of Bharat that pre-dates these modern-day invasions. There are even seeming evidences about the Vedic emergence of Hinduism that subjugated the indigenous culture and population, and went on to oppress them continuously. However, there are also evidences around how the Buddhist and Jain adoption may have tried to destroy Hindu scriptures and culture. To make things even more interesting, it also appears that large scale erection of Hindu temples possibly started as a counter-measure to the emergence of thousands of Buddhist monasteries and Jain temples, and that these monasteries may have been destroyed by subsequent Hindu Kings and settlements. 

Clearly this is a chicken-egg quandary and an honest attempt to map this may not give us a winner here! If we are prepared to go back 1000 years, we should be ready to go back 2000 years, 3000 years, and when we go sufficiently far, everyone is a settler, an invader, an oppressor. The only unanimous apology from the nation should probably be towards the indigenous population whose culture we destroyed, the culture that worshipped nature and ancestors for several 10,000 years before the first name was given to any God.

All that said, if we are prepared to support laws around livelihood (reservations), rights (land ownership) and representation (self-governance) to settle historical mistakes, we cannot leave faith unsettled either. Justice has to be for everyone.

So where do we go from here? Well, we have created common places of education, common places of healthcare, common places of transport, common places of work, common places of shopping. Is it time to think about common places of worship? But that is for the rational mind. When faith is not about rationality in the first place, these arguments could be meaningless. Should we then just let the fights continue?

What religion has done to human civilization is mostly a 3000-year old story. Let us hope we don't have to wait for another 3000 years to know the answer to this question.