Yeh VHP kya hai?

Author: Satiricus
Publication: Organiser
Date: April 21, 2002

Introduction: The Supreme Court did not ask, "Who is Mohammed Aslam, alias Bhure? Whom does he represent? What is his locus standi?"

Time was when Satiricus was happy being a Hindu. In those good old communal days it was simple. It did not exercise his grey cells. Alas, not any more. Now Hindu Satiricus has to grapple with two quite complex questions that have fairly flummoxed him. They are- even if his claim of being a Hindu was accepted, is he a representative Hindu, or is he a representing Hindu? That is, which Hindus does he represent? Conversely, which Hindus represent him? Take the VHP. Satiricus knows Ashok Singhal, Satiricus is a good friend of Anandshankar Pandya, and Satiricus has met both Giriraj Kishore and Pravin Togadia. But does that mean the VHP represents Satiricus? Satiricus cannot understand why it should. Because nobody told him that being a card-holder of this or any other Hindu body was a sine qua non for his status as a Hindu, or, to put it in legalese acceptable to the Supreme Court, his locus standi as a Hindu. In his simplicity he thought as a Hindu he represented himself, and that was enough for his Hinduism having legally admissible locus standi. As for the VHP, although not its enrolled member, Satiricus happens to know that it is present and active not only all over India, including remote tribal hamlets, but also is thirty countries across the world, from America in the West to Australia in the East. And in supreme simplicity he had assumed that what an ignoramus like him knows, the Supreme Court is bound to know. But why should its learned judges demean their erudition with such trivia? So with a straight face the Supreme Court asked the other day-What is the VHP? Whom does it represent? What is its locus standi? What do these learned questions show? To Satiricus' mind they show that everything about the VHP is questionable, including its existence. Now this Satiricus can quite understand. For he must say that after half a century of glorious secularism the very presence of communalism is clearly questionable. Surprisingly enough, the Prime Minister does not seem to share Satiricus reasonableness. He actually called the Supreme Court's question a "strange question", and added that if the very name of the VHP sent the Opposition into convulsions, then it certainly had locus standi. Now, whether or not these trishul-terrorists represent meek Hindus like Satiricus, the presence of Hindus in Hindusthan is itself certainly questionable. Fortunately for the learned judges of the Supreme Court there is no such problem with the Muslims. So naturally enough they did not ask, "Who is Mohammed Aslam, alias Bhure? Whom does he represent? What is his locus standi? What is this Babri Masjid Committee? Whom does it represent? What is the locus standi of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board?" Why was it that doubt assailed the Court only in regard to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad but not about the Babri body? The answer is simple, and both Satiricus and the Supreme Court know it. It is that in secular India every Muslim represents all other Muslims. So when Bhure, a lone Muslim, spoke, he was speaking as the representative of the entire Muslim community. Naturally his locus standi was eminently acceptable for the Supreme Court judges. This being the situation it is no wonder the evidence presented in favour of the Ramjanmabhoomi temple by unrepresentative Vishwa Hindu Parishad should seem so much saffron supposition, while the evidence presented against the Ramjanmabhoomi by the Babri Masjid group should appear eminently acceptable. And what were the highlights of this evident evidence? That Rama was a king of Egypt, and that he was born in Afghanistan. Does that mean Rama was born a Muslim in Muslim Afghanistan and became the Muslim king of Muslim Egypt? Satiricus would not be surprised to see Syed Shahabuddin saying so, but maybe Syed Sahib would be surprised to see that there are sources asserting otherwise. For instance our Puranas give a systematic, chronological list of as many as 125 kings of the Solar Dynasty, ancient India's first royal dynasty, in which a few, familiar names are Ikshwaku (7), Harishchandra (31), Sagar (37), Dilip (41), Ambarish (45), another Dilip (59), Raghu (60, great-grandfather of Rama), Aja (61, grandfather of Rama), Dasharath (62, Rama's father), and 63 (Rama). But all this is just mythology, our secular intellectuals would point out to Satiricus with a pitying smile, and ask him-do you seriously want us serious historians to take it seriously? As historical source material, they say, the Puranas are puerile. Satiricus, of course, is too ignorant to confront this condemnation, but R.C. Majumdar, who is an-intelligent historian as against an intellectual historian, writes: "The traditions preserved in ancient Indian literature, notably the Puranas, form the main source of information for the history of the earliest period." As for Rama being the king of Egypt, Satiricus does not find Rama being a king of India as well as Egypt, then a Hindu land, quite so surprising. For in the book The Theogony of the Hindus the author writes "the high civilisation of the Hindus gradually extended itself to the West in Ethiopia, to Egypt, to Phoenicia..." Actually even for the Supreme Court it may come as an anti-secular shock to learn that not only Rama but even Krishna was known in Egypt. For in his book Celtic Druids Geoffrey Higgins wrote: "In the French war the British sepoys on their arrival from India at ancient Thebes in Egypt found their God Krishna, and instantly fell to worshiping..." As for where and when Rama was born, Satiricus recalls, supercilious secularists asking to see, at least jocularly, Ram's birth certificate issued by the then Ayodhya municipality. Satiricus of course admires their admirable faith in the births-and-deaths records office, but do they have such records of Mohammed, about whom there are two years of birth, or of Jesus, about whom there are not only two years but also two places of birth? So if Rama was not born in Ayodhya but in Afghanistan, that does not overly worry Satiricus. For if Ayodhya was Vedic, Afghanistan was Rigvedic, where a sage named Bashkuli had composed the Bashkala recession of the Rigveda itself.
 

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