Sangom sir,
I respect your views and they are balanced, and very conciliatory.
But you are trying to gloss over the fact that A temple did exist before, and it was destroyed to build a Mosque. The question of Ram being king or God, or the time the temple was built is not of consequence. I would have expected Yamaka to make the correction.
Still my position that Masjids were built by demolishing Hindu Temples is fact. Take at look Mathura, Kashi, somenath, and many more. Even kutub minar is built on Temple structure. I do not know how many of the posters here have spent their life in Northern part of India. The power of the Muslim voting block, and the group mentality of poorer Muslims do not endear them to Hindus, Sikhs, etc. When India Vs pakistan matches used to be played they will openly support Pakistan. I am against anti-India people.
Organised religion does not bother me, I am not for one in personal life.
I do not want to create trouble between groups to win election, but seems the norm. I was against demolishing of the Temple, and equally against demolishing of the masjid. There are enough spots to build Temple.
Shri Prasad,
My pov is that the temple or whatever that existed in the Babri site, was razed to the ground, desecrated and a masjid was built on yop of that during a period when wars were the norm, the invading army looted, plundered and lay to waste even entire kingdoms perhaps, and, if the invader professed a religion other than the invaded's it was the unwritten rule that the women were captured after killing the menfolk, raping them and were presented before the invader as some kind of war booty which will help produce more people belonging to the invader's religion. Even Krishna or some other venerated figure in our scriptures was supposed to have brought thousands of such women from a vanquished kingdom and presented them to the king, for whom he fought.
So, that was done long ago. May be if the Ayodhya ruler of that time was smart and powerful, he could have immediately razed the mosque, built a grand Rama temple, protected it from any further scratch even from the Muslims. Why, for that matter, if the power ruling Ayodhya was strong enough Babar's hordes would not have come anywhere near the sacred temple. None of these happened and the so-called Rama believers were happy to have forsaken their beloved Rama and the very room in which Kausalya gave birth to him, etc., since 1527 till about the middle of the 19th. century. During this period they contented themselves with celebrations at the site of the mosque itself and it seems the Muslims also did not object to it.
"In 1767, Jesuit priest Joseph Tieffenthaler recorded Hindus worshiping and celebrating Ramanavami at the site of the mosque. In 1788, Tieffenthaler's French works were published in Paris, the first to suggest that the Babri Mosque was on the birthplace of Rama,[22] saying that "Emperor Aurangzeb got demolished the fortress called Ramkot, and erected on the same place a Mahometan temple with three cuppolas" reclaimed by Hindus through numerous wars after death of Aurangzeb in 1707 A.D like they earlier fortified it during Jahangir's rule as Ramkot.
During the 19th century, the Hindus in Ayodhya were recorded as continuing a tradition of worshiping Rama on the Ramkot hill. According to British sources, Hindus and Muslims from the Faizabad area worshiped together in the Babri Mosque complex in the 19th century until about 1855. P. Carnegy wrote in 1870:
"It is said that up to that time, the Hindus and Mohamedans alike used to worship in the mosque-temple. Since the British rule a railing has been put up to prevent dispute, within which, in the mosque the Mohamedans pray, while outside the fence the Hindus have raised a platform on which they make their offerings."[23]
This platform was outside the disputed structure but within its precincts.
In 1858, the Muazzin of the Babri Mosque said in a petition to the British government that the courtyard had been used by Hindus for hundreds of years"
(
Ayodhya dispute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
When the British took over the Government and the judiciary, the greed of the Hindu, in my view, prompted him to test whether he could slowly dislodge the mosque like the proverbial story of the Arab & the camel.
"In 1885, Mahant Raghubar Ram moved the courts for permission to erect a temple just outside the Babri Mosque premises. Despite validating the claim of the petitioner, the Faizabad District Judge dismissed the case, citing the passage of time.[24] On 18 March 1886, the judge passed an order in which he wrote:
I visited the land in dispute yesterday in the presence of all parties. I found that the Masjid built by Emperor Babur stands on the border of Ayodhya, that is to say, to the west and south it is clear of habitations. It is most unfortunate that a Masjid should have been built on land specially held sacred by the Hindus, but as that event occurred 356 years ago, it is too late now to agree with the grievances. (Court verdict by Col. F.E.A. Chamier, District Judge, Faizabad (1886)[25]
.
..there are substantial numbers of Muslims 7 km away at District Headquarters - Faizabad. Since 1948, by Indian Government order, Muslims were not permitted to be closer than 200 yards away to the site; the main gate remained locked, though Hindu pilgrims were allowed to enter through a side door. The 1989 Allahabad High Court ordered the opening of the main gate and restored the site in full to the Hindus. Hindu groups later requested modifications to the Babri Mosque, and drew up plans for a new grand Temple with Government permissions; riots between Hindu and Muslim groups took place as a result. Since, then the matter is sub-judice and this political, historical and socio-religious debate over the history and location of the Babri Mosque, is known as the Ayodhya dispute."
(
Ayodhya dispute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
It will thus be seen that the Hindus who did not have any guts for close to 400 years to do anything, felt increasingly greedy and chauvinistic after Independence. We must note that the Muslims were practically denied access to the mosque and they did not demur. In such circumstances I can view the action of BJP as one against the national peace and condemn it.
Originally posted by Kala Bhairavan
I could not quite understand this emphasis on Lord Rama being fictional!
Who is to say that Allah is NOT fictional?
If a monument existed for fictional Allah, why is to so inconceivable that a temple existed for Lord Rama?
It is one thing to argue against demolishment of the mosque (there are plenty of ways one can build a case against), but what is the need to question the historicity of Lord Rama? It is not for no reason that atheists are accused of being partial!
First of all it may be correct to know that Muslim prayer houses - mosque, masjid - is not a temple or monument for Allah. It is simply a prayer hall with the direction of Mecca indicated by a niche in the wall or some such thing but never any image or icon. May be in the 21st. century, the Muslims will make use of GPS indicators of sufficient size to locate Mecca as accurately as possible. Hence, we must not equate a Hindu temple with a Muslim mosque, though in the matter of sacred feelings both Hindus and Muslims may value their respective prayer halls equally.
I agree that perhaps there is a streak in atheists to prove that the God notion of believers is unsubstantiable and towards this end they try to prove the meaninglessness of each god/goddess concept. I will like that this is done at the general level and not in contexts such as this one.
Originally posted by Kalabhairavan
The hindutva parties seem to be the only ones who are willing to stand against Islamic and Christian fundamentalism in India. They cannot be easily wished away!
I did not find any really constructive step being taken by the ABV government either in strengthening and uniting the Hindus (Siva sena ultimately fell out with BJP) nor in weakening Muslims or Christians. If I remember right the bigwigs of the BJP took pride in going to Iftar parties, blah-blaing Hindu-muslim bhai bhai, and the news getting maximum media coverage even when the BJP was ruling in Delhi.
Originally posted by Yamaka
But Atheists work for a peaceful egalitarian Society devoid of religions, castes and racial discrimination, believe me.
Shri Y,
As suggested by Prasad, I think we can speak only for ourselves. I do not know whether the Atheists are more pointed towards getting all the gods and goddesses out than any building up of egaliatarian society. If that were the real case, the Atheists should give more attention to why religion prevents egalitarian society, which does not seem to be the agenda of atheists. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Originally posted by Prasad
One more thing all Atheist I meet including here in this site are miserable, show me a happy Atheist. First of all you are negating that may not exist. Secondly you are going to a minority in the world for ever. Majority wants to believe as they know they inadequate to solve all problems. So it is human to assign an external agent we will call X to have the power to solve our problems.
Shri Prasad,
It is a coincidence that all the atheists you chanced to meet are "miserable". I on the contrary have found atheists of both kinds. I also do not agree that God solves problems for you and me; problems get solved, surely with passage of time. If this does not happen for some reason the person with the problem disappears and that also is one way to solve the problem, in this vast universe, is it not?
Believers get mental solace by first positing a God, then entreating God, whenever there is difficulty beyond their ability to manage. I have reason to believe that this happens because the believers are convinced about their dark past, mujjanma karma and their possible unpleasant results; and they have imagined a God which is capable of circumventing the Karmic Law and getting them past the troubles. Bribery and middle-man concept at the very Karmic level, I will say.
Why not better be honest to one's own conscience, accept that none of us may have glorious mujjanma Karmas and that all of us will have our own shares of pleasures and pain in our lives? And stop comparing with others and throw away that question "why such bad things are happening to a good person like me?"
