Profiling Muslim sites

Profiling religious sites of Muslims is a new trend in India. Apparently this is so because the religious-right is at the helm of affairs, and is busy disseminating an order of otherness with the minorities, especially Muslims. A plea from Vishnu Gupta, president of Hindu Sena, demanding a geographic survey of the Jamia Masjid in Delhi is nothing but hooliganism. It is primarily intended to belittle the minority community, and to make them feel the heat of history as Muslims once ruled the Indian subcontinent.

Gupta believes the iconic mosque stands on Hindu deities' idols that were buried within it when it was built during the Mughal era in the 17th century. He cites an unsound reference wherein Emperor Aurangzeb had once razed down temples to allegedly humiliate the Hindus. Thus, he and his likes in the Hindutva-driven dispensation have picked a bait to browbeat Muslims at the expense of communal harmony in a billion-plus heterogeneous society.

Gupta's petition, pending with the Archeological Survey of India, is fraught with consequences. It has already stirred hatred in the Indian capital and the Sambhal uprising is taking a toll. The quarrel is also being debated in the parliament, and it seems hawks are out with knives to make some political scoring, as Gupta has an axe to grind.

Such shenanigans are not new in a rapidly polarising Indian society as similar applications had surfaced to screen and dismantle holy premises such as the renowned and revered Dargah of Khawaja Moeenuddin Chishti at Ajmer. It is also to be reckoned that the holy site is revered by Hindus too, and this boils down to the point that there are people out in communal grab who want to engage in profiling to not only serve their vested interests but also to ridicule the flagship of Indian secularism.

This necessitates a deeper look as to why the society is going that way, and the chief culprits to be named are thriller Bollywood movies that spew hatred on secluded religious initiatives, and the new municipal tendency of renaming Indian cities back to Ashoka and Shivaji eras. It has to be stemmed before it gets too late.