BY PANKAJ VOHRA AND SUNITA ARON
March 16, 2006
New Delhi and Lucknow, March 12: Shortly after Varanasi
was shaken by terror, Vinay Katiyar (president of the
BJP UP state unit from 2002-2004) stood outside the Sankat Mochan temple,
spewing fundamentalist venom – Shiv bhakt, Ram bhakt, Hanuman bhakt
chup nahin rahenge. Agar isi tarah attack hote rahe, woh bhi sadak par
aayenge aur jo bhagwan ka aadesh hoga, uska palan karenge (Devotees of
Shiva, Ram and Hanuman will not remain silent. If attacks like this
continue they too will come out onto the streets and act according to the
dictates of the lord).
Interestingly, however, the mahant of Sankat Mochan, Veer
Bhadra Mishra (who is also a professor of water resource management and
hydraulic engineering at the Banaras Hindu University), denied him
permission to use the temple premises for staging a day-long dharna.
Instead, he went out and welcomed a delegation of minority leaders, which
was led by Mufti-e-Benaras Maulana Abdul Batin. Together, they condemned
the efforts of terrorists that sought to shatter the communal fabric of
the city and vowed to prevent terrorists and politicians alike from
realising their dreams of religious polarisation. The frustration on
Katiyar’s face as he sat on a dharna ‘outside’ the Sankat Mochan temple is
perhaps representative of the disappointment that many a political party
is set to feel as they try to gain malicious mileage from what remains a
truly dastardly act.
It remains clear that when Islamic militants targeted
Varanasi on Tuesday (and that too the Sankat Mochan temple), they did so
with a specific purpose. The fundamentalists obviously knew that bomb
blasts in the holy city were bound to have wide-ranging ramifications; a
communally surcharged situation would make governance difficult and the
spectre of riots would then be witnessed by one and all. Seemingly, the
people of Varanasi wanted none of that. After lodging their protests they
went back to work and life at the holiest of all Hindu pilgrim
destinations is slowly limping back to normalcy (...)
It has been the efforts of the people of Benaras that have
resisted the widening of communal divides. As politicians continued
playing their petty but dangerous games, prominent members of different
communities held peace meetings in every nook and corner of the holy city
to ensure that they (the netas) failed in their designs. In 2005
the people of Ayodhya reacted in much the same way. Following the
attempted terror attack on the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi, politicians were
air-dropped in the city by their respective parties but locals remained
unaffected by the blast and by the trumpets blown. And in Lucknow when a
little known political leader, Sonkar, organised a Khatik’s rally, less
than two dozens Khatiks (members belonging to a particular caste of
Hindus) turned up at the venue despite the fact that four Khatiks had lost
their lives in clashes with minorities.
The message seems clear – The people of UP and the nation
don’t want to talk secularism, they want to live it.
(Courtesy: Hindustan Times.)