The Idea of India
Posts Tagged ‘Ayodhya’
The Winding Road From Somanatha To Ayodhya Or How Colonial Historiographies Continue To Bewitch, Bewilder and Bedevil
The Winding Road From Somanatha To Ayodhya Or How Colonial Historiographies Continue To Bewitch, Bewilder and Bedevil

  Because of the dominance of … ‘fundamentalist’ knowledge at the level of the establishment and those in power …[they] find themselves – in spite of all the changes of the past centuries – moving on a stage where history is repeating itself with just one objective; the continual actualization of the past. Adonis, Arabic […]

Beyond Boundaries by Pankaj Mishra
Beyond Boundaries by Pankaj Mishra

This essay is reprinted here by kind permission of Pankaj Mishra. The original piece appeared in The National newspaper and can be seen here. Pankaj Mishra is the author of four books, most recently The Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond. But it was perhaps his writings […]

Laying To Rest The Ghosts Of Ayodhya – The Liberhan Report Unveiled
Laying To Rest The Ghosts Of Ayodhya - The Liberhan Report Unveiled

The demolition of the Ram Janambhoomi Babri Masjid took place on sixth of December 1992 in the presence of national and local leadership. Cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal (BD), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena (SS) along with their leaders were present at the spot. They […]

Still Looking For Answers In Ayodhya / Liberhan Report Published
Still Looking For Answers In Ayodhya / Liberhan Report Published

What is happening in India is a new, historical awakening…Today, it seems to me that Indians are becoming alive to their history…Only now are the people beginning to understand that there has been a great vandalising of India…What is happening in India is a mighty creative process…the sense of history that the Hindus are now […]

Making Medieval Histories Or How To Name Ballistic Missiles
Making Medieval Histories Or How To Name Ballistic Missiles

Pakistan has said it will not rename some of its missiles, despite objections from Kabul which says Afghan heroes’ names are being misused. Afghan Information Minister Sayed Makhdum Rahin had asked Islamabad not to link Afghan rulers’ names with “tools of destruction and killing”. The missiles are named after Muslim conquerors who defeated Hindu rulers. […]

In Garbs Foreign: Temple Desecrations & Acts of Conquest
In Garbs Foreign: Temple Desecrations & Acts of Conquest

I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realize that something terrible happened. I feel that the civilization of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions … The Old World is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed V.S. […]

The Saints of Ayodhya: Sufis In The Hindu City
The Saints of Ayodhya: Sufis In The Hindu City

The Sufi dargahs of Ayodhya are easy to miss. Not only are they rather simple structures, often no more than a few graves surrounded by a some stones to demarcate an area of worship, but are obscured by the many dominating and magnificent mandirs that define the landscape of the city itself. So it was […]

The Persistence of Ayodhya: Wounds & Resistance
The Persistence of Ayodhya: Wounds & Resistance

I was asked to remain confined to my room.  The men from Indian intelligence were polite but firm, and as they questioned me in a small tea shop in a neighborhood adjacent to where the Babri mosque once stood, I could see that they were unsure about what precisely it was that I represented. I […]