The New York Times - USA (2020-08-06)

(Antfer) #1

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020 A


Y

NEW DELHI — In a moment of tri-
umph that India’s Hindu nationalists had
worked toward for years, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi on Wednesday set the
ceremonial cornerstone for a new Hindu
temple at the site of a destroyed mosque
in Ayodhya.
Hindus and Muslims have clashed
over the Ayodhya site for decades, set-
ting off waves of sectarian violence that
has killed thousands. As Mr. Modi sat
cross-legged and chanted mantras in
front of a Hindu priest on Wednesday,
part of the elaborate groundbreaking
ceremony for the temple, it was the ful-
fillment of a promise to his Hindu politi-
cal base and an unmistakable milestone
in his efforts to shift India’s secular foun-
dations toward a more overtly Hindu
identity.
Millions of Indians watched the cere-
mony on television or on social media.
But because of the coronavirus pan-
demic, the gathering in Ayodhya itself
was more muted than originally
planned, with the crowds kept away.
Hindu priests chose Wednesday, and
specifically 12:44 p.m., as the most auspi-
cious time to begin building the temple.
With the television cameras rolling,
Mr. Modi took center stage. He per-
formed Hindu rituals, such as offering
holy water and putting a red mark on his
forehead, alongside some of India’s most
avowed Hindu nationalists. They includ-
ed Yogi Adityanath, the firebrand Hindu
monk turned chief minister of Uttar
Pradesh State, and Mohan Bhagwat, the
leader of the R.S.S., a Hindu supremacist
group, whose members helped tear
down the mosque that used to stand in
Ayodhya.
“The wait of centuries is coming to an
end,” Mr. Modi proclaimed.
Mr. Modi’s triumphal moment collides
with a tough reality. India has been wal-
loped by the coronavirus, racking up
more infections than any other nation be-
sides the United States or Brazil. The vi-
rus is cutting through India’s political
class, including people close to Mr. Modi.
In the past few days, Dharmendra
Pradhan, the oil minister, and Amit Shah,
the home minister, who is widely consid-
ered India’s second-most-powerful per-
son after Mr. Modi, have come down with
the coronavirus and been hospitalized.
Several other politicians have fallen ill.
And the economy has fallen into a deep
well. Economists have predicted that
more than 100 million Indians will have
lost their jobs or are in serious danger of
losing them. As factories shut down and
people retreated to their homes under
coronavirus lockdown rules, some of
which still stand, tens of millions of labor-
ers poured out of the cities, making har-
rowing journeys back into the country-
side, where they hoped to rely on their
rural families to survive.
Some economists have predicted that
India’s once booming economy could
contract by nearly 10 percent, tipping
millions back into poverty.
In that environment, for many Indian
Hindus, Mr. Modi’s Ayodhya ceremony
was a captivating distraction. It symbol-
ized Mr. Modi’s “total domination over
India,” said Arati Jerath, a political com-
mentator.
The intent, Ms. Jerath said, is for Mr.
Modi to show that he and his party are
“building a Hindu nation and that India
is a Hindu-majority country, not the
Nehruvian secular India that we have
known for the last 70 years.”
All week, government officials had
been prepping the site. Firefighters


hosed down Ayodhya’s streets with sani-
tizer. Saffron flags — the holy color for
Hinduism — fluttered from nearby
rooftops, and houses around the temple
site had been hastily splashed with a coat
of fresh paint. Security officers chalked
out the precise spot where Mr. Modi
would land in a military helicopter.
Wednesday coincided with the first an-
niversary of Mr. Modi’s move on Kash-
mir, another political gift to Hindu na-
tionalists. On Aug. 5, 2019, Mr. Modi’s
government suddenly announced that it
was eradicating the statehood of Jammu
and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim major-
ity state, bifurcating the territory and
turning it into a federal enclave.
Kashmiris saw that as a betrayal of
decades of policy that allowed Kashmir a
certain degree of autonomy, and thou-
sands of Kashmiris were rounded up and
arrested. Some Kashmiri leaders still re-

main in detention.
A few months later, Mr. Modi’s govern-
ment passed a citizenship law that bla-
tantly discriminated against Muslims.
That law proved incredibly divisive, set-
ting off nationwide protests that formed
the biggest challenge yet to Mr. Modi’s
agenda and put him on the defensive for
the first time.
Mr. Modi’s participation at Ayodhya is
seen in this light, as another decisive
step toward an India that officially favors
its Hindu majority — about 80 percent of
the population is Hindu and 14 percent
Muslim.
“The last 15 months have seen a more
systematic and ruthless action toward
rewriting the constitution and ushering
in a new grammar of state power,” Suhas
Palshikar wrote in a column this week in
The Indian Express, one of India’s lead-
ing progressive newspapers. “The new

republic is founded on a militant culture
of majoritarianism.”
India’s Muslim community has mostly
stayed quiet about Ayodhya, accepting
defeat.
In November, India’s Supreme Court
greenlighted the construction of a Hindu
temple on the site where the mosque had
stood before Hindu devotees destroyed it
in 1992 with sledgehammers and their
bare hands. Mr. Modi’s party has cast its
quest to build a temple as a key step in
establishing India as overtly Hindu, wip-
ing away centuries of oppression at the
hands of the Muslim Mughal Empire and
British colonialists.
Many independent analysts saw the
Supreme Court’s decision as a capitu-
lation to the majoritarian politics of Mr.
Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
Many Hindus believe that the dis-
puted site was the birthplace of their

revered god Ram and that an earlier tem-
ple for Ram was demolished during
Mughal rule to build the mosque. The
case had been tossing and turning in In-
dian courts since the 1950s.
The Hindu supremacists’ destruction
of the Babri Mosque in 1992 set off riots
across the country that killed about 2,
people. The Ayodhya shock waves con-
tinued for years; the widespread reli-
gious massacres in Gujarat in 2002 were
connected to Ayodhya as well.
The mosque that had stood on the site
was built in the 1500s during Mughal
rule, a period that many right-wing Hin-
dus feel bitterly about, seeing it as subju-
gation under Muslim occupation. Al-
though monuments like the Taj Mahal —
also built under the Mughals — are some
of India’s most celebrated sites, Hindu
hard-liners see them as testaments of
past oppression.

India’s Leader Dedicates a Hindu Temple on the Ruins of a Mosque


PRAKASH SINGH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

MONEY SHARMA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
A screen in New Delhi, top, showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking part in the groundbreaking for a Hindu temple Wednesday in Ayodhya. Supporters
of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, above left, celebrated in New Delhi. A Hindu ceremony, above right, in Amritsar celebrating the temple groundbreaking.

NARINDER NANU/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Symbol of Ascendancy


At Site of Sectarian Strife


By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
and HARI KUMAR

ROME — Six weeks shy of his birth-
day, Giuseppe Paternò fulfilled the
dream of a lifetime: He got a university
degree.
“Don’t get lost because you find obsta-
cles — because there will always be ob-
stacles,” Mr. Paternò told reporters after
he graduated with honors last week from
the University of Palermo, where he re-
ceived a degree in history and philoso-
phy. “You have to be strong.”
In Mr. Paternò’s case, he was so strong
that the birthday that loomed as he
reached his lifetime goal was his 97th.
Mr. Paternò’s graduation has inspired
news coverage around the world, partly
because of his age. But he has also drawn
attention because his life story speaks of
commitment, a theme that has resonated
as millions of schoolchildren in Italy and
elsewhere face extraordinary uncer-
tainty amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Paternò “transmits faith in the fu-
ture,” said Rossella Cancila, his thesis ad-
viser and a professor of history at the
University of Palermo. “He’s a model to
follow.”
He has been honored by his former
employer, the State Railways system,
and by the city of Palermo. Interview has
followed interview.
“Too many interviews, too many com-
pliments,” he said during an interview on
Wednesday, acknowledging that per-
haps he was overwhelmed. But Mr. Pa-


ternò has seemed to get around the
many obstacles he has faced in his life-
time. Studying had been his passion
since he was a small child, he said, “but
unfortunately life betrayed me.”
Born in Palermo in 1923 and the first of
seven children in a “very poor family,”
Mr. Paternò began working soon after
finishing elementary school. “The family
was large, there was only one paycheck,
we were under fascism, and times were
tough,” he said.
Eventually, he ended up at a publish-
ing house where an enlightened boss
persuaded his father to send him back to
school for a three-year vocational de-
gree. Mr. Paternò then worked for an in-
surance agency while he took private
classes to become a telegraph operator.
He used those skills when he was drafted
into the navy in World War II, and then at
the State Railways company, where he
worked for more than four decades.
In 1951, with a wife and two small chil-
dren at home, he got his high school di-
ploma as a surveyor, which led to a desk
job at State Railways. It was only after he
retired, in the mid-1980s, that he re-
turned to his books, taking theology
courses through the Archdiocese of Pa-
lermo after a chance meeting with a phi-
losophy professor who urged him to fol-
low his passion.
He got around to returning to school in
2017 — after completing another goal:
writing an autobiography and seeing it

published.
“I wasn’t one to bring my grandchil-
dren to the playground,” said Mr. Pa-
ternò, speaking not of his lack of fond-
ness for them but of his lack of interest in
the usual grandfatherly activities.
There doesn’t seem to be any hard feel-
ings. Three of his four grandchildren and
one of his great-grandchildren attended
his July 29 graduation ceremony, which
was led by Fabrizio Micari, the chancel-
lor of the University of Palermo. Mr. Mi-
cari congratulated Mr. Paternò for his de-
gree \ near-perfect grade point average.
“It’s an extraordinary, exceptional result
for any young man,” the chancellor said,
with a hint of humor.

Mr. Micari called for a round of ap-
plause when he announced that Mr. Pa-
ternò was graduating with honors, be-
stowing a red-ribboned laurel wreath on
the graduate’s head, an Italian tradition.
Mr. Paternò’s son, Ninni Paternò, said
the family had not expected all the atten-
tion.
“It’s incredible,” the younger Paternò
said of his father. “He achieved his objec-
tive, but he didn’t mean to end up in
newspapers around the world.”
Mr. Paternò’s thesis on Palermo inter-
twined the city’s history with his own.
“He dove into the thesis, especially
during the lockdown,” said Ms. Cancila.
“His story is proof that dreams can

come true and that you can remain
young — if not in age, at least in spirit — if
you cultivate interests,” she added.
Italy’s university system is based on a
three-year degree, followed by a two-
year master’s course. University offi-
cials are hoping that Mr. Paternò will
continue his studies.
He isn’t so sure.
“I have to confess that in this moment,
I don’t know whether I would tackle it
with the same spirit,” he said on Wednes-
day, noting that all the attention had been
a bit wearying.
Still, Mr. Paternò said, he would proba-
bly enroll anyway. “I want to keep my op-
tions open.”

Receiving His University Degree


As a Great-Grandchild Watches


By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Clockwise from top right: Giuseppe Paternò in 1933; taking a final online; and being awarded his degree last week.

GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/REUTERS

GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/REUTERS

ANTONIO PARRINELLO/REUTERS
Free download pdf