120 "Presenting" the Past
rise and ebb of socio-economic-political events in the subcontinent, the
mosque stood challenging the Brahminical preoccupations of somaticity,
the catholic tolerance and assimilation of their faith, and the inherent vul-
nerability for contamination, betrayal, or even subjugation. The mosque
symbolizes not just the physical defeat of Hindus at the hands of the Mus-
lims but also the perpetuation of the humility through modern secularism.
Their old mythical Ram temple as much as the glorious Hindu historical
era stood deposed by the invaders, and the old "Hindu glory" lay buried
in and overshadowed by a historical trauma. The retribution of removing
the mosque and rebuilding their temple is only a logical action to demon-
strate their valor; accomplishing that by actual physical demolition only
adds to their self-perception and their depiction of the "neo-Hindu" image
to the Muslims and the larger world.
"HINDUISE POLITICS AND MILITARISE
HINDUDOM"
Just like the preindependence period, the independence-struggle era did
not have much of a communal fervor. The Hindu-Muslim question dur-
ing the independence struggle was confined to a few Muslim intellectual
landlords and capitalists who were cooking up a problem that actually
was not there in the minds of the masses. In the 1937 elections, when the
peasantry got a chance to vote for the first time, the Congress contested on
a nationalistic plank with unity, democracy, and secularism as the leading
principles, whereas the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha con-
tested on a communalist platform. Gandhi offered the slogans "heart unity
between Hindu and Muslim" and "Hindu-Mussalman ki jai" (Victory to
Hindu-Muslim unity). He associated the Congress with the peasants, took
up their causes in the indigo movement in Bihar and the Bardoli struggle
in Gujarat, and held the upper-class Hindu and Muslim powerbrokers in
contempt. The Muslim League was decisively rejected, the Hindu Mahas-
abha completely routed, and the Congress won 26 of the 58 Muslim seats
it contested. Of the 485 seats allotted to Muslims in the provinces by the
Communal Award of 1932, the League won only 108. In its stronghold, the
United Province, the League won only 29 seats out of 22S.^38 The Hindu
and Muslim peasants and masses proved that the League and the Mahas-
abha were not their vanguards.
But the postindependence period witnessed a growing Hindu and Mus-
lim reactionary revivalism. The two-nation theory, the bloody partition,
and the accompanying holocaust; the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and beyond; controversial mass conversions of Hin-
dus to Islam; the upper-caste Hindu jealousy over the foreign-remittance
prosperity of Muslims; the growing urban Muslim and their rising political
consciousness; and the resultant fear and insecurity among the Brahmini-