154 "Presenting" the Past
So in this vast, diverse, and intricate India, the context is definitely "one
of a multiplicity of different, yet interlocking, histories—legendary, secu-
lar, reformist, sectarian, legitimist, nationalist, rebellious, nativistic—all
of which end, as it were, in a final denouement." Hence it is only appro-
priate to avoid the sequential narrative with an implied teleological range
and to go for an "open-ended strategy of multiple description" that helps
us to move freely between sequence and episode and draw upon the many
histories of India.^28
Thus there are innumerable religious, cultural, historical, political,
economic, legal, and other factors that contribute to and constitute the
popular memories of the vast and complex Indias. These local-national,
resilient-rigid, gullible-shrewd, erratic-consistent, dissenting-agreeing,
tangible-elusive memories evade any kind of quantification, generaliza-
tion, theorization, or even meaningful representation. The communal-
nationalistic discourses preempt this difficulty by imposing a singularity
and specificity on the many memories. For example, consider the following
story of the Sangh Parivar that effectively taps into all the historiographi-
cal traditions of the Indian society, the myths, the memories, the fears,
and the prejudices, and circumvents the representational difficulties. The
story merits reproduction in full in order for the precursory nature of the
Hindutva logic and program to be grasped:
Nothing could escape him. If it was a temple it must be felled. If it was an idol it
must be shattered.
His back slightly bent, one of his hands resting behind him and the other count-
ing the beads of his rosary, Aurangzeb paced up and down in his shamiana.
"Ya Allah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "So many years I have been camping in the
Deccan—and yet these thrice-cursed Marathas are not crushed.... "
The generals sitting by his side did not say anything. They had no answer on
the invincibility of the kafirs.
Pounding a fish in the palm of his hand the Badshah exclaimed, "I must serve
Allah! If I cannot do it by destroying the kafirs, I must destroy their gods and god-
desses " With an imperious gesture he turned to his generals and commanded,
''Wherever we camp, see that no Hindu temple remain [sic], no Hindu deity
remains ... fell them all and build mosques there."
All too glad to carry out such a bidding the generals departed on an orgy of
destruction.
In the evening a messenger entered the imperial tent and saluted. ''May it
please your majesty," he began, "news has come that very nearby there is a famous
temple of the kafir God Shiva.... Because it is a famous temple, your majesty may
perhaps wish to put an end to it with your own hands...."
"What is it known as?"
"It is known as the Jyotirlinga of Omkareshwar...."
"We shall certainly call on this kafir god and put an end to him...."
As the bearded band halted before the famous temple and Aurangzeb got down
from his mount, the priests knew what was coming.