Pratap Bhanu Mehta & banning Allahu Akbar

Pratap Bhanu Mehta evidently disagrees with Sheldon Pollock and a host of other Orientalists. He thinks Lord Ram never had anything to do with political power. This is a strange doctrine. Lord Ram was a King.  Many Dynasties in India claim descent from him. Just recently, in response to a question by the Supreme Court as to whether descendants of Lord Ram were still living, responses came forth from two of the oldest and most blue blooded Royal Families of India.

Yet Mehta writes- 'Ayodhya’s Ram temple is first real colonisation of Hinduism by political power'. The fact is Temples and Mosques and other places of worship have often been imbricated with political power. In the case of those built by invaders, this represented colonialism. However, the vast majority of people in India are Hindu. Hindus can't be said to colonize themselves. They can only rule themselves.

Why does Mehta say something so absurd? The answer, it seems, is that- though he himself is from a Jain family- he has been talking to Lord Ram. This makes him superior to anyone else. He alone can speak with authority about this subject.

Ram. You can be properly addressed just with that name.

But not known purely on that basis. In any case Lord Rama is 'purvabhahshin'- the first to initiate conversation. If He isn't talking to you, chances are you are not really talking to Him. That is certainly the case with the cretin Mehta.

Any proclamation announcing your triumph, like Jai Shree Ram, diminishes you.

No it doesn't. Mehta may think Muslims are diminishing God by saying 'Allahu Akbar'. He is welcome to go and explain his point to them. The fact is, one is not considered to diminish anyone or anything by eulogizing them in an euphonious and salutary fashion.

The necessity of proclaiming your victory implies you could have been defeated.

No it does not. Nor is it the case that saying 'Our Lord who art in Heaven' implies God could be in the other place.

I must also make a confession. You were the radiant and intimate presence in my life:

Yet you turned out to be a moral imbecile. For the Faith Community, this is because you weren't really in communion with God. You were merely engaging in some hypocritical behavior of a self-aggrandizing sort.

The ground of our Being. You were the Mind and the Senses. You were the Virtues.
You were Compassion and Divination. Your name was uttered in the anguish of suffering and the ecstasy of liberation. You were the householder, the son, the brother, the disciple, the friend. You were the king, but also the renouncer. You were Dharma. You were occasionally cruel and unjust. But your anguish seems to recognise your own cruelty. You were divine. But your equivocations were human. You were the last Refuge I woke to, and slept to, the reassurance Tulsi gave us: “Raghuvar tumko meri laaj, sada sada main sharan tehari, tum ho garib nawaz (I seek protection in you, protector of destitute souls)”.

Mehta speaks in the past tense. Apparently, he has gotten over his crush. Why?

Today, those who waged war in your name

are clearly shown to have won the legal case and to have widespread popular support.

will consecrate your temple at Ayodhya. They are describing this as the ultimate act of devotion to you, the ultimate obeisance to your sovereignty.

That may be true enough if that is how they genuinely feel. Mehta may not like it but he was not able to prevent this outcome. Why be a sore loser? Move on to telling the Muslims not to diminish God by saying 'Allahu Akbar'. They are sure to give him a very warm reception.

They are, they say, reclaiming hallowed ground, desecrated by barbarous invaders. They are describing this as a cathartic overcoming of Hindu humiliation. They are describing this as a new renaissance for Ram Rajya. You will now be the symbol of a community united in strength, full of a new found pride.

What's wrong with that? These guys won a Court Case. Let them make merry. Don't be a dick just because your side lost.

It will be said, secretly, this is restoring wholeness to a broken culture.

Why secretly? Is there some obscene undercurrent I am missing?

But I know I will not find you there.

Nor will anyone else who does not actually visit the place for that pious purpose.

This is because what is being consecrated is a monument to a violent, collective narcissism.

In the opinion to a monumental narcissist.

You know a temple to you is dangerous or superfluous.

Mehta is against Hindu temples. Is he equally against Mosques?

Superfluous if we understand your true meaning; dangerous if we arrogantly emulate you.

Lord Ram won battles. Mehta may not want to 'arrogantly emulate' any warrior because he is a coward. But, not everybody is a coward. There were plenty of valorous Jain Kings.

Some people, including Jains, want to build Temples. Others get their knickers in a twist when this happens but, if the Indian Express will pay to publish their drivel, it's a case of nice work if you can get it.

Valmiki described you in human form as “nara chandrama” (moon amongst men). Your greatest chronicler could see right through you.

Nonsense! He could see through an aspect of 'maya' or illusion but the moon is not transparent, nor is it a mirage.

He had the moon’s blemishes in mind.

The moon has no blemishes. It is a satellite of the earth which has craters.

You are admittedly an epitome of sacrifice.

No. Lord Ram protects Vedic sacrifices.

You gave up a kingdom, to honour an unjust promise of your father.

Ram did so at the behest of Kaikeyi.

It is puzzling that our itihasa is about children fulfilling the unjust promises of their father and setting off a chain of destructive events in its wake.

But this did not happen. Rama could have seized the throne and his father could have said the thing was out of his hands. The point about this episode is that Rama chose to honour the demand of the weaker parent. But, equally, being a warrior, he could win greater Empires elsewhere- which is precisely what he accomplishes.

In the Ramayana and Mahabharata, there is not a single father, from Shantanu to Dhritarashtra to Arjuna, where the children don’t have to pay for the unjust choices of the father.

Nonsense! Men of mettle can leave home and win renown elsewhere. Why is Mehta bleating about bad Daddies? How infantile is this senile pedagogue?

Yours did too. Then there is Vali who you slayed like a coward,

Vali had a boon that he could not be attacked frontally. As a warrior, it was his job to guard his rear and sides. He failed to do so. So he started whining about unfairness. Why get boons which give you an unfair advantage if you are concerned with fair play?

Shambuka whose penance challenging the caste order you unjustly punished,

By sending him straight to Heaven. By contrast, don't kill those who just do that sort of thing to get a meagre livelihood.

and Sita whose truth had to be sacrificed to opinion.

So that Mummy and Daddy and all the slain warriors could come back to life to have a wonderful banquet before parting again promising to meet up in Heaven. Why is Mehta speaking in this childish tone? Is it because he thinks, if the Temple is built, somebody will come and chuck him into a fire to test his virginity? I suppose so. This is where the Me Too movement is heading.

You could reconcile these blemishes because you were divine.

But the metaphysics of the Ramayana are Occasionalist. There are no 'blemishes'. There is Maya on the one hand, and a univocal efficient power on the other.

You could sin and still redeem them. “Svargata shambuka samstuta Ram,” as it goes in the beautiful Nama Ramayana (you sent Shambuka to heaven who was apparently grateful to you).

That's how Occasionalism works.  Why get your knickers in a twist over a Temple being built? God builds it. God levels it. It is all God's Lila- or play.

But we mortals cannot worship your morals.

Morals are not meant to be worshipped. God yes. Morals no. You have to try to be moral in your own life.

We humans have to have a lesser morality, since we cannot redeem those we slay or banish.

So what? God could slay or banish people He does not want to redeem the worst sinners. On the contrary, he wants them to taste Hell fire for eternity.

Vali, and Shambuka and Sita will require justice here, not eternal redemption.

No they won't. The dead may have their problems but lack of access to judicial processes is not one of them.

So we cannot emulate your maryada (integrity). It was appropriate to you. No wonder your greatest devotees, Madhusudhan Saraswati, Tulsi, Gandhi, never felt they needed a temple to discover their morality.

So what? If some lesser devotees want temples why not let them have it? Terence Tao does not need help with Arithmetic. I do. Tao is a greater mathematician than me. Does this mean I should receive no help balancing my check book?

Perhaps we are consecrating a higher principle. “Shuddha Brahma Paratpara Ram” as the first line of Nama Ramayana goes — the purest Brahmana. But that never needs a temple.

This answers your question. A temple is being built by those who feel they will benefit from it. The fact that others don't need it is irrelevant.

The beautiful Shiva-Uma-Rama of the Ramrahasya Upanishad cannot take the form of a singular representation.

Yes it can. It mentions 'bija mantras' which fully represent its entirety. 

In consecrating you at Ayodhya, they want to dislodge the different forms in which you reside in our inner citadel, one no invader has been able to breach, and replace it with a new Teflon diety, manufactured by a political machine.

No they don't. They don't give a toss about you, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, because, to be frank, you are a fucking tosser. We don't care what shite you have shoved up your inner citadel or prison purse.

If Mehta shits himself with fear just because Hindus are building a Temple, fuck will he do if the Chinese invade? Silly question. He will learn Chinese.

So the temple is dangerous or unnecessary.

To Mehta- but he is unnecessary to everybody.

You know this temple is founded on something akin to an act of terrorism, the razing down of a mosque.

A mosque is not a mosque, according to Islamic law, unless it is used for Muslim worship. The structure had not been used in that way since 1949. However, it had been used for Hindu worship on an annual basis till the late Eighties when it was opened up to the public.

You know this temple is not a product of piety, but retaliation and revenge for an event centuries ago.

Mehta doesn't just speak to God. He also knows whatever God knows. Yet Ashoka University is insisting he teach undergraduates. This is evidence that Modi is Hitler! America must give asylum to this lunatic. 

Kings and invaders of years past must have razed many temples to the ground and they likely destroyed a temple at Ayodhya too. But that is neither here nor there.

What is here is Mehta gibbering with fear because the indigenous people, not invaders, are building something they want. Why do invaders get to knocks stuff down while the natives mustn't do so?

History is a slaughter house that no divinity of any stripe has been able to redeem.

Mehta would prefer it to be a slaughter house where Hindus are slaughtered. Sadly, Hindus don't agree with him.

All we can do is snatch snippets of a fragile justice here and there.

Mehta can't snatch shit though he may use his shithole as a snatch. 

It is the ultimate hubris to think that we need to protect you rather than you to protect us.

Says a guy who is talking to God and telling him 'you were a bit naughty weren't you? Still, I magnanimously forgive you- provided you fuck up the BJP.'

Revenge does not help.

Nonsense! Tit for tat is a good game-theoretic strategy.

Past conflicts are being used as pretexts to reconfigure contemporary power.

But this succeeded long ago! Why dwell on the subject?

The forces that will consecrate this temple converted your name into the very opposite of what it signifies.

In the opinion of a nutter who thinks he is talking to God.

They made Ram synonymous with revenge, with an insecure pride, with a blood curdling aggression, violence towards others, a coarsening of culture, and the erasure of every last shred of genuine piety in public devotion and public life.

Who is doing this? Mehta is doing this. Does he really want us to believe he is a pure and innocent Ram Bakht without hatred in his heart? Listen to him rage!

They will say Ram is a national symbol, a symbol of Hindu pride. But did you consent to being converted to something as banal and nasty as the symbol of an ethnic nationalism?

Mehta blames God for permitting Hindus to be similar to Muslims or Christians or Atheists. Why? I suppose it is because he objects to Hindu pride. He will only be happy when there is Hindu humiliation.

You redeemed your devotees, those you wronged, but your opponents as well. But this temple is a monument to exclusion, a brute majoritarianism subordinating others.

This shite of yours, Mehta, is a monument to your insensate rage and hatred of a political party and, truth to be told, a nation which considers you a worthless cretin.

Look at the men, both political and spiritual, who speak in your name,

And then look at this cretin who thinks he is speaking to God! India has made its choice between them.

and the blood, power and intimidation they have on their hands.

and the jizz Mehta has on his hands

Your name will be used to shore up the coarsest forms of personalised power; the entire liturgy is a display of the most corrupt of monarchical power, in a democratic garb.

While Mehta's name will be used to shore up- nothing at all. Darbari intellectuals like him harmed the dynasty by their Hindu baiting.

I understand that so many of my fellow Hindus will experience this as a great catharsis, as the weight of history being lifted.

Some may. Others will want to make a pilgrimage there. This should help the local economy.

But deep down we need to ask: How did we become so insecure that we need a cowardly victory of razing down a monument to satiate out collective narcissism?

No. The real question is- why do elderly Indians write shite of this sort? Does it have something to do with Colonialism? Or did Mehta get muddled by his presumably Jain upbringing? Jainism may well have a different take on Lord Rama. But Jainism is a separate Religion. How is it concerned with what Hindus do?

And is this a kind of insecurity that is never satiated, it expands its circle until it colonises all sentiment? This temple is the first real colonisation of Hinduism by political power. I feel chained like never before.

Then return to Jainism. Quit pretending to be Vaishnava.

You came to earth to lighten its load; this temple burdens us with evil. Like the last genuine devotee of Ram in modern India, Gandhi, we can only mourn in silence, as our garib nawaz forsakes us. Your radiant presence is gone. Only the oppressive yoke of zealotry remains.

Mehta mourns. Mehta feels very sorry for himself. But Mehta makes us laugh. Lord Ram, of his Grace, has turned this pompous fool into a figure of fun for poor bloggers like me. Now if only Mehta would go off to Pakistan to convince the people there not to say 'Allahu Akbar' my cup of joy will runneth over.