"The parallel can be seen for example in the recent resurgence of the worship of Rama, where the control of this religious articulation is politically motivated. The characteristics of the Semitic religions are introduced into this tradition. The teacher or prophet is replaced by the avatâra of Vishnu, Rama; the sacred book is the Râmâyana; the geographical identity or the beginnings of the cult and the historicity of Rama are being sought in the insistence that the precise birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya was marked by a temple, which was destroyed by Babur and replaced by the Babri Masjid; an ecclesiastical infrastructure is implied by inducting into the movement the support of Mahants and the Shankaracharyas or what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad calls a Dharma Sansad; the support of large numbers of people, far surpassing the figures of earlier followers of Rama-bhakti, was organized through the worship of bricks destined for the building of a temple on the location of the mosque. There has been an only too apparent exploitation of belief. The current Babri Masjid dispute is therefore symbolic of an articulation of a new form of Hinduism, militant, aggressive and crusading, which I have elsewhere referred to as Syndicated Hinduism."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Educators from IndiaNon-fiction authors from IndiaHistorians from IndiaWomen academics from IndiaWomen authors from India
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Romila Thapar
48 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Romila Thapar →
Related Quotes
"Strangely, Indians travelling outside the subcontinent do not seem to have left itineraries of where they went or des…"
"Dayananda Sarasvati, seeking to return to the social and religious life of the Vedas, used the Vedic corpus as the bl…"
"The Hindutva version of the theory became a mechanism for excluding some sections of Indian society, specifically Ind…"
"The fundamental sanity in Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan."
"Not surprisingly, nationalism was replaced by a form of militant Hinduism, and the communal atmosphere in Indian poli…"
"[In India’s case] what one can foresee, perhaps, for the end of the next century [i.e. the twenty-first], is a series…"
"All history is contemporary history; you can't get away from the politics around you."
"Capitalism is often believed to thrive among Semitic religions such as Christianity and Islam. The argument would the…"
"The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on…"
"The discovery of Harappan sites on the Indian side of the border between India and Pakistan is viewed as compensating…"