Knocking off the Gods

by Margaret Bhatty

The world must be puzzled about the kind of noises coming out from India over the destruction of the giant limestone Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Our Prime Minister calls it "a further obscurantist regression - an assault on centuries of Afghan tradition." This is the same man who declared earlier this year that the destruction of the Babri Masjid (mosque) "fulfilled the people's aspirations." Which people? we would ask. He also said the temple to Ram would be built.

Smashing idols, demolishing shrines, and desecrating sacred icons is something the Christian West has now outgrown. This was how Christianity wiped out flourishing cultures when its tall ships circumnavigated the globe. Destroying the gods of one's adversaries clearly demonstrated the superiority of one's own. Fundamentalist Hindus don't like to be told that in ancient India, even before Allah emerged from among the sand dunes of Arabia, or Christianity found the trade routes to the sub-continent, Hindu kings had no qualms about smashing the gods of other Hindu kings and looting their wealth. Harsha, who ruled a vast empire for 41 years from 606 CE, had special officials whose duty it was to gather the spoils and make an inventory of temple gold, jewels, and land.

During the month of March, as news got around here of the Taliban's plans to destroy the idols of the Buddha, among our loonies new equations have begun to emerge on the religious front. No one here is really bothered about the cultural or historical loss to the world of these spectacular carvings. Our Hindu outfits - the RSS and its various squads — are instead much perturbed by this assault on the integrity of Buddhism in particular, and Hinduism in general. After all, it was from Hindu India that the religion went northwards. Most Buddhists don't see themselves as part of Hinduism. In fact, Gautama's creed was a spirited rebellion against Hinduism and its attendant ills in the 6th century BCE. But the RSS would like to see that reversed. It describes Islam and Christianity as 'alien' but concedes ethnic validity to Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism as 'Indian.' In an effort to take Buddhists back where they originally belonged - in the bosom of Hinduism - Gautama was declared the tenth avatar of Vishnu. In Ayodhya today all the pillars, carvings, etc. are ready for the final act when hordes of zealots will descend on the town and erect the temple without steel or cement. Among the idols waiting to be installed is a new arrival - a freshly-carved image of Gautama Buddha!

We have a huge Buddhist population consisting chiefly of former Untouchables who converted when their leader Dr. Ambedkar embraced the religion at a mass conversion ceremony here in Nagpur in 1956. He hoped by this act to set all free from the stigma of untouchability. It didn't work. As neo-Buddhists his followers are unimpressed by the Hindu concern for their welfare. They give their votes to their own kind. (The efforts of the RSS to 'reinstate Sikhism as an off-shoot of Hinduism also met with a spirited rejection. It was obliged to tone down its rhetoric when Sikhs threatened to come out on the streets.)

Buddhism is of much older vintage than Sikhism. Gautama was born around 563 BCE. His teachings spread fast all over India. The success of this new creed was a great loss of face to Hinduism. But it survives today chiefly in Southeast Asia because of ruthless persecution by Brahmins in order to restore their Vedic religion.

The renowned Kashmir historian, Kaihana, who lived in the twelfth century, recorded how King Jalauka ordered the demolition of Buddhist viharas because the sound of clarions disturbed his sleep. King Abhimanyu had hundreds of Buddhists killed year after year. King Nara, also of Kashmir, had viharas destroyed and settled Brahmins in Buddhist villages. "The massacre of Buddhists and destruction of their holy places did not stop until Buddhism was rooted out of the Valley." In other parts of the country also, Buddhists faced persecution or death. One raja of Bengal, Shashank of the seventh century, tried without success, to uproot the Bodhi Tree in Gaya. Buddhists were driven out of Kerala. South Indian kings also turned on the Buddhists. King Sudhavan issued an edict: "From the Bridge of Rana in Ceylon to the Himalayas, who does not slay the Buddhists, both old and young, shall be slain."

According to a modern historian, P. Ramanathan, both Buddhists and Jains were actively persecuted in south India. "The impaling of 8,000 Tamilian Jains on a single day by the Tamilian Brahmin, Thirignana Sambhanda, at Madurai, around 600 AD, is celebrated by an annual festival in the Meenakshi Temple and at many other temples. The Vaikuntha Perumal temple in Kanchipuram is only one among numerous containing bas-relief sculptures of the murder and torture of Tamilian Buddhists and Jains."

Letters in our newspapers present a revealing cross-section of opinion on the Taliban's destruction of all pre-Islamic shrines in Afghanistan. Inevitably, the destruction of the Babri Masjid crops up. Hindutava sympathizers all declare it was not iconoclastic but a remedy to right an earlier wrong. But the future agenda also includes Muslim mosques in Mathura and Varanasi with others to follow. There is talk of destroying the Cathedral of St. Thomas on the Mount in Chennai (Madras), and countless others in Goa and Pondicherry - all built on Hindu temples razed by earlier Portuguese and French colonialists.

One reader in the Times of India writers "Perhaps there is only one difference between Taliban and Hindu fanatics: The Taliban have managed to destroy their own country and its heritage without opposition. Our home-grown Talibans continue to operate fearlessly." He deplores the way these monsters are nurtured by our own politicians. Another writer in the same column (11 March 2001) declares "there never has been an instance of Hindu intolerance against people of other faiths. But history is replete with instances of Muslim invaders destroying the religions and cultures of the lands they over-run - all in the name of Islam." He describes the destruction of the Buddhas as "the third assault on Hindu civilization" - the first that of the adventurer Mahmud of Ghazni from 1010 to 1026, and the second by Muhammad Ghuri in 1182 - both emerging from the northwestern region through the Khyber Pass. He sees the Taliban action as the third assault on Hindu culture!

Ironically, Sayed Rehmathullah Hasmi, Taliban spokesman at the UNO, has declared that the bombardment of the Buddhas is "in retaliation to the demolition of the Ban Masjid in 1992." We could go on like this for decades, until there is nothing left on either side to demolish.

As a mind-set "Taliban" is not a monopoly of the zealots who promote their brand of intolerance and brutality in Afghanistan today. Talibans have rampaged through human history in different guises. The same mind-set which marched with the Crusaders to liberate Jerusalem, also crossed the Atlantic with the Conquistadors to demolish the gods of the Incas and other flourishing cultures. It circumnavigated the globe in voyages of discovery and repression and established Christianity in Africa.

In the Middle East and Europe, the great schisms of early Christianity resulted in massacres, desecration of shrines, smashing of icons. Wars between Catholics and Protestants were as brutal as tribal conflicts in the darkest regions of the earth where Christ hadn't yet penetrated.

India, legendary for its wealth in ancient times, was looted and plundered by warlike Tartars, Mongols, Huns, and other hordes of Central Asia. When these embraced Islam their campaigns took on the character of holy wars waged against idol-worshipping heathens. But there is nothing specifically Islamic about iconoclasm. Every religion places upon its adherents an obligation to exalt one's gods. And if this can be best achieved by destroying and laying waste to others' shrines and sacred areas there is much merit attached to the act. It is essentially a vested interest in a game of power. That is why we can recognize it here in my country in the utterances and activities of Hindu and other fundamentalists.

Repression, persecution, and vandalism are taken as proof of the vitality and validity of a dogmatic belief. We have all that and much more now stalking this land which could once pride itself on its secularism. If an Islamic Taliban is a blot on the face of Afghanistan, how much more reprehensible a Hindu mindset is in a culture which graciously accepts all religions as just so many different paths to the same end.

It is therefore even more ironical that condemnation of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas should come from the RSS. By identifying a Hindu interest in seeing the sculptures preserved, it has taken upon itself the role of self-appointed spokesmen of Buddhist interests. And in so doing it brings into sharper focus its own phobias about Islam.

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Margaret Bhatty comes from a Christian missionary family. She is a free-lance journalist and author of books in English for Indian children. She lives in Nagpur, India. For many years a columnist for American Atheist, she is the author of the AAP book An Atheist Reports From India, which is available from American Atheists ($9.00, ISBN 0-910309-42-6, Stock #5026).

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