Ayodhya- Fodder for the media & some thoughts

Tomorrow is the expected date of a judgement on the Ayodhya dispute. Sure, there are strong possibilities that it may get deferred yet again (the Congress wants this as a live issue)or if there is a decision, the losing side will go to the Supreme Court. My blood boils at the media for focusing with so much intensity on an issue that is best forgotten. They are the ones fanning the flames of communalism.

I am a Hindu by birth. I am comfortable with the freedom that Hinduism has given me. I do not need any self appointed guardian for my faith. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (and its proxy, the BJP) think that they are the self appointed guardians of all Hindus. They could not be more mistaken. The Hindu is not so weak that he needs rabble rousers to be his guardians. To a Hindu it does not matter whether he goes to a temple or not. He is as comfortable in worshipping a Ganesha as he is in worshipping Sai Baba of Shirdi. He is equally comfortable in not doing any worship. Just because he is not following a ritual does not mean that he is an atheist. To him atheism is a fall out of what the preachers of the faith have turned the religion in to.
As a Hindu, I do not need a VHP or a BJP to tell me what is faith. What they tell me about faith is not faith at all. Faith is not following some idol or God or demi God. Faith is not found inside a temple, church or mosque. To me, all these symbols are mere edifices of some one’s belief or a vested interest. Apart from an archaeological interest, I find no spirits in these places. And in each of these places, whether it is a Tirupati or a Kalighat or Jagannath Puri, the gatekeepers of those Gods make sure that even an agnostic will surely get converted to an atheist. In Tamil Nadu, I have seen a humungous number of people who have ‘converted’ from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam. Today, when I meet someone with the name of Srinivasan, I cannot take it for granted that he is a Hindu. These conversions are purely driven by economic considerations and the failure of institutions like VHP to do anything positive for the Hindus.
Organisations like VHP / BJP have not anything for the Hindu they claim to represent. I have also seen Christian (there are about fifty different church branches- with most having adopted Hindu rituals in order to keep the new convert involved) leaders siphon away wealth in crores, but at least most of these convertors have given some money or a school admission to the convert. It is a different story that after conversion, they extract their pound of flesh. Conversions in India is a big business and I will not dwell on it here.
The other interesting role is that of the Congress party. Right from the days of P J Nehru, appeasement of muslims has been fashionable. In the name of ‘secularism’ the Congress has always turned a blind eye to the Hindu. The Congress does not want the Ayodhya issue to be resolved since it is a permanent tool to bash the BJP. The day the dispute is resolved, Congress has no grounds to talk about any shortcomings in the BJP which they themselves do not possess. They are stupid not to have accepted a 'compromise' to have a temple and a mosque side by side.
The BJP is plain stupid. Self styled leaders like Advani think that their rabid styles get votes. Sadly, guys like this have done zilch to do anything for the betterment of the Hindu. They also fall in to the trap of opening their stupid mouths in the media with nothing positive to demonstrate. They are sliding down a banister with splinters pointing up.
Finally, the media in India is probably the worst in the world. Today, when people care a damn about Ayodhya (frankly, I did not know anything about the dispute in so much depth but for the media noise in the last two weeks or so) they keep throwing images of demolition of the Babri masjid. And by having daily debates anchored by their rabble rousing and obnoxious anchors. They publish and announce messages of ‘peace’ but make sure that there will be trouble tomorrow, by raising tempers and fanning the flame of communalism in the name of secularism.