Time to stop digging up past, move ahead

Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat's call to Indians to let bygones be bygones and live peacefully together, though welcome, comes a bit late. The air is already thick with hatred and suspicion. The ghettoisation of the minds has gone too far in the country due to the divisiveness seeds sown by one and all.

Why search for Shivlings everywhere, Bhagwat asked and rightly so. Yes, there is no point in searching for Hindu Gods under every Masjid. There ought to be one everywhere. After all, this was a land of the Hindus once. And also of the Buddhists and Jains, too, who preferred their own path. Of course, they did not have to kill and maim the others to establish their religious supremacy. For that matter Ashoka, one of the greatest emperors of the yore, had walked the righteous path of peace only after butchering millions.

History records that Ashoka ensured rivers of blood in the Kalinga war only to repent later and change his course. Some Buddhist texts recall him as one of the cruellest monarchs. It was so with several kings and conquerors. All of them had waged wars and killed people. If those who marched their armies in this country were locals, then they imposed their rule on the losers and if there were to be outsiders, they massacred the populations and looted them. Woman have always been the first casualty in such wars and the victorious armies usually raped and brutalised them. Some even exported these women as sex slaves to far-off lands.

That is the past. It is not in our hands to change it. If one seeks to continue baying for the blood of those 'sinners,' the present and the future, too, become uncertain. Have not we moved ahead since the medieval ages? Have not we become a bit more civilized? Yes, it is true that some of the Muslim kings and emperors used religion as a tool to take control of the land. Their rule was barbaric in every sense. Those who got converted under such rules were most probably afraid of their fate and did so. That is again the past.

Our contemporaries who practise a different faith now did not demolish a temple and build a Masjid there. As not only Bhagwat, but everyone else knows, our ancestors were the same. We had the same lineage. The Muslim and the Hindu families born here since generations and died here have the same ancestry. During these times of identity politics there will be always a tendency to question the other. A section of the Hindus could claim to be natives of this land and question the 'Aryan connections of another section.'

Where does this lead to? The problem with the past is that it is not even past and always steps into the present. Let us not allow that to happen. For that matter, we don't even need a Bhagwat to tell us what kind of a past we had. Every Indian knows what it was. Of importance is what should be our future. That is all! Don't we have better things to do in life? Let us ignore the extreme agendas working to resurrect the past ghosts on either side.