Some were talking about the temple, and the fine stones and votive offerings with which it was adorned. Jesus said, “These things you are admiring — the time will come when not one stone will be left upon another. All will be thrown down.” (Luke 21.5-6)
Every government down the ages has joined religion and politics in an attempt to preserve its hegemony. For politics has played the religious card, well aware that religion usually makes for better thought control and so for tighter governance.
So, governments have used religion to further their ends, whether the rulers be Hindu, Muslim, or Christian.
In this, members of a majority community were usually privileged, while other religious minorities were either persecuted, expelled, or exterminated. The Jews in Europe, for instance. Or the indigenous peoples in the Americas.
The Peace of Westphalia
The most significant exception to this universal rule was the treaty between Catholic and Protestant rulers which concluded the “wars of religion” in Europe. It is commonly called the “Peace of Westphalia” (January 1648).
It changed the face of Europe and left a lasting impact on the world.
The Protestant Reformation (roughly 1521-1648) wasn’t just a religious revolution. It had a political and military impact as well.
Rulers and their armies fought each other for the right to break away from Rome (if Protestant), or the right to impose the old faith upon all their people (if Catholic). In between there were smaller groups — Anabaptists, Quakers — who were persecuted by both sides.
The Treaty of Westphalia changed all that. It gave sovereignty to individual rulers and is credited with being the birthplace of the nation-state. Its classic formulation was, “The religion of the king becomes the faith of his subjects” (Lat. cujus religio eius regio).
It was also a distant forerunner of what is today called “secularism,” for it foretold the advent of religion as a private choice, and not as public pageantry or forced imposition.
However, the European model did not apply to other parts of the world.
‘Ethnic Democracies’
In India, for instance, various parts of the country followed their own worship of the Mother Goddess in its diverse forms, and various rulers followed their kuldevatas (family deities) without any conflict. Orthodoxy was not an important value; caste affiliation was.
Much of this changed with British rule in the 19th century. Many educated Indians looked at the European model of social organization and governance with envy, and the idea of “ethnic democracy” took hold.
What is ethnic democracy? Briefly, it is a political system that combines representative government with structured ethnic dominance.
Both the dominant ethnic group and the minority ethnic groups do not have equal citizenship rights, and so the latter are precluded from certain aspects of civic life.
Many Hindu ideologues were inspired by the European Fascism of the 1930s and sought to duplicate its model in this country. India’s present government has even enacted a Citizens Amendment Act to do this.
“Ethnic democracy” was earlier practised in “apartheid” South Africa, and is currently followed in Israel. How ironic that the Jews, earlier victims of “ethnic cleansing” by the Nazis, should today practice similar genocidal assaults on Christian and Muslim Palestinians!
Religion in the 21st century
“The 21st century will be religious — or it will not be at all,” said Andre Malraux, the perceptive French writer, reflecting on his experience with the two atheistic ideologies of Naziism and Communism.
It is true that there is a return to piety, but it is also true that we see the rise of fundamentalist and intolerant belief systems. Religion has not become benign and compassionate; it has grown arrogant and violent.
Sadly, nowhere is this seen more clearly in India than in the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the building of the Ram Temple. But it is also seen in Istanbul, Turkiye, in the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia museum into its earlier status as a mosque.
Religion in the public space
Most Indians brought up in the Nehruvian mold, would say that the feudal religious mindset so prevalent in the country should yield to citizenship, a secular quality concerned with making a better life for all. Alas, it hasn’t.
If India is to become a country where all religious communities live together in harmony working together for the common good, then there should be a downplaying of rituals and religious pageantry in favor of development goals — education, health, employment, prosperity, and ecological sustainability.
Unfortunately, this is not so. In fact, the last decade has seen a fall in the levels of prosperity for the ordinary worker, and a sharp decline in standards of health, education, and public welfare.
Simultaneously we see an increase in the pageantry of public Hindu festivals and a growing hostility towards religious minorities.
The nation seems to be moving regressively towards a feudal polity, characterized by an absence of liberty and egalitarian community.
We are not yet an ethnic democracy, but we seem to be getting there soon.
Hindu temples: shrines or monuments?
Writing recently in The Indian Express, Ramesh Venkataraman observed: In ancient India, there were two kinds of temples — the sacred shrine, a teerth, built organically, which attract devotees in their thousands. Tirupati is perhaps the most famous, but so are Sabarimala, Kedarnath, Badrinath, and the temple towns of Varanasi, Nashik, Rishikesh, Puri, and a host of others.
The second kind of temple is the grandiose imperial structure which displays the ruler’s power and triumphalism.
People do visit such, but more as tourists than as devotees. Kailashnath in Kanchipuram is one such, as is Brihadeshwar in Thanjavur, Ellora, the Mahabalipuram shore temples, and many others scattered across the breadth of this land.
Venkataraman concludes: The Ayodhya Ram Mandir is squarely a political project, a refrain in the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party’s manifesto since the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Like the imperial temples of yore, it is a tribute to the power of the Modi regime, and it burnishes its Hindu credentials.
For Hindu India, under Modi’s leadership, wants desperately to be seen not just as the “workshop of the world,” but also as vishwa guru (world teacher) and vyaspeeth (global arbiter).
On account of its recent tumultuous history, the Ram Mandir promises to be a major tourist attraction. But whether the new temple will resonate with the Hindu faithful and become a sacred shrine, is a question that only time can answer.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.