It was while in a small Hindu refugee colony near Jodhpur that I understood how the building of Ram Mandir has impacted Hindu refugees who have run away from Pakistan being persecuted because of their faith.

The refugee colony of Pakistani Hindus lies at a distance from Jodhpur. One goes there by a path laid with stones and consists of a rickety journey by a three-wheeler. Once you reach there, you come across a space surrounded by rocks. In the morning light, it presents a beautiful glow and when evening comes the sun’s rays reflect a golden hue that when reflected from the rocks presents an ethereal sight. A few thousand families live there after having run away from persecution in Pakistan. They work as labourers and manual workers. When we went there, after the customary greetings, the community came out and surrounded us, men, women and children. Without any exception, their story of why they left Pakistan was the same as told by everyone. “We had to convert or get killed. We chose to run away.”

A couple of charpoys were set up for us on a small plateau right in front of a small temple. Barely the size of a small room, it looked recently constructed. As I peered inside, there was a huge canvas poster of Sri Ram accepting ber (Indian Jujube fruit) from his disciple, Shabri. On the roof hung a small bell. As I did a pranam, I asked one of them when they built it. “We collected the money and built it.” I was not ready for the next thing he said. “Do you know where we got the motivation from?” he asked.

On seeing my face he said, “It was the building of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. It was the happiest day of our lives since we came from Pakistan. Seeing it being inaugurated on TV was so inspiring. We clapped, cried and hugged each other when the ‘Anushthan’ (ritual) was going on. Emotions ran high in the community, and we felt inspired to build a temple for Ram Prabhu (Bhagwan) which you are seeing in front now.”

As I came and sat amongst the group members, one of the group members explained, “The Hindu refugees from Pakistan can tell you what it means to build a temple. It was unimaginable for us to think of building a temple in Pakistan and having seen so many of them desecrated, it was unimaginable that we would remain indifferent. In Pakistan, we prayed inside our homes without making a noise because public display of our faith is prohibited, something we couldn’t even imagine doing.” The difference they said lay in their having lived with religious persecution with any symbols, or sounds of their faith being prohibited.

As one of them said, “There are three categories of Hindus in the world. There is the Hindu who feels hurt, the Hindu who is passive and indifferent to his fate and a small number who is perturbed and conscious of his identity under threat. The Pakistani Hindu belongs to the last category who feels his persecution in his blood. It is raw and like a festering wound that doesn’t heal. He is rooted in his trauma and persecution for generations ever since partition. It is the Hindus of Bharat who remain passive and not bothered about their annihilation. They are like an ostrich that is hiding its face in the sand. The Hindu who feels reactive is the one creating awareness. He is in minuscule number with the passive Hindus who remain indifferent to him and passive about their fate.”

This passion, the enthusiasm these Hindus from Pakistan talked about was missing in Ayodhya. It was also not witnessed in most parts of our country. Have the last seventy-five years turned us complacent and dulled us that we don’t remember our history? Where is our remembrance of the Direct Action Day, the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus? Where is the memory of raw wounds of generations of persecution which is no longer part of our consciousness? How do we get in touch with our collective souls and collective roots to remind us of who we are? Perhaps only then we will be able to respond the way our Hindu brothers from Pakistan are doing.

A story comes to mind. One of the biggest temples in the entire North India, the Birla temple of New Delhi was built in 1939. No big and grand temple had been built for a long time out of fear of annihilation that has existed for a millennium. Similar to the Hindus from Pakistan, it was the high point of the freedom struggle that gave the people the passion. Yet, it is not part of our historical consciousness as an event that changed the course of our history. There was no acknowledgement of the importance of the event, nor was it mentioned in history books or celebrated.

The building of Somnath temple caused no ripple. It did not cause a change in the historical consciousness of people. It is only mentioned as a footnote, as a fact as to how many times it was destroyed and built again by the masses. It didn’t have a transformative impact on our psyche. It did not lead to a resurgence of national pride or revival.

Why did we then think it would raise the national consciousness through the building of the Ram temple? But if we don’t take lessons from our history, won’t we suffer each time?

The answer perhaps lies in the change of mindset of Indians, one that developed due to the destruction of all symbols over generations and needs much more effort to change. It lies buried and dormant below the shame and fear of centuries that slavery ensued which Prime Minster Modi talks about, but many others remain quiet due to shame.

It is an issue that no one has addressed through education and awareness in our students. It is only when we, as a race, realise how close we have come to annihilation in our history, that the danger persists as raw and threatening, growing bigger, that we will see our resurgence.

Image provided by the author.