DC Edit | Honour Somnath Lesson, Stand United As Indians

It is important for all people to care about history and learn the lessons it offers in order to live today and plan for the future. It is useful to prevent the repetition of past mistakes and ensure that resources are used in the best possible way for the future.

Repeated attacks on the Somnath temple in Gujarat, which began 1,000 years ago, offer India valuable lessons that unity of purpose among the people is the best guarantee against a powerful enemy that might attempt to invade from outside the border. It is also a symbol of the resilience of the Indian people, who rebuilt the temple each time it was destroyed by marauding foreign powers, starting with Mahmud of Ghazni’s attack in 1026. Somnath can indeed teach a lesson to today’s Indians.

However, facts, fictions and interpretations of the attacks became the main item on the agenda of the Indian right wing, which was used to paint a mask of victimhood to what it believed to be a captive audience of the Indian people. He uses stories not to unite people, but to widen and deepen the fault lines between them by dividing them into descendants of aggressors and victims.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also in the same line while addressing devotees at Somnath Swabhiman Parv, marking the 1000th anniversary of Muhammad Ghori’s attack on the temple. Mr Modi said the forces opposing the reconstruction of the Somnath temple after Independence were “still active among us” and India must be alert, united and strong to defeat them. His apparent reference was to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his current party men.

The truth is that India chose to remain a secular nation despite Partition on religious grounds, and Nehru, as Prime Minister, opposed the government’s direct involvement in the reconstruction efforts. The President of the period, Dr. His objection to Rajendra Prasad opening the temple was also based on his belief that a government that belongs to all people should not be seen as part of a particular religion. The temple was actually rebuilt during Nehru’s time and the opening ceremony was attended by Dr. It may be recalled that Prasad presided over it.

It is understandable that Nehru’s logic was lost on Mr Modi consecrating a temple while he was Prime Minister. It is equally unimaginable that the first Prime Minister, after a disturbing incident, said that the arsonists could be identified by the dress they wore, but Mr Modi said it. Mr Modi is pursuing a different kind of politics, but that hardly gives him the right to denigrate the actions of his predecessor, who followed the spirit of the Constitution to which they both swore an oath. Followers of Nehru’s principles get their right to be in the country not because of the generosity of the government of the day but because of the Constitution.

As a country, it is important that we remember the wounds that history has inflicted on us, instead of licking them and making them bleed even more, in order to stay alert against their repetition.