Islamic Movements in India (Royal Asiatic Society Books) by Arndt-Walter Emmerich

Author:Arndt-Walter Emmerich [Emmerich, Arndt-Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000706239
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-11-10T18:30:00+00:00

During the speeches, PFI cadres distributed a pamphlet entitled “6 December 1992: Lest we forget”. Its content firmly stated that:

Asking Muslims to forget about Babri Masjid is adding insult to injury. Not a single citizen of this great nation, let alone Muslims, will forget about Babri. Forgetting an unspeakable tragedy would only help the growth of communalism and fascism.

This brief excerpt mirrors the campaign’s objective for the PFI. PFI members used phrases such as “whoever is fighting for the cause of Babri Masjid will receive support and help from the PFI”; “we will ensure that even a newborn child will know about the story of the Mosque”; “the history of Babri will be imparted into generation after generation, until we get justice”; or the PFI makes sure to reach “every nook and corner of the country, educating the masses about the Babri issues”. By reminding Muslims of the traumatic Babri Masjid destruction and the violent political context in which it occurred, groups such as the PFI contribute to what researchers of the Holocaust have called a “post memory” that is “a generational structure of transmission embedded in multiple forms of mediation” (Hirsch 2012: 35). Often, these highly individual and emotional accounts carry sentiments of personal loss and severe humiliation by the actual destruction of the mosque (given the symbolic meaning as a house of God and the Prophet), but also by the public demand to forget and forgive. Such narratives of emotional injury are similar to what Mahmood (2009: 845–846) described in her fieldwork in Cairo after the Danish cartoon controversy: “I was struck by the sense of many devout Muslims on hearing about or seeing the cartoons. While many of those I interviewed condemned the violent demonstrations, they nonetheless expressed a sense of grief and sorrow.” One of Mahmood’s interviewees told her that “the idea that we should just get over this hurt makes me so mad: if [Christians] don’t feel offended by how Jesus is presented, why do they expect that all of us should feel the same”.

Sentiments of hurt, anger and moral injury with respect to religious symbols such as the Prophet or the mosque are neglected within social science, but can trigger various forms of collective and individual actions and are effectively utilised by the PFI leadership for political mobilisation. The next section discusses how PFI activists responded to the BJP’s nomination of Narendra Modi as their candidate for prime minster in 2014.

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