After the momentous High Court judgment proposing a three-way split of the disputed land, politicians sighed in relief and commented with wary optimism that the court had “paved the way to build the temple at Ayodhya”.
The plainness of this statement disguises the fact that, perhaps for the first time in recent Indian history, an architectural solution will have to be imposed on thousands of years of religious belief, five centuries of history, 60 years of judicial inquiry and decades of social and demographic change. Those eras, years, hours and moments have already laden the site, and whatever will be built on it, with unparalleled complexity as well as opportunity.
The site itself has become synonymous with Ayodhya and with communal politics. It has required every Indian to examine his or her individual politics. No other image of Ayodhya — not the sublime ghats along the holy Saryu river, nor the hundred temples along the skyline of this erstwhile capital of Awadh — remains in the collective imagination of the nation.
The significance of site and city changed dramatically that fateful day, as images of the Babri demolition were transmitted across India. On December 6, 1992, we all became participants, whether reluctant, passive or eager, in an event that questioned the very idea of India. Each of us, that day, was forced to take a stand on what we thought made us “Indian”.
Can a building on this site capture that moment and its implications?
The disputed site has been a religious and political symbol for decades, but today it is also a marker for social change. What was a symbol of intolerance and religious fervour may now become a sign of secular tolerance, in a calmer and more mature society. With well over a third of all living Indians aged 18 or less, the events of December 1992 seem more distant; now they can be seen in a more balanced way.
Will the new structure address this social evolution?
If we accept the High Court’s reading of history, the disputed site has gone from religious inception as the spot where Lord Ram was born, to the Babri mosque under the first Mughal, and from a multi-religious space where Hinduism and Islam rubbed shoulders to the trigger that set off one of the worst communal riots since Partition. This piece of land has stood silent witness as all that history has been piled on it.
Will the architecture to come be able to distill something of this historical complexity?
Here is an opportunity for India to create a monument neither indebted to the past nor limited by expectations for the future. This building should be the deliberate act of a nation that wants to commemorate its present.
We cannot erase the lines of history from the palms of time. Even after its demolition the Berlin Wall remains etched on the history of Germany, and the carnage of India’s Partition has no memorial but is part of the collective memory of the nation.
The site in Ayodhya, too, will carry marks of its past. But it is time to archive them in such a way that the architecture of whatever is built there does not stand in judgment on what happened on that spot. It should instead create a monument to the present.
For the present in India, unlike even a decade ago, is no longer defined by where we are coming from, but by where we see ourselves going. n
[Suparna Bhalla is a Delhi-based architect]
