Wall in Berlin & Temple at Ayodhya By Dr Jay Dubashi

Wall in Berlin & Temple at Ayodhya

By Dr Jay Dubashi

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Posted by Team Folks

courtesy: http://folks.co.in/2009/11/wall-in-berlin-temple-at-ayodhya/

The Wall itself was an ugly structure, which only communists can put up. It was an eyesore right in the midst of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. When I climbed the Wall and stood on top, I could see East German soldiers patrolling beneath us, with drawn bayonets.

Twenty years ago this week, on November 9, 1989 to be exact, a wall came down in Europe and it changed history for all time to come. It brought an empire built up by monsters known as communists crashing down on their heads. It was an earth-shaking event whose after-effects are still being felt across the world, though it happened twenty years ago. And the whole thing began with the removal of a single brick from a wall that had stood between the people of Europe and freedom.

I am referring, of course, to the Berlin Wall that was brought crashing down on that date, but I also refer to other mental bricks that the communists had erected around the world in an effort to safeguard their imperial interests. With the Wall, went the 72-year-old history of a moth-eaten revolution, in the name of which, the commies had tried to bamboozle a whole world, and almost succeeded.

There is also another quirk of history. While the Wall was coming down in Berlin, the first brick of the Ramshila foundation was being laid in Ayodhya. While a temple was going up at Ayodhya, a communist temple was being demolished at the same hour and on the same day five thousand miles away in Europe. If this is not a historic coincidence, I do not know what is.

Actually, it is not a coincidence. It is history in the making, for history has a way of righting a wrong and restoring a balance to the entire historical architecture. The Berlin Wall came crashing down because it was a perversity and a product of twisted minds. The Ayodhya temple was going up because it was a right temple at the right place, for where else would you have a temple for Sri Ram except at Ayodhya, the sacred place where he was born? All that has happened is that a wrong has been righted, which is what history does, for that is its main function.

I was at the Berlin Wall a few months before it fell. I had gone there more as a tourist, but also as a student of history. I wanted to know how it feels to be part of history, in fact, to be history itself, for I had a strong suspicion that the Wall was destined to come down sometime or the other, maybe even in our own lifetime, though that was too good to be true. I flew from Frankfurt to Berlin in a rickety plane that almost crashed before we landed. But our Berlin hosts assured us that we were safe, probably safer than the Wall itself.

But when I arrived at the Wall, not far from the old Hitler chancellery, I somehow felt that things were not quite right. The Wall itself was an ugly structure, which only communists can put up. It was an eyesore right in the midst of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. When I climbed the Wall and stood on top, I could see East German soldiers patrolling beneath us, with drawn bayonets, as if preparing for an assault. One soldier was so close to us that I could almost touch him and nearly did, until I was told that these men had shot dozens of East Germans crossing over to West Berlin, as it was a crime to leave your part of the city to go into another part. Communists have strange rules about domicile, for sometimes you are a citizen of their country though there are times when you are not.

This was twenty years ago. Things have changed and the whole of East Germany has now become part of Germany. There is, of course, no Berlin Wall, and you can drive from one part of Berlin to another without bothering about visas and such things. Lots of countries east of the Berlin Wall have now left the Soviet Union which itself has ceased to exist. There is no Soviet Union. There is no hammer and sickle, and there are no red flags. Lenin’s corpse is moulting in the mausoleum while the government decides what to do with it. Moscow is, however, full of broken statues of Joseph Stalin and his comrades, gathering dust and moss in some forlorn parks where even children fear to go.

The Berlin Wall was more a symbol than a piece of brick and mortar, but the fall of the Wall was succeeded by the fall of communism itself, as if the two were related, which, of course, they were. It took only two years more for the communist regime in the Soviet Union to collapse, as if it was waiting for the Wall to fall. Even Mikhail Gorbachev must have been surprised at the way the Soviet Union disintegrated so rapidly after the dismantling of the Wall.

What about Ayodhya? It will take maybe another thousand years before a temple comes up at the place. It is shocking how slowly things move in India. As I said, it took the East Europeans only a couple of years to dismantle the evil empire of Stalin & Co. and recast their country in a new democratic mould. Those who have visited the new Russia say that the country is no more what it used to be under Stalin & Co. Some things are better and some things are worse, but the new Russians as a whole are much better off than they used to be. There are still beggars taking shelter in the Moscow underground and young women offering themselves right under the windows of the Kremlin-as they did when Stalin was alive-but otherwise things have changed for the better. People are better dressed, they eat better, and children go to schools that have proper teachers and proper textbooks.

But, as I said, nothing has changed in Ayodhya. Time has stood still, as it always does in India, when there is no one to push it. We Hindus are a timid lot. We are always looking for someone else to solve our problems, as if we had nothing to do with them, and the problems were not our responsibility. Ayodhya is not someone else’s responsibility; it is the responsibility of Hindus-and Indians. It is true we have a hostile government in Delhi and an equally hostile and irresponsible one in Uttar Pradesh, but we cannot go on endlessly waiting for someone come from the heavens to help us build the temple. It is time we Hindus gave up looking for others to solve our problems. If we cannot make an effort-legal, political and social-to have a temple for Sri Ram built in Ayodhya, what is the use of all these millions of Hindus who are supposed to inhabit this land of ours?

Hindus have to help themselves, even if the whole world is against them. Didn’t the people of West Berlin help themselves? The Berlin Wall was demolished, brick by brick, stone by stone, until nothing remained in the place on November 9, 1989. But we Hindus are still waiting for our temple.