Ayodhya and the future India / edited by Jitendra Bajaj

The Ayodhya events signify the beginning of the end of a phase of Indian
history. The republic, constituted as a successor regime to the British and the
Mughals, no longer seems so viable. And, it is time to begin exploring the
future directions of Indian polity.
Having taken over the levers and the trappings of imperial power in India the new
ruling elite quickly convinced itself that the court-houses, the circuit bungalows
and the magisterial residences built by the British, as also the various manuals
and codes of departmental and courtly procedure, created by them and the earlier
Mughal rulers, were essential to the governance of the Indian people. Even the
symbols of Indian defeat became the treasured inheritance of the Indian state.
The Ayodhya events have broken the reverie. They have come as a rude jolt to
many who had begun to imagine that they were now in a position to do what
the conquerors of the past had failed to accomplish: To make the people of
India forget their intrinsic Indianness, their essential rootedness in the Indian
civilisation. The Ayodhya events have shown that the people of India have
not given up. They continue to keep their own co~nsel about what is worth
preserving in the Indian past and what needs to be forgotten. And, thus they
have forced us to begin thinking beyond merely finding ways of somehow
carrying on with the mantle of the dead and departed imperialists.
In the talks and discussions co\1ected in this volume leaders of different sections
of Indian opinion engage in an exploration of the essential questions facing the
nation in the context of the Ayodhya events, with great concern and transparent
frankness.