Judging Ayodhya

Itihasa, the Sanskrit word for history, is derived from a phrase that simply means, “so indeed it was.” If you want to know, what indeed happened through the years of the Ayodhya campaign, to bring down a mosque and rep­lace it with a temple—The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India—Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s book on Ayodhya and the project to reconfigure India, is a narrative exp­lainer. The veteran journalist Mukhopadhyay created a unique beat for himself in the 1980s when he began covering the rise of Hindu right and was des­cribed by his right-leaning editor, as “our religious correspondent (p 275).” This book draws upon Mukhopadhyay’s decades of reporting and insight into one of the most important campaigns that have dominated Indian politics over the past three decades.

Through 274 pages of his entirely readable book, divided over eight chapters, Mukhopadhyay deals with the und­erlying themes in their entire historical, political, and chronological perspective. The book covers the whole spectrum from the transformation of Ram—the mythical hero—to god, then to political icon followed by the silent march ahead towards India’s future as a defacto Hindu rashtra. Anyone interested