The legacy of Babur should be erased from this country in every way.
Nobody should do the crime of identifying present-day Muslims with this man.
Because he is not a devout Muslim by any standards.
Ram never claimed he is a Hindu!
But today he is an icon in this country.
Because he is exuding the right kind of qualities, which are necessary to build great civilizations in this world.
Superscript: What is your perspective on the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid issue? What needs to be considered to end communal tensio and move forward after the verdict?
To give you some sense of two different dimensions of what it is.
And why we must be careful about what stand we take is –
Ram is over six thousand years ago.
What he did, what he did not do,
lot of dissection happens in South India about him, North India doesn’t dissect him.
They just worship him.
Southern India dissects him a little bit.
But an icon of six thousand years old, who has inspired people towards righteousness,
towards truthfulness, towards being compassionate to each other.
For generations, thousands of generations.
You should not disturb that icon.
Doesn’t matter historically what is right, what is wrong – because nobody really knows for sure.
It’s only the general story everybody knows.
Where he went, what happened, what are the events of his life.
“What he did? Why he did?” You cannot dissect that. You are not his psychiatrist.
Somebody, you know I was in some Youth and Truth event they are saying “He was insecure”.
I said, “You are not his psychiatrist or something.
Six thousand years ago, whether the man was secure or insecure how do you know. Its rubbish.
But he is an icon who has inspired, millions and millions of people, across generations.
You should not disturb that. Because humanity needs those icons.
You can take up Ram, you can take up Krishna, you can take up Jesus, you can take up Buddha,
and find faults with them and today tinker with them,
“See he did this, this was not okay, that was not okay, he was racist, he was this, he was that.”
This is rubbish.
This is all relevant to people who are here now.
Six thousand years ago, you want to judge him now!
No.
He is serving humanity has an icon, that icon should not be disturbed.
What is he an icon for?
He is an icon of stability, not impetuous action.
When action is needed he is very decisive, but never reacts to anything.
He is conscious action.
Even if war, he will do war; surrender, he will surrender.
Give up his kingdom, he will give up his kingdom – but everything consciously, in a balanced way.
This is what we are worshipping him for.
Because he has a freedom of going through the drama of life, extreme drama in his life.
But he goes through the drama effortlessly.
He goes through the drama, without reacting.
He goes through the drama, without any sense of angst or anger against anybody.
When he kills Ravana, who stole his wife and causing havoc, he comes and repents for his death.
“That I had to do this.”
This is the kind of man – you don’t disturb him.
Well at least that’s the story. Don’t disturb the story.
Geographically was he born in Ayodhya – Yes.
Was he born in this point come on!
Do you know in which point you were born ? Hello?
Forget about a man six thousand years ago, you are still living,
do you know exactly at which spot your mother delivered you?
I am asking, does anybody know?
No.
So it’s ridiculous argument.
Now Babur.
Babur is a third generation after Genghis Khan.
This Mongol empire. Mongols..
Slowly the word Mongol became Mughal in India. It’s Mongol.
This Mongol empire expansion for a period of ninety years to hundred years,
killed over forty million people.
Forty million people!
Of those times nearly ten percent of the world’s population.
You understand?
Ten percent of the world’s population they killed, not with a nuclear bomb, with swords!
Very energetic people.
I am saying, it takes a lot of activity to kill ten percent of the world’s population, isn’t it?
Just with swords and spears.
So wherever Genghis Khan went he made a rule
– all the males wherever he conquered,
all the males who are above the height of a cart wheel,
those days height of a cart wheel
which went with the armies was always like about thirty-eight to thirty-nine inches, about that much.
Anybody who is above that height, was killed.
And then it is the practice of the Mongols to pile up all the severed heads into a big mountain.
So the women were taken as slaves to service the soldiers.
Or they were sold in various markets across Middle east, Europe, everywhere they were sold.
So they spread like this.
After Genghis Khan, came Taimur Lang.
Taimur Lang bore Babur.
Taimur Lang came right up till Delhi, his empire.
Then Babur came.
Taimur Lang is supposed to have killed, seventeen million people In the cruelest possible way.
What happened to the men is compassion.
What happened to the women is another matter.
I don’t want to go into the descriptions, it is most terrible things happened to them.
When Babur came, this is also the time of Guru Nanak.
Guru Nanak, a very, totally peaceful, non-reactive kind of human being, a realized being said,
“A Messenger of Death has come.”
And in Guru Nanak’s own words, it is said,
I am paraphrasing,
he said, “He killed thousands of men wherever he went.
In any town he went – kill all the men, burn the town down, capture the women and children.
Women were brutally raped always in public, because it is not just a rape, it is a lesson for everybody.
And in thousands Babur sold the Hindu women in the markets of Khandahar and Kabul. In thousands!
Fortunately, he lived only for four years in India. he died.
So the legacy of Babur should be erased from this country in every way.
Above all, nobody should ever identify the present generation of Muslims with Babur.
Because the atrocities that he was, he did not commit atrocity, he is an atrocity.
Genghis Khan was not killing for religion, it’s just power and conquest.
Taimur Lang also largely conquest, slightly a religious tinge came.
But Babur used the religious connotation very strongly.
And it gave him more power to kill because he thought he is doing Jihad.
Many times he ransacked Muslim towns also.
Muslim populations also he killed.
So he used religion very conveniently, according to his convenience.
So him building mosques, is not out of devotion, not for prayer, it is also an establishment of power.
Whether it is a Hindu temple or a Jain temple, everything he broke.
One prominent Jain temple he destroyed, because in the cave what they had carved, the figures were naked.
So he made sure the entire thing is destroyed.
So, this man and his legacy should be forgotten.
Nobody should identify themselves with that, because that is not going to lead to a good future,
and nobody should do the crime of identifying present-day Muslims with this man.
Because he is not a devout Muslim by any standards.
He is not a devotee of any kind.
He is a tyrant of the worst kind who very powerfully used the name of religion to impact wherever he went.
It gave him a new level of authority, which Genghis Khan did not have.
Because they did not use religion for conquest.
So these atrocities happened. We should not forget these things.
We must remember, but we should not be bitter about these things.
We must remember to ensure such things don’t happen once again anywhere in the world.
But if we create bitterness out of history,
then knowingly or unknowingly we are prone to commit similar atrocities once again.
We think a reaction is good.
No.
A reaction is not any better than dastardly action. It’s the same thing.
So Babur’s legacy must go.
Ram – don’t see him as a religious person because he never said “I am a Hindu.”
Hello?
Did he ever say “I am a Hindu”?
He represents this culture as an icon of stability, balance, peacefulness, justice.
Wherever he went he always looked at it – how to give justice to the people.
In giving justice to the people that he administered, he put himself through extreme levels of suffering
and hardship for himself.
This is a man that you need.
I want both the Hindus and the Muslims to remember – Ram never claimed he is a Hindu!
But today he is an icon in this country.
Everybody should look up to such an icon because he is exuding the right kind of qualities.
Not because he is a Hindu, not because he is this or that.
Because he is exuding the right kind of qualities, which are necessary to build great civilizations in this world.
And in many ways,
the time of Rama became a kind of a fulcrum to build this civilization in this six thousand years.
This is why, even during the freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi went on referring to Ram Rajya.
The best administered and a just, absolutely just state means Ram Rajya.
Even today when we say Ram Rajya, we mean to say a very just and fair state.
Not an exploitative state. Not a tyrannical state. And that is what we want to make out of India.
That it is a just and fair state to everybody who lives here.
Not a tyrannical state.
So for that you need Ram.