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trouble is that self-styled Nehruites and other secularists are not
able to recognize that India is no longer the convalescent she was
not only when Gandhiji launched his first mass movement but also
when she achieved independence with Pandit Nehru as the first prime
minister. The two leaders have helped nurse her back to health as
have their critics in different ways. That is the implication of my
observation that the energies now unleashed have been at work for
two centuries.
Only on a superficial view, resulting
from a lack of appreciation of the history of modern India,
beginning with Raja Rammohan Roy in the early nineteenth century,
can the rise of the Ramjanambhoomi issue to its present prominence
be said to be the result of a series of accidents: the
sudden appearance of the Ramlalla idol in the structure in 1949 and
the opening of the gate under the Faizabad magistrate's orders in
1986 being the most important. As in all such cases, these
developments have helped bring out and reinforce something that was
already growing - 200-year-old movement for self-renewal and
self-affirmation by Hindus. If this was not so, the accidents
in question would have petered out.
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