Sacred Provocations

A recent video of Muslim women offering namaz within the grounds of Pune’s iconicShaniwarwada fort palace-complex has ignited needless controversy amid the festive Diwali season. Built in 1732 by Peshwa Baji Rao I as the seat of the rapidly expanding Maratha power, its stone ramparts once echoed with the ambitions of empire. Three centuries later, they again now echo with the shrill sounds of political theatre.

Shaniwarwada, after all, is not a mosque. It is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It is a relic of Maratha pride, not a site of prayer. Within hours of the video surfacing, it became a hotbed of political opportunism.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Medha Kulkarni marched in with Hindu activists and ‘purified’ the spot with cow urine. Predictably, the Opposition, especially the Congress, and the Aam Aadmi Party condemned Kulkarni’s act as “polarisation ahead of civic polls.”

The question here arises is what business did anyone have offering prayers - of any faith - inside a heritage fort? The Shaniwarwada is not a mosque, not a dargah, not a shrine. To perform religious rituals there is unwarranted provocation.

The choice of this site, and the timing of this act – around Diwali – deepen suspicions as to whether the incident was part of a conspiracy to fray Pune’s social fabric ahead of the civic polls?

Those who performed it knew the symbolism. They knew this act would ignite controversy, particularly in a city steeped in Maratha history. And they also knew how the responses would be framed. That any objection would be branded as ‘communal.’

Imagine, for a moment, the reverse. If a group of Hindus were to perform an aarti in Delhi’s Jama Masjid, or chant mantras within the courtyard of the Taj Mahal, how swift and ferocious would the outrage be? There would be editorials decrying ‘Hindu aggression’ and bemoaning ‘the death of pluralism’ and self-anointed secularists demanding apologies. Yet when the sanctity of a Hindu-associated monument is challenged, the same voices urge restraint, tolerance and ‘context.’

This asymmetry corrodes the very idea of equal respect among faiths. It is visible not only in the response to Shaniwarwada but in the debates that have gripped the country in recent years — from the Sabarimala controversy, where the centuries-old traditions of a Hindu temple were mocked as regressive, to the repeated defacement or trivialisation of Hindu symbols in art and media under the guise of ‘creative freedom.’

Just ahead of New Year’s Day on 2018, the provocative ‘Elgaar Parishad,’ organised by an alliance of self-styled ‘progressive’ groups, had used the same Shaniwarwada as a stage for open provocation and grandstanding, sparking caste tensions that led to the Bhima Koregaon riots.

The government must therefore treat this incident seriously. This was not a harmless act of personal worship. The administration must investigate and punish those who authorised or instigated this calculated attempt to provoke or polarise.