Do Bangaloreans care about Ayodhya anymore?

December 6, 1992. That is when trouble began. Babri Masjid was demolished. Along with it, the goodwill and trust that Hindus and Muslims shared came crashing down. The country went into shock.
People were glued to the television sets, read all the newspapers and went to bed, every single day with one single question in their minds: What is happening to my country? That was then. Today, the Ayodhya issue is again in the news. But, do people really care? Bangalore Times decided to find out whether the average Bangalorean cared about the Ayodhya issue anymore.
“Yes, I still do care about it to some extent,� says Ajit Saldanha, event manager and freelance writer. Whereas, Andrew G, musician, says, “I really don’t care about the Ayodhya issue. I mean I feel sad that nobody can come to any sort of agreement, but it does not bother me anymore because it does not really affect my small world. I see enough problems around me.� Suddenly, people seem detached from Ayodhya and its problems. Ajit agrees that it does not affect him as much as it did in 1992. “You build up your threshold of tolerance,� he says.
Sugantha, travel agent, says, “I have been hearing about the Ayodhya issue for more than a decade now. Initially, I used to be bothered about it. But, over a period of time, it ceased to affect me for various reasons — a. the situation has reached a stalemate and it’s going to remain that way forever. b. it doesn’t affect my personal life, neither my job nor my family or even the city in anyway.�
Tracy Menon, homemaker and mother of a one-year old child, says, “Public memory is short. People do not care about Ayodhya issue any more. Some probably don’t even know what the fight is all about.� Tracy accepts that she no more arduously reads the newspaper or watches television for information about Ayodhya. “The issue does not bother me enough to go looking for news about it. I might just scan the headlines in the newspaper or watch a bit about it on TV.�
Vanitha, a 21-year-old housekeeper, says she does not know much about Ayodhya. “Some people are fighting over a piece of land,� she says. “But I know people get affected. It affects me when I see innocent people are being killed. Trouble always reaches poor people like me first.�
Do people think that there will be a solution to this problem? “As an optimist I’d like to think that there will be a solution. But as a realist, I know that there is no solution to this problem,� says Ajit. “Legal solution is the best.� On the other hand, Tracy feels that there will never be a solution to the Ayodhya issues because,
“Too many selfish agendas are involved.� Vanitha sums it up, “I don’t know. However, I see no end either. Maybe they should let the Muslims have their masjid, since they were there first.�
However, some of the most liberal minds feel that a temple should be built because it is Ram’s birthplace.
Nevertheless, even they feel Ayodhya has become irrelevant to their day to day lives. “Life should go on and it will whether a mosque or a temple is built,� says Sugantha. However, one wonders, how will god reside in a house where every brick will remind him of what went into building it — anger, hatred, bloodshed and all that is most ungodly!
sudhapillai@indiatimes.com