6 Reconstructions of Somanatha LmRE IS a myth recounted as early as the Mahiibhiirata that explains the origin ofPrabhasa in Gujarat as a sacred place MBh Salya ch 34 Once King Dak a cursed the Moon god Soma with tuberculosis for paying exclusive attention to only one of his twenty seven daughters all of whom had been married to the Moon Day by day the Moon began to fade away Along with him the plants and herbs started to languish and the creatures that depended on them grew emaciated Finally the gods who were also beginning to suffer went to Dak a and asked that he remove the curse Dak a replied that his curse could not be undone but he could recommend an antidote if the Moon would bathe in the holy spot where the Sarasvati River flows into the Western Ocean he could restore his glow And so the Moon regularly wanes for half a month from curse then regains his effulgence by bathing there on each new moon day For that reason the place is named Prabhasa brilliance This myth clearly relates the seaside tirtha to the cyclic disappearances and reappearances of the moon and suggests also the restorative powers that later pilgrimage guides would attribute to Prabhasa When worshipers of the god Siva took over the site some time before the seventh century simply inserted Siva into the existing narrative In Saiva versions the Moon not only bathes at Prabhasa but also worships Siva as his lord there Thus the tirtha is also named Somanatha Siva as Lord of the Moon The myth also seems to prefigure the distinctive historical career of the Saiva temple at Somanatha for that temple too has periodically dis appeared as a site of worship and then reappeared starting with its fa mous destruction by the Ghaznavid sultan Mal J mud in 1026 We have al ready seen in Chapter Three how later Indo Muslim texts transformed Mal mud s victory over the Somanatha idol into an archetypal encounter of Islam with Hindu idolatry In this chapter I shall take up the subsequent history of the site and show how Somanatha has waxed and waned as a symbolic site around which various other parties have also sought to articu late their own claims upon religious and political authority in changing his torical settings 2 RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SOMANATHA 187 i 1 I SOMANATHA THE SHRINE ETERNAL I first became interested in Somanatha several years ago in 1988 when I came across a three rupee site for tourists and pilgrims that had found its way into the stacks of the Yale University library This little work by Shambhuprasad Harprasad Desai 1975 a retired officer of the Indian Administrative Service and native of Prabhasa told a fascinating story of repeated struggle over the site Following Mal miid s raid the guide claimed local Hindu rulers soon rebuilt the temple which was later desecrated by armies of the Delhi Sultanate At least nine more times according to Desai Muslim invaders desecrated the shrine and just as often intrepid Hindus re consecrated it Checking around I found that many other sources told much the same story The historical details were often fuzzy the number of dese crations varied and the references to primary sources were hard to track down Nevertheless from the 1870s or so on almost every author who wrote of Somanatha confidently asserted that the site had been repeatedly contested by the Muslim and Hindu communities over six or more centuries By 1990 the Muslim desecration count had apparently climbed to twenty one at least according to one letter printed in the New York Times 26 Novem ber 1990 The best known and most comprehensive work on Somanatha I found is Somaniitha The Shrine Eternal written by Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi and first published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1951 to commemorate the re construction of the temple In this popular work Munshi argues that the worship ofSiva and the sanctity of his Somanatha shrine are prehistoric part of India s primordial tradition In historical times Munshi goes on Siva served as a guardian of national resurgence in the early centuries C E Mun shi postulates a first temple established at Prabhasa by the beginning of the Common Era and a second temple supposedly destroyed by Arab Muslim armies from Sind in the eighth century The author then retells Mal mud s destruction of the temple and many subsequent rebuildings and redesecra tions Somanatha was the shrine beloved of India he concludes An an cient race subconsciously felt that it was Somanatha which connected it with the past and the present it was the eternal symbol of its faith in itself and its future As often as the shrine was destroyed the urge to restore it sprang up more vividly in its heart Munshi 1976 89 Munshi identifies Somanatha with both the national and the racial identity of India So fixed in historical memory has this story become that Hindu nationalist groups the Visva Hindu Parishad VHP and the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP pointedly chose Somanatha as the starting point for their 1990 Rath Yarra chariot procession Figure 32 The example of Somanatha seemed to add historical weight to their more questionable claim that another Mus 188 CHAPTER SIX FIG 32 The Rath Yatra at Somanatha Organized by the BJP VHP 1990 with char iot in foreground and Somanatha temple in back PhotOgraph courtesy of Frontline Madras RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SOMANATHA 189 lim invader the Mughal Babur had constructed the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya after destroying a Hindu temple that allegedly marked the site of Rama s birth 3 In Hindu nationalist rhetoric Somanatha figured prominently in a broader historical vision of barbaric foreign invasions by Muslims and the continuous struggle of indigenous Hindus to maintain their religious and cultural heritage of which the nationalists placed themselves as the current instrument In the BJP s official White Paper on the subject they observe Here was an ancient temple which had been ravaged looted and ransacked repeatedly by foreign invaders from Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi to Emperor Aurangzeb Every time the Temple was razed to the ground and a mosque put in its place by the marauders it sprouted again only to be pulled down again Bharatiya Janata Party 1993 16 The BJP s use of an organic meta phor the ever sprouting temple renders Somanatha and its restoration part of nature itself the irresistible expression ofthe urge as Munshi had put it of the Hindu race Few people nowadays I am sure think of Somanatha in terms of the waxing and the waning of the Moon It has instead become firmly embedded