THE SPECTRE OF FUNDAMENTALISM RISES OVER SYRIA

The Assad family held together Syria's disparate communities with a secular government. That body politic will fray. India needs to keep an eye on the possibility of growing radicalisation

- KP NAYAR

ON My first visit to Syria, which was being torn apart by the Arab Spring, revealed a startling experience outside the Umayyad mosque in Damascus: a gaggle of about 100 women speaking Urdu and Hindi. These women—from Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh—had defied the Indian government's ban on travel to Syria because it had become one of the most dangerous places in the world and were visiting places of pilgrimage in the Levant.

At the mosque, women from Lucknow and Hyderabad reverentially pressed their heads against the shrine of John the Baptist. It contains the relics of Saint John, who Christians believe baptized Jesus Christ in the Jordan River. The Indian pilgrims, however, did not refer to him as John the Baptist; according to Islamic belief, he was Imam Yahya. They had been told that pressing their heads against the shrine would bless them with prophetic visions.

Religion and society in Syria, secular in their complexities for centuries, are now certain to fray. The recent experience in Syria's neighborhood following upheavals similar to the one that saw the collapse of the Assad family rule last weekend offers no hope.

Will the relics of the baptizer of Jesus Christ, to which Pope John Paul II prayed in 2001, survive last weekend's regime change in Syria? President Hafez al-Assad and his successor, son Bashar, carefully maintained a separation of religion from the state, a practice that may now be ending.

In all of Syria, the only place where the Star of David is on display is at the Umayyad mosque. The Ba'ath ruling party, since 1963, has banned the symbol of Judaism, which is also on Israel's flag. Will the only symbol of Jewish identity in Syria now be allowed to remain in place? Or will its fate be the same as the Buddha statues of Bamiyan in the Taliban's hands?