It all started on a cold winter night when some idols were placed inside the masjid. This action changed the way a large section of Indians looked at mosques of medieval India. The mosque in question, Babri Masjid, is now history, demolished on December 6, 1992. Could Babri Masjid have been saved?
In his book, The Babri Masjid Ram Mandir Dilemma: An Acid Test for India’s Constitution, former Home Secretary Madhav Godbole writes: “On the night of December 22, 1949, when idols were surreptitiously placed in the Babri Masjid, a picket of 15 policemen was present but it did not ‘interfere’ and preferred to merely look on. And of course, on 6 December 1992 when the Babri Masjid was wantonly destroyed by rowdy, unruly kar sevaks (volunteers), thousands of policemen, including theArmed Constabulary of Uttar Pradesh, were mere onlookers. Kalyan Singh, the Chief Minister at the time, had given clear instructions not to use force against the kar sevaks.”
Mr. Godbole goes on to state, “Babri Masjid could have been saved from destruction if there was political will to act.” He notes rather poetically, “If political initiative had been taken at the Prime Minister’s level, the Mahabharata of this Ramayana could have been avoided.”
Back then, the Ministry of Home Affairs had prepared a contingency plan for the takeover of the Babri Masjid by invoking Article 355 of the Constitution, and thereafter to dismiss the State government under Article 356. But then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had a different opinion. The rest is history.
Origins of a movement
There was a prolonged lull between 1949 and 1984 when the demand for a temple at the birthplace of Ram was raised by some right wing bodies.
“In September 1984, the VHP flagged the Ram-Janaki Rath Yatra (which began its journey from Sitamarhi in Bihar and arrived in Delhi on 30 October) to muster support for the Ram temple,” writes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay in The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right. Interestingly, the decision to form the Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti for the liberation of Lord Ram’s birthplace was taken at a meeting held in April 1984 in Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, a government-owned auditorium. Whether this Dharma Sansad had anything to do with science is debatable but the meeting was well attended.
As Valay Singh writes in Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord, “Those who attended the Dharma Sansad represented the multitude of Hindu sects and traditions. A total of 558 religious’ scholars, monks and gurus participated in the meeting. Together they represented seventy-six sects and traditions...The Dharma Sansad had the support of Gulzarilal Nanda, a seasoned Congressman and two-time interim Prime Minister who was a committed cow protection campaigner and a Hindi zealot.” A little later, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi “facilitated” the opening of the locks at the disputed Babri mosque for worship.
“Ashok Singhal accelerated the agitation by commandeering the VHP to ‘rescue’ Lord Ram from ‘captivity’ -- he negotiated with the government to ensure that mass mobilisation programmes like shilanyas or the foundation laying ceremony be allowed on the eve of the 1989 Lok Sabha elections...From 1986 onwards when he was appointed general secretary of the VHP, until he died in 2015, Singhal was the face of the Ayodhya agitation. Although it was L.K. Advani who had kick-started the famous Somnath to Ayodhya rath yatra in 1990, it was Singhal who worked tirelessly to ready the ground,” recalls Mr. Mukhopadhyay.
The RSS link
With many leaders of the VHP, Bajrang Dal and the BJP working towards a common purpose, those were days of communal tension. Even violence. M.J. Akbar expressed it briefly, in Riot after Riot, “1990 was a year in which politicians were constructing their futures – always a dangerous time for the innocent….Advani has touched a Hitler’s nerve in India, and the reaction is electric. Myths have become facts...Revenge nursed in the privacy of the mind is now public doctrine. The pregnancy of a Hindu Rashtra has been proclaimed.”
It was only a little earlier that the Bharatiya Janata Party had resolved at its Palampur conclave that the question of faith was paramount. The party held that “the nature of this controversy is such that it just cannot be sorted by court of law...The sentiments of the people must be respected, and Rama Janmasthan handed over to the Hindus.”
Amidst all this, the fortunes of the RSS, as A.G. Noorani writes in The RSS: A Menace to India, soared. “Poison was injected into the atmosphere. The beatific smile of Ram in VHP posters had been replaced by a war-like image -- Ram with his trident and bow at ready.”
According to Noorani, the rath yatra was not the decision of the BJP, “It was a carefully designed strategy of the RSS. The yatra was a concerted effort of all the leading members of the RSS family. The Toyota rath, carrying the party symbol, made their political intentions clear. Advani was the chosen hero.”
Back in 1989, Syed Shahabuddin, a prime figure in the masjid protection effort, conceded, “With these programmes, the VHP has ensured that it shall never have to look backward on the road to Ayodhya.”
Foresight? Maybe but as the grand Ram Mandir is due to be inaugurated where the Babri Masjid stood, Singhal, even Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and others are reduced to footnotes in the relentless march of time.
