By Zawahir Siddique
[Crescent International, August 1-15, 2000.]
India’s fascist media interprets the history of India since the mid-80s, when the "Ram janmabhoomi" (Rama’s birth place) agitation was initiated, as marked by animosity, avarice and cynical abuse of religious idiom. The reality is that ever since the Aryan invasion, the Brahminist forces (the so-called upper caste Hindus) have enslaved the masses of India with their brutal ideology. For centuries, all power has remained in the hands of a small group of hereditary exploiters whose lives and interests have always been, and remain today, antagonistic to the welfare of the masses of India.
On December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was martyred, signalling the final end of Muslim security in India. The demolition was no simple matter of vandalism. Behind it lies a long history of Hindutwa politics which celebrates aggression and violence, declares war against other communities, and scorns legal and democratic norms. The Sangh Parivar (family of parties), the intolerant Brahministic chain which comprises the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP), among others, had developed a brutal plan to proclaim its anti-Muslim priorities. The Babri Masjid was chosen as a token victim. The Ram Janmabhoomi agitation was designed to demoralize the Muslims, the Sangh Parivar having decided to express its supremacy by destroying the 464-year-old mosque and constructing a Ram temple in its place.
As the news of the demolition of Babri Masjid spread, a new phase of murderous Hindu-Muslim riots, accompanied by police firing in several places, began. The worst incidents took place in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Banaras and Jaipur. Bombay witnessed two spells of rioting from December 6-12 , 1992 and then from January 7-16, 1993. It is estimated that roughly 227 people died in the December riots and 557 in the January riots.
These were followed by 317 deaths in March 1993, after the serial explosions at the stock exchange in Bombay. The loss to public and personal property was unfathomable with 50,000 people being rendered homeless. Reports reveal that most victims were Muslims, and the police commissioner of Bombay, S. K. Bapat, later acknowledged that the police were active participants in killing Muslims.
Ayodhya, the place where the historic Babri Masjid was bult by the Mughal emporor Babur in 1528, became a site for conflict only in the 19th century. The issue of whether Ayodhya was the birth place of Ram, and whether the Mosque was built over the temple, has left many historians preoccupied. This was a result of a well planned propaganda plotted by the anti-Muslim forces to deny the historical and archaeological evidences favoring the Muslim place of worship. A large section of Hindus were forced to believe that Babur had built the Mosque on the birth place of Ram. The first recorded conflict over Ram Janmabhoomi took place in 1853. After a major armed struggle between the Hindus who occupied the mosque and Muslim who sought to liberate it, it was decided that both the communities should be allowed to worship there, Muslims inside the mosque and Hindus outside it.
After the uprisng of 1857, the British ruled that the respective places of worship of the two communities should be demarcated. The Hindus were allowed to build a raised platform in front of the mosque to commemorate the birth place of Ram. A grill fence was raised between the mosque and the temple. The Babri Masjid-Ram janmabhoomi controversy acquired a new momentum as both the communities put forth rival claims for the control of the mosque. A number of communal incidents rocked the area in 1912-13. There were also major incidents in 1934, when Hindus briefly took over the mosque and destroyed two of the domes.
In 1949, after a concerted Hindu agitation, it was proclaimed that an image of Ramlala (the infant Ram) had appeared inside the mosque. This was regarded as an auspicious omen heralding the recovery of Ram’s birth place. The Muslim community protested the illegal placing of idols in the Mosque’s inner sanctum, and the State Chief Secretary and the Inspector-General of Police ordered the removal of the idols from the Mosque. However, the district magistrate, conscious of the problems that would follow such an action, locked the Mosque and asked the Imam to leave while allowing puja (Hindu ritual) within the Mosque. Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru ordered that the idols be removed, but the court countered the order and allowed the puja to continue. In effect, the mosque was shut down.
The Sangh Parivar burst into Indian politics in the 1980’s, confirming the final dissolution of the so-called secular spirit that had been hypocritically institutionalized by the first generation leaders of India. The establishment of a Hindu state organized around the liberation of the ‘sacred’ site at Ayodhya became the dominant symbol in a cluster of ideological formulations that challenged practically all the accepted aspects of secularism — minority rights, freedom of religion and equal citizenship. Ayodhya was transformed into a metaphor for the impoverished spirit of Hindus who could not recover their sacred spaces, for the illegitimacy of minority entitlements, a historical allegory for Muslim invasions, and a spatial one for the construction of the space of a Hindu nation.
The power of this metaphor was so great that events moved rapidly from the mid-1980’s onwards. In 1985, the VHP filed a petition demanding a re-opening of the ‘disputed structure’ for worship by Hindus. The VHP simultaneously restructured and strengthened its organization. In 1984, the Bajrang Dal had been formed at the militant youthwing of the VHP, with the stated intention of recruiting men for militant action for the establishment of a Hindu nation, and for the liberation of the Ram temple. Internationally, the VHP organized a series of conferences to appeal to the Hindu diaspora. Hindus abroad sent huge funds and tons of bricks for the programme.
In 1986, a court ordered that the doors of Babri Masjid be opened and puja permitted there. Muslims were forbidden from offering prayers in their place of worship. Neither the central government nor the state government reversed the decision. But this did not satisfy the Sangh Parivar, who called upon the government to transfer the property rights of the Ayodhya site so that the biggest temple in the world could be built there. The Ram Janmabhoomi became a symbol of resurgent nationhood and the symbol of militant Hindu nationalism intent on recovering its patrimony.
In 1990, L. K. Adwani (one of those charged in the Babri Masjid demolition case and now home minister of India) launched his Rath Yathra from Somnath. Travelling 10,000 km, the Rath Yathra evoked muscular emotion and provoked several communal riots. A group of young men offered Adwani a cup of blood signifying their readiness to achieve martyrdom. On October 30, 1990, members of the Sangh Parivar stormed the mosque and raised a flag above it. Fifty people died in police firing. The rest is history — the demolition of the mosque and the transformation of BJP into a party of government following the`1998 and 1999 elections.
In terms of the rule of law, January 1989 marks a crucial watershed. Meeting on the fringes of the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the Dharma Sansad — the VHP’s trumped up religious assembly — decided that no earthly power, such as the government or the judiciary, could thwart it in its divine mission of constructing a temple at Ayodhya. And so it proved. Despite all the historical and archaeological evidence, and the laws of the land, ‘secular India’ could not prevent the destruction of Muslim security in India on December 6, 1992.
Eight years later, neither the judiciary nor the government has been able to settle the issue on democratic or judicial norms. There is no sign of a trial for those charge-sheeted in connection with the demolition, and L K Advani is by no means the only one to be serving in government. Meanwhile, thousands of Muslims are languishing in the jails under the banner of TADA — India’s draconian and discriminatory "anti-terrorism" law — ever since the demolition of the mosque occurred.
The Sangh Parvar’s call for the demolition of the 464-year-old Mosque was regarded as empty rhetoric until it was translated into a reality on December 6, 1992. Today, it would be a blunder to perceive the campaign for the construction of a Ram temple over the ruins of the historic mosque as mere rhetoric. The VHP gave the construction programme new impetus when it decided in April 2000 to build a huge model of the proposed temple and consecrate it at Karsevakpuram in Ayodhya. The Sangh Parivar is expected to announce a date for starting the construction of the Ram temple very soon. Pillars and other elements of the proposed temple are already being built at various places. The Ram temple juggernaut is all set to roll once again to Ayodhya, this time from the arid terrain of the Thar desert.
In peril are peace and harmony in a vast region through which the proposed yathra of the VHP is to pass, carrying a marble model of the temple it proposes to build at Ayodhya. Besides the marble model is a 30 inch tall, 100kg statue of Ramlala seated on a lotus, is believed to add glamour to the procession. The lotus is the election symbol of BJP and it would be foolish to assume that its use in the statue is a coincidence.
The media, the constitution, the government and the Muslim leadership failed to check the demolition of Muslim Pride eight years ago. Today the threat of the reconstruction of Hindu fanatism is fresh in the temple agenda. The Muslim leadership has so far shown no signs of preparation to accept the challenge of dislodging the attrocities of the Sangh Parivar.