Jamil Chughtai
The day was Sunday, date 6th of December 1992 and the city Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. It gave natives the shock of their lives as they stared at a huge mass of around 300,000 orange-clad Hindus emerging from every nook and corner of the town chanting ‘Jai Ram Jai Ram” mantra and furiously scampering towards the location where an old structure of Muslim worship stood. Brandishing axes and hammers, the hysterical Hindu ‘Kar Sevaks (activists)’ reached the site of Babri Masjid, mounted the building from all directions and started to tear it down. Within no time, the four hundred year old Babri Mosque was turned into rubble by radical Hindus on the baseless plea that it was built on the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ site, the actual birthplace of Rama (the god). This demolition of an ancient place of Muslim worship was not merely a thoughtless act done by frenzied mobs but a carefully planned feat through which the Indian state handed down an official burial to its so-called secularism – dispensing it for good.
Historically, the mosque was built in 16th century by a Mughal General Mir Baqi after the name of emperor Babur. As per record, the mosque, later known as Babri Masjid, was constructed at that time without demolishing any previously existing structure. However, as Hindu mythology would have it later on, the city of Ayodhya turned out to be the birthplace of ‘the Rama’ and to top it all precisely at the spot where the Babri Mosque stood. In the 1980s, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), with support from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its political face, began a campaign initially for construction of Rama temple at the site. Rallies and marches were held as a part of this movement, including the Ram Rath Yatra led by L K Advani. As per plan, the campaign culminated on 6 December 1992 as the VHP and the BJP organized a rally at the site with three hundred thousand kar sevaks. As expected, the rally was made to turn violent through hate-speeches, and as a result the unruly gangs simply brought down the mosque within hours right in front of the security personnel.
A subsequent inquiry of the incident found 68 BJP and VHP leaders responsible for the demolition. However the self-styled “shining India as biggest secular state of the world” have till date avoided taking any action against the real perpetrators of the incident including LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti who led the mobs armed with axes, hammers, and grappling hooks. Even India failed to do anything against Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh who later on openly bragged about his role in the Babri Masjid demolition. The Liberhan Commission condemned CM Kalyan Singh and his government for preplan-mannered events, misuse of power, attracting youth for support, and allowing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to run the state during the course of events. Indian government’s conspiracy in demolition of Babri mosque is further substantiated by former Intelligence Bureau Director, Maloy Krishna Dhar who stated on record that mosque’s demolition was planned 10 months in advance by top leaders of the RSS, BJP and VHP through a silent agreement with the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Dhar claimed that the aim was to utilize Ayodhya as “a unique opportunity to take the Hindutva wave to the peak for deriving political benefits”. Nevertheless, the demolition of Babri Mosque was not a simple act of violence by unbridled mobs but a well planned politico-religious maneuver executed with utmost secrecy and flawless precision.
In India of today, the ongoing Hindutva-oriented attitude in fact expresses the deep-rooted Hindu complex originating from their tamed servitude towards mighty Muslim rule in the sub-continent spanned over eight hundred years. Having won the majority status in post-partition India, the Hindutva hawks are now looking for every aberrant way possible to satiate their frustration either by breeding issues of erstwhile temples or sacred cows for exacting the centuries’ old vengeance on Indian Muslims. To wipe out haunting stigmas of the past defeats and humiliations, the ‘Saffron Brigade’ under CM Modi is seen openly tampering with the history of India by twisting facts about Muslim rulers of Hindustan as well as changing the results of famous battles won by Muslims against Hindu rulers.
This ongoing heat of identity pursuits in India, along with surge in Hindu fundamentalism, has already started to create disillusionment among the Indian masses following faiths other than Hinduism, especially Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and even Dalits. A fertile breeding ground is also being provided for RSS to create Hindutva fanatics in India with ideology of ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan’, which would lead to further isolation of the minorities and low-caste segments of society every passing day. Under the guise of ‘Gau Raksha’, Hindu extremists are now hell-bent to inflict pain onto the Muslims by burning their houses and beating the inmates to death on the pretext of consuming cow meat. In effect, religious tolerance has become a far cry in today’s India .
Babri mosque incident was not merely a bloody occurrence that caused desecration and demolition of a Muslim worship place in Ayodhya, it has rather exposed India’s real face to the world. The ongoing Hindutva push against the non-Hindu communities bears all the potential to eventually disintegrate Indian federation into myriads of independent states with Hindu low-caste Dalits, Christians, Muslims and Sikhs living separately; leaving the small number of high-class ‘Brahmans’ with residual diminutive tract of land to rule none but themselves.
