Ayodhya Noorani

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BOOKS

How a mosque became a temple

A.G. NOORANI

A timely and revealing book on the takeover of the Babri Masjid on the night of December22-23, 1949. The authors’ political sophistication emerges from the pointed questions they raiseabout a divide in our polity.

The Sangh Parivar is all set to revive the Ayodhya issue and for the same reason for which it is seekingto make Narendra Modi its frontman in 2014. It is desperate because it has no vote getter. L.K.Advani’s ambitions have far outrun his abilities as a vote getter. He draws a yawn even in the parivar.

Radhika Ramaseshan, a correspondent very much in the know, reported a meeting on January 31,2013, at the residence of Shripad Yeso Naik, MP, a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) regular,which was attended by Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj. Thelong-neglected Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s leaders Ashok Singhal, Praveen Togadia, Champak Rai andDinesh Kumar dusted off the cobwebs that had covered them to make themselves presentable at themeeting ( The Telegraph, February 1, 2013). On February 7, the VHP’s steering committee meeting atthe Kumbh Mela in Allahabad passed a resolution on the construction of a Ram temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid which the parivar demolished 20 years ago on December 6, 1992.

Radhika Ramaseshan reported: “VHP sources admitted that the agenda was political and was drawnup with the 2014 elections in mind and the possibility that the recycled Ayodhya card might help theBJP in the Hindu belt and the west. They also said the blueprint was firmed up in conjunction with theRSS.” One of the reasons for the meeting on January 31 was to “prop up a ‘Hindutva’ context for

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=20130308300

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Narendra Modi’s prospective projection nationally”.

SANJAY SHARMA/INDIA PIX NETWORK

December 6, 1992: Hindu fundamentalists atop the Babri Masjid just before demolishing it.

This book could not have made a more timely appearance. It uncovers a wider plot to recast the Indianpolity, of which the takeover of the Babri Masjid on the night of December 22-23, 1949, was but a

subplot. It is by far the most revealing book on that sordid episode. The authors, both Delhi-based journalists, did fieldwork for years. Their stupendous research in the archives would do any scholarproud. Two lies used repeatedly to cover up the crime are exposed; namely, that the idol of Ram“appeared” that night as L.K. Advani asserted on August 1, 2003. He has also systematically spreadthe tale that no prayers were said at the mosque for years. The RSS’ organOrganiser said it“meticulously appeared” (March 29, 1987).

The authors record the testimony of the Babri Masjid’s lastmuezzin, Muhammad Ismail, who put up afierce resistance to the intruders who had scaled the walls and were about to plant the idol. He wasbeaten up and forced to flee and he spent the remaining years of his life as amuezzin in a mosque inPaharganj Ghosania on the outskirts of Faizabad.

Themuezzindelivers theazan, the call to prayer, and looks after the mosque. The imam leads theprayers five times a day. Haji Abdul Ghaffar, who lived in Mohalla Qaziana in Ayodhya, functioned asimam of the Babri Masjid from 1930 to 1949. His father, Maulvi Abdul Qadir, was imam from 1901 to1930. Abdul Ghaffar wrote a bookGungashta Haalat Ayodhya, Awadh, which contains a wealth of information and deserves to be translated into English. The authors tracked down the principal actors. Their lively, evocative style of writing brings the events to life. They had located some of the criticaleyewitnesses too.

THE HINDU ARCHIVES


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Biharsharif, 1990: BJ P leader L.K . Advani's Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra faces protests from J anata Dal supporters.

Advani’s ambitions and BJ P’s campaign

It was not religion but politics, specifically the lure of power and Advani’s prime ministerial ambitions,which inspired the campaign. In 1990 he waded through pools of blood in his rath yatra from theSomnath temple in Gujarat to Ayodhya. Immediately on the passing of the BJP’s Palampur (Himachal

Pradesh) resolution on Ayodhya on June 11, 1989, Advani said, “I am sure it will translate into votes.”On December 3, 1989, after the general elections, he expressed satisfaction that the issue hadcontributed to the BJP’s success. On February 24, 1991, as India teetered towards another election, hewas confident that the issue would “influence the electoral verdict in favour of the BJP”. On June 18,1991, he made this pathetic confession: “Had I not played the Ram factor effectively, I would havedefinitely lost from the New Delhi constituency.”

Shortly after the demolition of the Babri Mosque on December 6, 1992, and another wave of carnagethat came in its train, Advani wrote that if Muslims were to identify themselves with the concept of Hindutva there would not be any reason for riots to take place ( The Times of India, January 30, 1993).In July 1992, he argued in the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chamber: “You must recognise the fact that from

two seats in Parliament in 1985 we have come to 117 seats in 1991. This has happened primarilybecause we took up this issue [Ayodhya].”

Behind the BJP’s religio-cultural rhetoric, however, there has always been cold political calculation. The BJP leader Sushma Swaraj ripped apart this pretence in Bhopal on April 14, 2000, when sheadmitted that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was “purely political in nature and had nothing to dowith religion” ( The Telegraph; April 16, 2000). She was once a socialist and an acolyte of GeorgeFernandes.

The authors recall: “The hands that pumped bullets into the chest of the Mahatma were that of Nathuram Godse, but, as was proved later, the assassination was part of a conspiracy hatched by top

Hindu Mahasabha leaders, led by V.D. Savarkar, whose prime objectives were to snatch politicalinitiative from the Congress and destabilise all efforts to uphold secularism in India. The conspiracy tokill Gandhi could not remain hidden for long even though the trial, held immediately after theassassination, had failed to uncover its extent.

SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA


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L.K . Advani. On December 3, 1989, after the general election, he expressed satisfaction that theissue had contributed to the BJ P's success.

“ The surreptitious occupation of the Babri Masjid was an act planned by almost the same set of people about two years later—on the night of December 22, 1949. It was, in many ways, a reflectionof the same brutalised atmosphere that saw Gandhi being murdered. Neither the conspirators nor theirunderlying objectives were different. In both instances, the conspirators belonged to the HinduMahasabha leadership—some of the prime movers of the planting of the idol had been the prime

accused in the Gandhi murder case—and their objective this time too was to wrest the political centrestage from the Congress by provoking large-scale Hindu mobilisation in the name of the Lord Rama.”(Emphasis added, throughout.)

Yet the two incidents differed—as much in themodus operandi used by Hindu communalists as in themanner in which the government and the ruling party, the Congress, responded to them. While theMahatma was killed in full public view in broad daylight, the Babri Masjid was converted into a templesecretly, in the dead of night.

Also, while the conspiracy to kill the Mahatma was probed thoroughly by a commission set up by theGovernment of India, albeit two decades later, no such inquiry was conducted to unmask the plot and

the plotters behind the forcible conversion of the Babri Masjid into a temple. “As a result, an eventthat so remarkably changed the political discourse in Indiacontinues to be treated as a localised crimecommitted spontaneously by a handful of local people led, of course, by Abhiram Das, a local sadhu.It was, however a well-planned conspiracy involvingnational, provincial and local level leaders of theHindu Mahasabha undertaken with the objective of reviving the party’s political fortunes that were lostin the aftermath of the Gandhi assassination.

SIDDHARTH DARSHAN KUMAR/AP

Ramachandra Das Paramhans. He was president of the Hindu Mahasabha's Ayodhya unit. Hetold The New York Times (December 22, 1991): "I am the very man who put the idol inside the

masjid."

Interestingly, no major newspaper gave the event the coverage it deserved. Investigative journalism,such as it was, was confined to the tabloids. It would have exposed the deep divide within theCongress between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the secularist, and his Deputy Vallabhbhai Patel,the communalist, who had even inaugurated, in Mumbai in 1945, the Pranlal Mansukhlal SwimmingBath whose membership was confined to Hindus.


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First Information Report

The first information report (FIR) lodged at 9 a.m. on December 23, 1949, hours after the Ram idolwas installed, speaks for itself. Pandit Ramdeo Dubey, officer-in-charge, Ayodhya Police Station,Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, lodged this FIR against Abhiram Das, Ram Sakal Das, Sudarshan Das and 50to 60 other persons, whose names were not known, under Sections 147 (rioting), 448 (trespassing) and295 (defiling a place of worship) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC):

“That at about 7 in the morning when I (Ramdeo Dubey) reached the Janmabhoomi, I came to knowfrom Mata Prasad [Constable No. 7, Ayodhya Police Station] that a group of 50 to 60 persons haveentered the Babri Masjid by breaking open the locks of the compound and also by scaling the wallsand staircases and placed an idol of Shri Bhagwan in it and scribbled sketches of Sita, Ramji, etc. insaffron and yellow colours on the inner and outer walls of it. That Hans Raj [Constable No. 70, whowas on duty at the time when 50-60 persons entered] stopped them [from doing so] but they did notcare. The PAC [Provincial Armed Constabulary] guards present there were called for help. But by thenthe people had already entered the mosque. Senior district officials visited the site and got into action.Later on, a mob of five to six thousand people gathered and tried to enter into the mosque raisingreligious slogans and singing kirtans. But due to proper arrangement, nothing happened. Committers of crime [Abhi] Ram Das, [Ram] Sakal Das, Sudarshan Das with 50 to 60 persons, names not known,

havedesecrated [ naapaak kiya hai] the mosqueby trespassing the mosque through rioting andplacing idol in it. Officers on duty and many other people have seen it. So the case has been checked.It is found correct.”

Ramachandra Das Paramhans, who told The New York Times, “I am the very man who put the idolinside the masjid” (December 22, 1991), was nowhere on the scene. Many believed he had left town toattend the conference of the Hindu Mahasabha that was to begin on December 24 in Calcutta (nowKolkata). The man who had planted the idol was Abhiram Das.

Fight for control

There was a rift between the intruders as well; Abhiram’s aim was to establish his Nirvani Akhara’scomplete sway over Ayodhya. “It was an established tradition that the Nirvani Akhara possessed thetemple of Lord Hanuman inside Hanumangarhi, meaning thereby that it would have control over allthe offerings and donations that the temple received from devotees and patrons. As part of thisarrangement, the Nirmohi Akhara, another prominent Ramanandi Akhara, had been assigned controlover the Ramachabutara. The Ramachabutara until then was worshipped as Lord Rama’s janmabhoomi. Accordingly, all the offerings at this site were collected by the Nirmohi Akhara.”

The claim of the Nirmohi Akhara over the janmabhoomi would automatically be diluted if AbhiramDas, a member of the Nirvani Akhara, succeeded in installing an idol of Ram inside the Babri Masjid—almost 50 feet [15.2 metre] away from the Ram chabutara. The “real janmabhoomi” that would thus

emerge inside the mosque would make the janmabhoomi owned for almost a century by the NirmohiAkhara redundant. And by becoming the Janmabhoomi Uddharak, Abhiram Das would have solecontrol over this potentially most significant spot in Ayodhya.

He held the idol firmly as he began climbing the Masjid wall. He, who led the march, was an activeMahasabhaite and was a trusted lieutenant of Mahant Digvijai Nath, president of the U.P. unit of theMahasabha. Ramachandra Das Paramhans was president of the Ayodhya unit.

THE HINDU ARCHIVES


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Delhi, 1946: J awaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with Gandhi at the CongressWorking Committee meeting.

The authors are scrupulously fair to V.D. Savarkar and accept that “there is scant evidence implicatingSavarkar in this conspiracy”. But the top leadership could not have been ignorant of what was afoot. Aresolution adopted at the special session of the Mahasabha in Poona (now Pune) in December 1950claimed: “During this year, [the] Hindu Mahasabha undertook the work of regaining the Ram J anmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya. Sri Mahant Digvijai Nath [Hindu Mahasabha’s national generalsecretary and president of the party’s U.P. unit], Sri V.G. Deshpande [the party’s national vicepresident] and Sri Tej Narain [working president of the party’s U.P. unit] went there and the Ram Janma Bhoomi shrine is now in the possession of the Hindu Mahasabhaites.…”

The authors also record: “It has been rumoured that sometime in the second week of December 1949,at a meeting of the reception committee set up for the twenty-eighth session of the Hindu Mahasabha,

Savarkar had directed Mahant Digvijay Nath, the president of the party’s provincial unit in U.P., toconcentrate solely on ‘regaining’ Ramajanmabhoomi in Ayodhya so that the work could be‘accomplished’ before the beginning of the Mahasabha’s Calcutta session on December 24 that year.Apart from Savarkar and Mahant Digvijai Nath, it was claimed, the meeting that took place at theparty headquarters in Delhi was attended by other prominent Mahasabha leaders like Nirmal ChandraChatterjee, Dr. N.B. Khare (who became the party president two weeks later) and Mamarao Date(based on interview with Pramod Pandit Joshi, secretary, All India Hindu Mahasabha on December 10,2010).”

After Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948, the Mahasabha’s former president, Shyama PrasadMookerjee, then a Minister in Nehru’s Cabinet, suggested two options to the Mahasabha on February

6: “to break with its political activities” and confine itself to “social, cultural and religious objects” oropen its doors to every citizen who accepted its programme. The Mahasabha accepted the first in aqualified form. It decided to “suspend political activities”, not abandon them. On August 8, 1948, theparty’s executive decided to renew its political activities, which it ratified on November 6-7, 1948. OnApril 3, 1948, the Constituent Assembly had passed a resolution denouncing communal politicalparties, leaving Mookerjee with two choices, quit the Cabinet or the Mahasabha. He chose the latteron November 23, 1948. But if political activity was to be renewed, an attractive plank was necessary.It was the Ram temple. The BJP followed this course in 1989 and is likely to do so again in 2013.

However, success required support from the bureaucracy and from the ruling party, the Congress.


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“The idea that eventually changed the politics of India, though much later than its originators hadanticipated, emerged for the first time among three friends—Maharaja Pateshwari Prasad Singh, headof the princely state of Balrampur, Mahant Digvijai Nath and K.K.K. Nair. The three were joined asmuch by their Hindu communal sentiments as their love for lawn tennis.” K.K.K. Nair, ICS was thenDistrict Magistrate of Gonda. Between June 1, 1949, and March 14, 1950, he was DeputyCommissioner-cum-District Magistrate of Faizabad. Later he was elected to the Lok Sabha on the JanaSangh ticket. His accomplice was the City Magistrate of Faizabad Guru Datt Singh. Both were forcedto quit the service after the masjid’s take over.

Yagna and idea

In 1948 the Maharaja of Balrampur founded the Ram Rajya Parishad. K.K.K. Nair was among hisguests. He amassed massive plots of land. The idea was mooted in the early months of 1947 when theMaharaja organised a grand yajna. The plot was bared in 1991 in the Mahasabha’s weeklyHinduSabha Varta, which the authors quote: “On the last day of the yajna, Sri Digvijai Nath—as per theviews expressed by Sri Vinayak Damodar Savarkar that the [Hindu] religious places which had beenunder occupation of foreigners must now be liberated—discussed the idea [of capturing the BabriMasjid] with Karpatriji and Nair. Promising that he would get back to him after considering theproposal seriously, Nair left for the district headquarters of Gonda. The next day, reaching the place of

yajna at Balrampur, Nair went straight to Karpatriji and Mahant Digvijai Nath, who welcomed him andasked him to sit next to them. They began discussing the issue once again. When Nair inquired aboutthe detailed plan, the mahant laid before him the strategy to get back Sri Ramjanmabhoomi inAyodhya, apart from Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi and Sri Krishna janmabhoomi in Mathura.Nair then promised Digvijai Nath that he would sacrifice everything in order to accomplish this task.”

Digvijay Nath exhorted Hindu militants on January 27, 1948, to kill Gandhi, three days before theassassination. He was in favour of depriving “Muslims of the right to vote for five to ten years”. TheBJP is too astute to say that. But by harping on a non-existent “Muslim vote bank” it wants to makepolitical discourse an intra-Hindu affair.

SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

New Delhi, December 23, 2007: Ashok Singhal, international president of the VHP, and Praveen Togadia (right), international general secretary of the VHP, perform "havan" at the bhumi

pujan ceremony for "Ram Setu".

The game would not have succeeded but for Chief Minister Govind Ballabh Pant and his backer at theCentre, Vallabhbhai Patel. In 1998, the then Home Secretary of U.P., Rajeshwar Dayal, made ashocking disclosure in his memoirA Life of Our Times. Officials brought to him trunk loads of plans


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for a holocaust obtained as a result of raids on the premises of the RSS. “I pressed for the immediatearrest of the prime accused Shri Golwalkar (the RSS Supremo) who was still in the area. Pantdeliberately procrastinated. Golwalkar disappeared. RSS sympathisers, both covert and overt, were tobe found in the Congress party itself and even in the Cabinet.” Speedy action might have savedGandhi’s life.

Congress, a house divided

The U.P. Congress was a house divided. Patel’s supporters were led by Pant; Nehru’s by Rafi AhmedKidwai. But Pant controlled the party. The Congress Socialist Party left the Congress in March 1948.All its 13 legislators resigned their seats and sought a fresh mandate. Byelections were due in June.Acharya Narendra Dev, a Socialist, fought from Faizabad. He had to be defeated. Pant’s factionreplaced Siddheshwari Prasad with Baba Raghav Das and Pant himself made a several visits toFaizabad. In one speech he said that “Muslims and zamindars and other vested interests were trying toundermine the Congress” and that Narendra Dev did not believe in Ram.

So fouled was the atmosphere that Nehru wrote to Mohanlal Saxena, a Cabinet colleague, inSeptember 1949: “Indeed the U.P. is becoming almost a foreign land for me. I do not fit in there. TheU.P. Congress Committee, with which I have been associated for thirty-five years, now functions in a

manner which amazes me. Its voice is not the voice of the Congress I have known, but somethingwhich I have opposed for the greater part of my life […] Communalism has invaded the minds andhearts of those who were pillars of the Congress.” The hint was clear.

Mahasabhaites took heart from this, as the BJP did in 1991-92 under P.V. Narasimha Rao’s regime.When Narendra Dev lost, Digvijay Nath rejoiced that “to win the elections the Congress leaders had toappeal to the Hindu feelings of the voters.”

Sequence of events

The authors carefully trace the events from October 28, 1949, onwards when a huge congregation

resolved to organise a function at the Ram chabutra on November 24. As they point out, “till then theRamachabutra, and not the Babri Masjid, was referred to as Ramajanmabhoomi”. The trio—K.K.K Nair, Guru Datt Singh and Gopal Singh Visharad, head of the Faizabad Mahasabha—went to work.One man saw what was happening and spoke up loud and clear. He was Akshay Brahmachari, aGandhian who was secretary of the Faizabad District Congress. “Developments taking place inAyodhya and Faizabad and the question of Babri Mosque are neither a simple question of mosque ortemple nor a fight between Hindus and Muslims. This is a serious conspiracy by reactionary forceswho want to use it to kill the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and win electoral battle by raising communalpassion. Local officials have also participated in this conspiracy.”

The plotters decided, on K.K.K. Nair’s advice, that planting the idol was better than taking over themosque by mass action. A meeting was held on December 2, which was attended by leaders of theMahasabha and Nair.

As Abhiram Das led the attack, themuezzinMohammed Ismail woke up from his slumber and“grabbed Abhiram Das” from behind and almost snatched the “idol from him”. He was beaten badlyand ran for his life. Thus a mosque was forcibly and deceitfully converted into a temple. Islamiccarvings were erased. As arranged, a crowd collected the next morning. The reader must peruse thismeticulously documented work to appreciate the political events before the takeover and the legalskulduggery thereafter to legitimise a crime. The correspondence between K.K.K. Nair and thehigher-ups and between Nehru and Pant as well as Patel’s make-believe letter to Pant are all set out.


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Nehru’s soft approach

Matters came to a head in August 1950 when Purushottamdas Tandon defeated Acharya Kripalani inthe polls for the post of Congress president. Tandon, anointed at the Nasik session in September 1950,resigned less than a year later, Patel having died in December 1950.

The authors’ political sophistication emerges from the pointed questions they raise about a divide in

our polity. They note: “[U]ntil he succeeded in marginalising Hindu traditionalists inside the Congressand their source of strength outside the party, Nehru seemed to have allowed his secularism to sufferfrom a certain ambiguity, doubtless due to his concern not to hand over his opponents a chance tobrand him anti-Hindu and thereby score a deadly point over him. Pragmatists may argue that was thereason why Nehru, as he jostled with Patel for supremacy within the party, did not mind a great part of his vision of secularism falling by the wayside.

“There is a counter-argument as well, which raises some pertinent questions. Was it necessary forNehru to remain a mute spectator while Govind Ballabh Pant and Purushottamdas Tandon played thecommunal card to finish off their opponents in U.P.—especially Acharya Narendra Dev—and thuscreated a ground conducive for the Mahasabhaites in Ayodhya? Could it have been avoided? Would

communalists still have succeeded in taking over the Babri Masjid and retaining it in the face of all hueand cry, had Nehru opted for an uncompromisingly tough attitude towards them right from thebeginning?Wouldn’t a harder attitude have forced the State government to take effective steps toremove the idol from the mosque and, thereby, undo the wrong committed on the night of December22, 1949? Could the Hindu Mahasabha have succeeded in going that far in implementing its Ayodhyastrategy without Nehru’s soft approach?”

As Sampurnanand wrote in his memoirs, Nehru never threw his weight behind the Congress SocialistParty. That does not diminish the majesty of his vision of a modern secular India. It is debatable howmuch power he wielded before Patel’s death on December 15, 1950. Nehru’s mass appeal was fargreater than Patel’s, but it was Patel who controlled the party machine. In this task Patel was aided by

rank communalists such as Rajendra Prasad, Pant, Ravi Shankar Shukla and B.C. Roy, Nehru’s oldfriend, and Tandon, who said on June 14, 1948: “The Musulmans must stop talking about a culture anda civilisation foreign to our country and genius. They should accept Indian culture. One culture andone language will pave the way for real unity. Urdu symbolises a foreign culture. Hindi alone can bethe unifying factor for the diverse forces in the country.”

He became president of the Congress. Moraji Desai said on November 29, 1964: “The Hindu majorityis clean hearted and fair-minded. I cannot say the same about the majority of the Indian Muslims.” (Hindustan Times, November 30, 1964.) He became Prime Minister of India.

Nehru’s biographer records that “in performing this duty (protection of Muslims), his first as the leaderof a free people, Nehru could not rely on the unqualified support of his Cabinet”. Patel and RajendraPrasad, backed by S.P. Mookerjee, opposed him. Patel was opposed to the return to Delhi of theMuslims who had fled the city to escape butchery, thanks to his own failure to protect them (S. Gopal, J awaharlal Nehru, pages 15-16).

Nehru temporised and contented himself with delivering speeches and writing to Chief Ministers,exerting himself actively when he could. On February 15, 1954, a deputation of Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu met the President of India Dr. Rajendra Prasad and presented a petition asking for a Centraldirective under Article 347 of the Constitution that Urdu be recognised as one of the regionallanguages of Uttar Pradesh. It was presented by Dr. Zakir Husain and among its signatories werePandit Hriday Nath Kunzru, Mrs. Uma Nehru, Pandit Sundarlal and Kishen Chander.


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It drew a rare snub to Maulana Azad from Nehru, on March 12, 1954. The petitioners should haveapproached the U.P. government itself! A Central directive “might well create some kind of aconstitutional crisis”. But invoking a constitutional provision does not create a constitutional crisis;perhaps apolitical one which Nehru feared, given the mood there (see the writer’s The Muslims of India, OUP, pages 299-305).

Hindu chauvinism

Later, Indira Gandhi so fouled the atmosphere when she returned to power in 1980 that even AtalBihari Vajpayee was provoked to tell M. Markham of The New York Times(June 14, 1984) that herconduct in “encouraging Hindu chauvinism is not going to pay. As the majority community, Hindusmust be above parochial politics.” This is precisely the course Advani took in 1990.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 drew a fierce attack by a politician not only onthe crime and its perpetrators, and on their entire outlook, but also on the acquiescence of “non-Congress centrist secular parties”. He wrote:

“We were not conscious of our own strength either in 1977 or in 1989 and carried the BJP on ourshoulders from strength to strength…. Religious fanaticism soon became the declared electoral

platform of the BJP. Capture of power in UP led it to believe that it could capture power at the Centreby the same tactics….

“India is being pushed back into the dark ages by obscurantist, fundamentalist and fascist forces. Theirappeasement… has today given them the strength and the audacity to seek to destroy the very basis of our nation state…. [T]he secular forces will have to unitedly and determinedly meet this challenge if India is to survive as a democratic, secular, progressive, liberal and modern nation.”

It is hard to think of a stronger and more just denunciation of the BJP. It was written in The SundayObserver of December 14, 1992. On November 13, 1993, he joined the BJP. The politician was Yashwant Sinha. To The Times of Indiahe pleaded dishonestly that “by then the difference between

communalism and secularism had blurred” (June 24, 2007). All the more reason for espousingsecularism even more strongly. There was no such blurring between December 14, 1992, andNovember 13, 1993, at all; only the opening of a more promising avenue to power than his mentorChandrashekhar could provide. As Finance Minister in the BJP-led regime he “consulted RSS leadersbefore I finalised the 1998 budget” ( Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer, page 183).

But, of course, Yashwant Sinha was and is neither a secularist nor a communalist; neither a fascist nora socialist. He is simply a committed opportunist. The likes of him will follow his example if the BJPshows signs of renewal.

In this there is a lesson for all secularists, but mainly for the Muslims of India. They should by allmeans fight for redress of grievances which are serious; but it is an abdication of duty as citizens of asecular state to confine politics to redress of the community’s grievances. Secularism demands notdetachment but involvement in the entire range of the nation’s activities—economic, social, politicaland constitutional. The course they have followed in recent decades has furthered the fortunes of thethugs in New Delhi who claim to be their “leaders”, earned them favours and marginalised Muslims. The BJP would not have travelled as far as it did, nor would the Babri Masjid have been demolished if the Muslims of India had lent their shoulder to the cause of secularism. A lot of time has been wasted.

It would be sheer folly to ignore the omens. The political clime is deteriorating fast.


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Ayodhya Noorani

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