SANGHARSH: THE STRUGGLE
Around seventy years ago, there was a flash of light at the Babri Masjid and lord Ram himself appeared. This divine light determined our electoral mandate, public opinion, national agenda, and future discourse.
Okay, so the flash of light wasn’t a real thing but a fable that became very popular in Ayodhya and the rest of the country. Pandit Abhiram Das led a group of about 50 to 60 people and placed the idols of Ram inside the Babri Masjid which he believed was a symbol of foreign oppression built on the very ground on which Lord Ram was born. The planning for this was done at City Magistrate’s house. His son recalls secret meetings that went on late in the night. They raised slogans and sang bhajans.
The myth that a miracle had taken place inside the Babri masjid was further perpetrated when it became a matter of public record. On 23rd December 1949, Hawaldar Abdul Barkat had in a statement to the police, said that at 2 am there was a flash of lightning after which he saw a beautiful child about four or five years inside the Babri masjid, behind its locked gates.
Despite the center’s concerns, the incident was treated as a local communal incident. In hindsight, placing the idols at the Babri masjid was the spark that lit the Ram Mandir Movement and also shaped the Indian politics as we know it today.
Opening Pandora’s Box
A leader looking to please everyone could both be equally responsible for turning the movement for a Ram Temple into a deeply political, but before the religious and political crusade came the ‘persecution’.
On 1st February, 1986, Faizabad District Court judge KM Pandey saw a monkey holding a flagpost there. People were offering it groundnuts and fruits. Judge Pandey thought it was strange that the monkey refused to eat. Judge Panday ruled “Muslims are not going to be affected by any stretch of the imagination if the locks of the gates were opened. Heavens will not fall.” Except they did! There was nationwide rioting. Several temples were burnt by Muslims all over the India in retaliation of Babri. The rioting was a direct result of judge KM Pandey’s ruling, which he later in his autobiography said was prompted by the divine monkey.” I just saluted him, taking him to be some divine power”, he wrote.
By the mid-1980’s it was impossible for the Indian public and our politicians to ignore the Ayodhya movement.
Mixing Religion and politics
19th February 1981, 200 Dalit families in Tamil Nadu converted to Islam. This collective, spontaneous decision was prompted by years of oppression by the landed elite and rattled the keepers of Hindu morality.
The DharamSansad organized by VHP was the very first time that rebuilding a Ram Temple was listed as an objective to preserve the Hindu Dharm. It was followed by a bike rally organized by VHP in which karsevaks from across the country arrived in Ayodhya and took a dip in the Sarayu river and pledged to rebuild a temple. While the VHP was its Ayodhya mission, in Delhi, the Muslim clergy too hit the streets in protest. A 62-year-old woman, Shah Bano won the rights to alimony from the Supreme Court. Rajiv Gandhi then tried to calm the clergy down by passing a law that undermined the Supreme Court ruling on Shah Bano.
Mandal route to Ram Mandir
VP Singh, then Prime Minister accepted the controversial Mandal Commission Report which gave 27% reservation to lower castes at all levels of government services. The BJP needed to shift the conversation from caste and quota-based, discriminating-reservation politics. So the decision was taken to launch a RathYatra from Somnath to Ayodhya.
BJP President LK Advani would travel in a bus-turned chariot. Thousands of people followed his yatra across to hear Advani talk about Ram’s birthplace, the temple, and how the government stood in his way. But Advani was later arrested in Bihar by Lalu Prasad Yadav’s government.
The stage was set for a confrontation. Thousands of karsevaks reached the Hanuman Garhi but were pushed out of the disputed property. Two days later, the karsevaks adopted a new strategy. Women and old men went right up front and started touching the policemen’s feet (Indian tradition prohibits an older person to touch younger ones feet). The policemen would instinctively step back and the crowd would push forward. But the drama didn’t last long. The policemen began firing without warning. According to the official reports, 15 people were killed. At the end of the day, angry karsevaks refused to conduct the final rites of those who had died and demanded to march once again. UP government responded to it by opening the blockades.
On 6th December 1992, at 6 am on a wintery morning journalists and karsevaks began arriving at the disputed site. By 10 am Sadhus, saints, and leaders had also reached. 12’o clock, a loud long whistle was heard and the younger karsevaks broke open the barbed wire, used ropes to climb up the disputed structure and hammers to ultimately break down the entire structure. Appeals by religious leaders to karsevaks to retreat fell on deaf ears. They didn’t want any proof of demolition to remain. In the accompanying frenzy, some mosques and homes of Muslims in Ayodhya were also burned.
THE FINAL VERDICT
It was that day, and then we have today. In the unanimous verdict by the Supreme court, a report by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) provided evidence that the remains of a building “that was not Islamic” was beneath the structure of the demolished Babri mosque.
Taking in account all the presented evidence, the Supreme Court had determined that the disputed land should be given for the construction of a temple of Lord Ram, while a portion of another land would also be given for the construction of a mosque, keeping in mind the religious sentiments of both the communities directly involved in the case.
It then directed the federal government to set up a trust to manage and oversee the construction of the temple.
