Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
I had kept my fingers crossed for most of the day the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its saffronite fellow travelers had chosen to launch a “phase two” of the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid saga. The “chaurasi Kosi parikarma- circumambulation of the 250-square kilometer area covering some six or seven districts in and around Ayodhya, the disputed Ram Mandir- Babri Masjid arena where the saffronites, two decades earlier, had made a brazen display of their muscle power, demolishing Babri Masjid in the presence of the tallest of the saffronites L.K. Advani, A.B. Vajpayee’s No. II, Murli Manohar Joshi and many other BJP and Sangh Parivar stalwarts. Sadly, for Mr. Advani he was out of the picture this time over, confirmation perhaps of Nagpur’s disapproval of him.
In my mind’s eye also flitted the picture of Advani, swearing by the tears in his eyes, that he had not expected the VHP and other saffronite volunteers to actually demolish the mosque. Crocodile tears you might say but Advani had insisted that he was genuinely sad over the turn of events. He was indeed surprised when the 500-year old mosque was torn down by the parivar volunteers.
I also recalled the narration of that day’s events by former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar : of how he had called Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao several times that day, of how he had pestered Rao’s senior Minister, Sharad Pawar throughout that day, giving them a virtual blow-by-blow account of the depredations of the RSS volunteers. He also recalled giving up his endeavour after Sharad Pawar told him that a cabinet meeting had been setup for 5-30 p.m.; he recalled making a final call to Rao as well to tell him that the main dome of the mosque had been demolished.
I was reminded yet again of my friend Saeed Shafi, a former Chief Town Planner to the government of India and his anguish over the destruction of the mosque. Shafi, a well respected architect and town planner, had a different story to recall. “Ours was an old Nationalist Muslim Delhi family and my father had decided that we stay back in India at the time of partition”. Shafi had made his mark professionally as a most distinguished architect and town planner when he was drafted as a member of an international panel to redesign the twin cities of Mecca and Medina.
“You know, the panel must have opted for the demolition of scores of mosques as the twin holy cities of Islam were rebuilt. I didn’t have any feelings when these mosques, madrassas and burial places were wiped out…….. But, I tell you – and I don’t know why- that something inside me snapped when Babri masjid was demolished”.
For him the mosque in Ayodhya had been a symbol of secular tolerance of India, the country’s readiness to accept people of all faiths, to assimilate and absorb the best of these.
There were similar stories I learnt during that dark period, reminding one of the Sikh angst and worse of the post -1984 anti-Sikh riots.
So, it was with a sense of grave trepidation that I woke up on the morning of the eighty-four kosi parikrama, convinced that it was just an attempt by the Sangh Parivar to arouse the communal beast just before the election process gets rolling. I knew that the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav is in power the State and would prevent the Vishwa Hindu Parishad from making it a repeat of 1992. It was clear the day the circumambulation became a non-starter and, not so surprisingly, when Ashok Singhal, god knows how old he is, demanded that the other VHP biggie, Pravin Togadia, the ugly face of the Ram Mandir movement, immediately endorse Narendra Modi has the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate. Obviously a directive from Nagpur had reached Singhal by then.
The obvious inference from the VHP’s attempt at staging a yatra of its own in Ayodhya was that it was meant to polarize communities and affect voting pattern in the next elections. Not-too-complex calculations go into working out what electoral patterns can emerge from this polarization, and the notion is that this will aid both the ruling Samajwadi Party and the BJP. It has been an old tactic of Saffron Parivar groups to profess a distance from another’s activities.
But it is no secret that often these activities, including “yatras” such as this one, have established common aims. In that context, while the BJP might be willing to play the communal card again, banking on such tactics even two decades after the destruction of the Babri Masjid underlines a larger failure of the party.
That failure consists of being unable to occupy the space it should have taken by now : emerging as a party of the centre-right, shorn of active, overt control of the RSS. Then again, it can be said that as the political arm of the RSS, the BJP could never have managed to shed that organisation’s debilitating control, and move beyond the RSS’s long-term plan to turn India into a majoritarian country with the minorities as second-class citizens. But the fact is that control is also debilitating because the very configurations of communities in India makes it tough for that exclusivist agenda to consolidate a Parliament-winning mandate all by itself.
That consolidation did seem to happen after 1992. But its limitations became apparent soon. Yet, the BJP seems to see polarizing figures and agendas as its ticket to power, even as any other main opposition party could have had a scam-tainted government squarely on the mat by now. That’s failure writ large.
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