A Temple of Sovereignty and Nationhood

RUSHING BACK TO LUCKNOW TO EVADE BEING STRANDED IN A CURFEW THAT appeared inevitable, my final image of Ayodhya at dusk on December 6, 1992, was an unending stream of kar sevaks. They were in small groups, walking purposefully on the road away from the continuing excitement in Ayodhya. Mission accomplished, they now chanted, “Ram Lalla phir ayenge, bhavya mandir banayenge. (Ram Lalla will return, and we’ll build a grand temple).”

More than 31 years after that momentous day which the next day’s newspapers described as either a ‘black day’ or ‘shameful’, many of those boisterous youngsters must have returned to Ayodhya on January 22 to mark the redemption of a pledge.

To be honest, neither those impetuous youngsters nor many like me who watched in disbelief as history was being made, could have imagined that the bhavya mandir promised to Lord Ram that dusk would materialise in our lifetime, and that too as part of a nationwide celebration. As we saw the dispute fall victim to protracted judicial prevarication, many imagined that the worship of the tiny Ram Lalla idol under a makeshift tarpaulin structure and surrounded by impregnable metal barricades would continue in this fashion for another 50 or maybe 100 years—until incensed Hindus took matters in their own hands once again.

The conviction that a long wait was inevitable was not entirely unfounded. On the afternoon kar sevaks were tearing down the Mughal structure with small chisels, ropes and their bare hands, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters on Ashoka Road in New Delhi presented a picture of chaos and consternation. Like the party leaders in Ayodhya who were caught totally by surprise at the unexpected turn of events, the clutch of elders holding the fort that Sunday afternoon didn’t quite know how exactly to react. The elderly KR Malkani, a former editor of the Motherland (which was closed on the imposition of Emergency in 1975) and Organiser, was the party spokesman present. A little irascible at the best of times, he tried to improvise an explanation to the few journalists who had turned up at the party HQ. The responsibility for giving the kar sevaks a bad name, he claimed, was that of the intelligence services that had masterminded a dastardly plot. No one was entirely convinced, but in those days of imperfect com­munications and government control of the electronic media, no one really knew what exactly had happened in Ayodhya.

It was at this juncture that Sikander Bakht, a veteran politician of Delhi and among the very few prominent Muslims to rise to a leadership position in BJP, walked into the party office. According to a version of events that was subsequently narrated to me by Arun Jaitley (who was in Delhi that day), Sikander was in a great mood. He entered the office and hugged a bewildered Malkani, exclaiming: “Aaj Hindu o ney kamaal kar diya. (Today, the Hindus have excelled.)” Sikander’s spontaneity lightened the mood and many in the party office did what they wanted to do in the first place—quietly celebrate.

I am told that a similar situation prevailed in the Times of India building later that evening. As glum-faced editors sat before their terminals pouring out their anguish and indignation, laddoos were being distributed by the workers in the print section. The next day, according to a version of events that appeared in the Delhi edition of the Times of India, a few lawyers approached the Supreme Court Bench saying they were ashamed of what happened in Ayodhya. They were interrupted by other black-robed col­leagues who shouted in unison that they were not ashamed.

Extrapolating from these random accounts of the reactions to the demolition of the Babri structure, some conclusions may be warranted.

First, Hindu society at large was left gasping by the sheer audacity of the kar sevaks. The BJP leadership, not least Atal Bihari Vajpayee who delivered a delightfully witty and confus­ing address in Lucknow on the evening of December 5, hadn’t the faintest idea of what would transpire in Ayodhya. The com­mitment to the Supreme Court that kar seva would be limited to clearing a patch of land and chanting bhajans was based on two assumptions. The first was a belief that the Ram bhakts that had trooped to Ayodhya to achieve something purposeful, would be content singing songs of praise and would, in any case, follow their leaders, even if grudgingly.

The second was the innate conviction among all responsible sections of India that there were self-imposed limitations on Hindu militancy. How and why this caricature of what Swami Vivekananda had mockingly described as the “patient Hindu, the mild Hindu” had seeped into the national con­sciousness is not known. However, it is a fact that a belief India had secured its independence from British rule was driven by the understanding that the tone of the freedom struggle was shaped by Gandhian non-violence. What was overlooked was the evidence that in a battle against entrenched authority, mob fury was the norm. This was as true of the rebellions of 1857 as the massacre of policemen in the police station of Chauri Chaura in 1922. It was also a fact that in the face of subal­tern mobilisation, faith in the ‘rule of law’ was notional.

With the benefit of hindsight, I will maintain without fear of contradiction that it was Hindu rage that manifested itself against a hated symbol of foreign rule. For those who planned the demolition—and based on his body language on December 6, I would suspect the hand of Ashok Singhal—this was the last occasion that Ram bhakts would mobilise in such large numbers for a specific objective. If this mobilisation ended in a tame bout of bhajan singing, it would become impossible for the leaders of the temple movement to gather people in such numbers in Ayodhya in future. It was also the intention of the Narasimha Rao government to tire out the movement and make it a victim of diminishing returns and this was perhaps understood by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leadership. Consequently, there was a belief among those who had invested everything in the Ayodhya movement that this was the last chance to remove what they saw as a blot on the landscape and simultaneously push Hindu society to the brink.

The way the demolition of the medieval structure was ef­fected, and its aftermath, prompts a final conclusion. It is undeni­able that when a group of kar sevaks broke the police cordon and climbed on to the roof of the domes, the BJP leadership was taken completely by surprise. I personally saw LK Advani visibly upset at the sudden turn of events and Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia, who was second to none in her commitment to Hindu nationalism, was so distressed that she demanded the trespassers be yanked off by their trousers. The confusion in the leadership became even more pronounced once the ever-resourceful and pragmatic Pramod Mahajan told the leader around 12.30PM that it was ex­tremely unlikely that the Babri structure could be salvaged. Once this realisation set it, it was a wait for the final collapse, a process made memorable for posterity by Sadhvi Rithambara’s choreog­raphy of the crowds. As long as I live, I will remember the tens of thousands of kar sevaks swaying to her chant of “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tor do (Give one more push, tear down the Babri mosque)”. The chants lasted till the final dome collapsed in a heap of red smoke shortly after 4PM.

After that there were wild, uninhibited celebrations, includ­ing a show of boisterousness by a group of white-robed sadhvis whose sense of restraint had otherwise been exemplary. Laddoos and other sweets appeared mysteriously from somewhere as Hindu militancy assumed a fierce character. From a distance we could see smoke from burning houses and Acharya Dharmendra announced from the public address system that the paramilitary forces should be prevented at all costs from taking over the site. It was only subsequently that the scheme of creating a makeshift temple at the site of the erstwhile garba griha was realised. It was apparent that some people had clearly thought through the aftermath of the demolition.

WHAT I WITNESSED ON THE TERRACE OF the Ram Katha Kunj where the leadership of the movement was situated was replicated across India among Hindu communities. It would be fair to say that the assembled media was in a state of shock and distress and this despondency was mirrored by the cosmopolitan elite that felt the country was in the throes of a majoritarian insurrection. A section of the middle classes also shared the elite wariness over a breakdown of the status quo, and anodyne comments such as “life will never be the same again” were frequent. At the same time, there was no mistaking the elation of the non-privileged Hindus, not least women, at the demolition.

It was the expression of support for the temple in Ayodhya that secured for BJP its first emphatic breakthrough, first in 1989 and then in 1991. Had the tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi not intervened before the third round of polling in 1991 and given the Con­gress a ‘sympathy vote’ in Maharashtra, it is likely that BJP would have emerged as the single-largest party. How this would have affected the 1992 mobilisation is a matter of conjecture. However, what can be said with a measure of certainty is that after the mid-term elections of 1993 where BJP won in Delhi and Rajasthan, but lost in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, the party leadership arrived at the momentous conclu­sion that the escalation of Hindu militancy had to be checked, even if it meant (as it did) offending VHP. It was decided that BJP would try to rope in a larger incremental vote by projecting the liberal face of Vajpayee. Simultaneously, it was decided that the fervour of Ayodhya would be allowed to cool and the future of the temple would be left in the hands of the courts, the only caveat being that Narasimha Rao’s knee-jerk promise after the 1992 demolition of building a mosque at the contentious site would remain confined to paper. Singhal wasn’t impressed by this retreat and for the rest of his life tried to detach the Ram Janmabhoomi movement from the overlordship of BJP. However, this bid to give VHP operational autonomy paid limited dividends and by a process of silent acquiescence, the case was allowed to be sent to the courts for adjudication. The entire process took two decades, enough time for the raw militancy of the early Ayodhya movement to be moulded into the larger process of national reconstruction.

It is to Modi’s credit that he deftly steered the expressions of raw anger into an articulation of national pride. There was an undoubted dose of triumphalism in the “Jai Sri Ram” that was heard in Ayodhya and elsewhere during the prana patishtha. However, these lacked the menacing edges of the “Jai Sri Ram” that resonated throughout a different Ayodhya 30 years ago.

At one time in the early-Noughties, I feared that Ayodhya had become a turning point in history when history refused to turn. Now I am not so sure. The Ram temple may yet end up as a symbol of an India that had finally secured its sovereignty and nationhood. It could be India’s breakthrough moment, a time when—to use one of Jaswant Singh’s most evocative expres­sions—the Hindu finally had cement poured down his spine.

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