Clueless in Dharmanagri

Alienated Muslims seek refuge in conspiracy theories, while aimless Hindu youth look up to Ramlalla, the deity BJP owes its rise to

It’s two in the afternoon in this town, as dust laden as any other in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Or perhaps more. The disputed site, once the eye of a Hindu nationalist storm, has people streaming in for a darshan of the idol of Ramlalla, Baby Ram. The ritual obeisance has just resumed after a break of a few hours. Walking past sleepy, pot-bellied men lazing in the shade, a serpentine queue of curious people await their turn. It’s a typical pilgrim crowd in many ways. There are men with noisy children in their arms, and women, their cracked heels glistening from behind their sandals, more concerned about salvaging ladoos from the prowling monkeys, it appears.

This is not just another pilgrimage spot, though. On both ends, before the devotees enter the small path leading up to the idol, surrounded by wire-mesh on all sides, there are stalls selling religious paraphernalia. There are posters which look more like that of Rambo than Ram, copies of Ramcharitmanas, VCDs of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan, and a locally-produced video of the events of 6 December, 1992, the day thousands of Kar Sewaks brought down the Babri Masjid tridome structure that once stood here.

Today, it’s a high-security zone, wire-fenced and guarded with heavy arms. This is one site for which the State’s security expenses are believed to be Rs 33 crore every year. At every step, paramilitary soldiers keep a close watch on visitors. Most of them are from the Hindi heartland. Pandey, Mishra, Yadav. These are the typical surnames. They’ve been there for months now. And yet, as you pass them, you pick up words from their conversation—Babar, Rath Yatra, Kar Sewaks.

It’s 1992 redux. In Ayodhya, the Ram Mandir, or Babri Masjid, depending on your point of view, overwhelms you. There is no escape from either.

A few hundred yards from the site, Haji Mehboob has lived through that feeling and more. Quite a bit more. On the day that Babri Masjid was brought down, he was under siege in his house along with some 200 fellow Muslims. “There was not an inch of space left in the hall where we had fortified ourselves,” he recalls. He survived, a hardened man. And so did everybody hiding with him, hardened too by the experience. He survived to fight back, he says, claiming a role in the violent clashes that followed in Ayodhya (self-defence is his justification).

Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, a prominent leader of the temple movement, also remembers the day vividly. Haji’s men, he alleges, had attacked a procession of Kar Sewaks with crude bombs. “That is what triggered off the violence,” in Gopal Das’s view. “But no matter what, we will build the temple,” he adds, with a certain air of determination that seems to envelop large parts of the town till this day, long after the issue has slid off public consciousness in other parts of India.

By the record, it was a year or two after the Uprising of 1857 that the Ayodhya issue caused its first stir, when a European writer made a claim that an ancient Ram temple lay buried under the mosque. But it was after Indian Independence in 1947 that the agitation began to take the shape that is familiar now. As it turns out, Haji’s father Mohammed Pheku was one of the initial petitioners of a case filed in 1949 when a Ram idol was sneaked overnight into the mosque.

That’s when its gates were locked on court orders, pending resolution of the dispute, only to be reopened nearly 40 years later for a shilanyas, ritual consecration, by the Rajiv Gandhi government. Today, Haji continues his father’s work. It’s a matter of filial duty for him, but exercising temperance in language is not his forte. “These Hindu leaders, they are all scared of me,” goes his bluster. He speaks for himself.

The actual balance of fear in Ayodhya, deeply divided as it remains, is not hard to guess. Back on that fateful day, it was ordinary Muslims oblivious of their complicity in the dispute who had to cower as Kar Sewaks wreaked horror upon horror on them.

Outside his saw mill, Mohammed Shaheen’s father and uncle were burnt to death. He was 19. Today, at his furniture shed, Shaheen does not want to talk about that day. “See, we are clear that we have to live in this country as second-class citizens. Once you realise that, there is no problem,” says a man at the shed who does not want to be identified. “You think Karkare was killed by Kasab?” asks another, referring to the head of Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad who was shot dead in Mumbai on 26 November 2008. The police officer was assassinated by “Hindu forces, those behind the Malegaon blasts”, he declares without a flicker of doubt.

In the Ayodhya air, conspiracy theories threaten to suffocate the truth in several other ways as well. The record of the number of people killed on 6 December 1992 is also one big smudge. The numbers range from 11 to 60, though 14 actually died. There is a theory for everything, be it the Parliament attack of 2001, Ayodhya terrorist attack of 2005 or the Batla House encounter in Delhi and Kasab’s arrest in Mumbai. It’s all one big set-up, some of Ayodhya’s furniture makers would have you think.

The focus, however, always comes back to the 1992 demolition. Hashim Ansari, an 88-year-old tailor, is one of the plaintiffs in the case. He was arrested for the first time during the 1949 agitation. Now, he blames Muslim leadership more than saffron forces for the alleged abandonment of minorities by the State.

“They are Muslims within the confines of their rooms,” says Ansari, “but in Parliament they become something else.” His sense of alienation, however, does not stop him from playing Holi with local Hindus, an act that draws Haji Mehboob’s disapproval (“It’s haraam in Islam,” he claims, “What kind of leader is he?”)

On the main road that runs like an artery through Ayodhya, Tulsi Ram Pandey looks for potential pilgrims who might need his services as a guide. The son of a kathavachak (religious story-teller) who had to quit formal education after high school, Pandey earns a few hundred rupees on a good day. The first place he takes any pilgrim is Karsewakpuram, where intricately carved pillars for the proposed Ram temple are on display. “It’s just a matter of time before these pillars become part of the temple,” he says, his Ramlalla devotion evident in his confidence.

By coincidence, on the day of our Ayodhya visit, a saffron campaign vehicle (‘off balance sheet’, as it were, in accountancy jargon) has concluded a tour of UP and Bihar to garner support for the temple. On a special dais erected within the precincts of a temple on the outskirts of Ayodhya, the campaign’s patron saints make their speeches. Members of the Bajrang Dal, which is part of the Sangh Parivar, mark their presence in their trademark saffron bandannas. They’re almost all young, in the 20s. The senior troopers wear dark glasses and chew betelnut in grim quietude.

Rajesh Kumar, who is hanging around the place, has been with the Bajrang Dal for three years. Why? “Because Hindus have to seek permission for even taking out a religious procession in their own country,” he replies. But doesn’t everyone else have to as well? He looks confused for a moment. “Please ask my seniors,” he mumbles, at length, “You see, I am new in the party.”

Does he have a girlfriend? We ask. He looks around to make sure his partymen are not in earshot. And then he lets out a shy laugh: “Who doesn’t have a girlfriend at my age?” Rajesh Kumar is 20. With some more maturity over the years, perhaps other wisdom will dawn too.

AyodhyaculturereligionUttar Pradesh