BABARI MASJID
Babari Masjid continues to cast a long, menacing shadow over Indian polity. A group of eminent intellectuals have called upon the nation not to forget December 6, 1992. In their opinion it represents a danger against which the nation must remain vigilant" Unfortunately, it has been remembered more by competing communalists who celebrated it as "Swabhiman Diwas" or "Black Day". The non-communal political parties have used it to abuse their rivals rather than for assertion of secularism and democracy so vitally necessary for India's survival as a nation.
The demolition was patently a criminal act, it being a blatant, shame-faced, defiant violation of the highest court in the land. No less a person than Vice President K.R. Narayanan had described it as the second great tragedy after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. As such it should have been expected to produce the effect that the earlier crime did. The mindset behind these tragedies should have become a pariah after December 6, 1992 as happened after that black evening of January 30, 1948. If it has not happened it is cause enough for anxious soul-searching.
Why is it that after some hesitant expression of remorse the perpetrators of the crime feel emboldened to flaunt it as a matter of national pride and as a first step towards creating a Hindu Rashtra of their dreams? Why do organized groups like VHP still feel tempted to whip up similar controversies and mock the statute book carrying the Places of Religious Worship (Protection) Act? Why does the nation not treat audacious defiance and mockery of law and Constitution as a challenge to its very being? Where have we gone wrong that the nation's sensitivity is so blunted that there is upsurge of outraged reaction.
The pathetic competition is breast-beating over injustice to the Muslim community was seized upon by the BJP and its associate organizations to unfurl the anti- appeasement flag. All criticism of its defiance of law and Constitution was fended off as an exercise to attract Muslim vote bank. Holding the Congress Prime Minister equally guilty proved to be the best escape root for the BJP. The Congress campaigners developed a complex that strong attack on BJP, RSS or VHP might make the appeasement charge stick and cost them Hindu votes.
The appeasement complex that paralyzed the Congress has affected the non-Congress parties also. The BSP leaders made snide remarks against Muslims. Mulayam Singh Yadav felt constrained to declare himself a devout Sanatanist Hindu. NTR in Andhra projected his celluloid Krishna image. From the Janata Dal rhetoric the Babari Masjid was missing. Only the Muslim leaders of all parties were left to bemoan it and they too continued to talk about it as attack on the community rather than on the nation itself.
The comparative silence over the Babari issue on political platforms is driving the Muslim community into its own shell. The politicians in the community, finding no purchase for the Babari issue, have started airing other grievances, some real some imaginary. Advocates of withdrawal from politics have once again got voice, hurling plague on all the political formations. Jinnah's advocacy of separatism is becoming respectable with exhortative expressions like "tyranny of numbers". While a small section is advocating reconciliation to living with a Hindu Rashtra a noticeably large section is expressing doubts about genuineness of secularism. No serious thinking can be observed about evolving a strategy to defend and strengthen secularism. It is a dreadful scenario underlining Bal Thackeray's gloomy predication about impending civil war.
High time for all secular parties to take a second look at their strategies.
The most important question in this context is: should the perpetrator of a crime be treated as guilty as the one who remained helpless spectator to the crime? To raise this question is not to exonerate Mr. Narasimha Rao. He certainly is guilty because he failed first to ensure strict observance of the Court's order and then to prevent the setting up of a make-shift temple at the controversial site. But then would it be fair to treat his guilt at par with that of those who whipped up the frenzy that manifested in the crime.
Rao baiting is no answer to the questions posed by the demolition of Babari Masjid, particularly because to the making of this tragedy most of the leading lights of contemporary politics have contributed in one way or the other.
The tragedy was the result of failure to evolve at united national strategy against the Sangh strategy to use the Babari issue for communal polarization. Even on December 6, 1992 if the non-Congress and anti-Rao parties and individuals had not waited to see Rao's discomfiture the misfortune that fell could be averted.
Proper approach to the daunting challenge event today is to avoid the temptation for one-upmanship and build a united approach on the communal question. Otherwise, the nation may go beyond the precipice.
(Source: The Secular Democracy, December, 1995)
Khushwant Singh on Advani, the Mosque-Breaker
Advani, more than anyone else, organized the rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya and brought together the destructive forces of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal to demolish the Babari Masjid.
He is far too intelligent not to have known that the mosque was not 'an old dilapidated disputed structure" as he described it, but had become the symbol of Indian secularism, and that encouraging its demolition would bring in its wake destruction of scores of Hindu and Sikh temples scattered over the world. He has much to answer for the spilling of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh blood following the Ayodhya vandalism. But he has no regrets. Such men are dangerous.
(Source: The Sunday Observer, 10 October, 1995)
