Ashok Singhal, chief of the VHP, is not the one to dissimulate or finesse, you can call him a bigot and hate his hates but he is frank about it and does not hide his real intentions. He said before the demolition of the Babari Masjid that it must be brought down and he worked to the objective with a singleness of purpose worthy of a better cause.
He refused Advani's curious offer to Muslims to persuade the VHP and the Bajrang Dal to leave the Kashi and Mathura mosques alone if Muslims would agree to the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Singhal wanted all three. After the demolition he has taken the position that the Ram temple must be built on the spot desecrated by acts of vandalism and sacrilege, attended by duplicity, cunning and false affidavits to superior courts of justice on the part of others including chief minister Kalyan Singh ... While Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is assuring Parliament that the Government will wait for the verdict of the Supreme Court, Singhal is saying to a TV channel that he and his organisation are "unhappy over delay in the Supreme Court verdict on the disputed site". He adds ominously that he cannot say, "when people will run out of patience". You will recall that he justified the demolition of the Babari Masjid on the ground that people had lost patience. Here is a brand new extension to doctrine of the rule of law. It will be respected so long as courts do not take too much time to agree with Ashok Singhal! ... We have Singhal's word that fabrication has been going on for eight years and that it was meant for the Ayodhya temple ...
... To say that the act of prefabricating a temple on open land is not an offence in on a par with the hypothesis that men loitering about a lamppost at dead of night armed with lathis are not in danger of breaking the law. If the men are waiting for the victim to emerge they can be dispersed; Singhal determined to build the temple on the site of the Masjid and under a hoarding advertising the fact, should have been prevented. He was not ...
Be that as it may, the fact that Gujral's government did nothing does not mean that doing nothing is the proper and only response ...
Before he opened his mount ... Ashok Singhal went to see the home minister. Did Advani tell him that the law will take the same course as it has not been allowed to take all these years? Has Advani emboldened VHP? Are we to be driven to the conclusion that the former finance minister, P. Chidambaram has a point when he accuses the Government of speaking with a forked tongue?
The Sangh Parivar are obviously at it again. There is the threat that the vulgarity of the demolition of the Babari Masjid will be compounded by the erection of the Ram temple ... knowing that it is not a matter of law but of public policy. Who has a right to the land, what was there on the spot earlier, was it a mosque or a mere "structure" and other irrelevant arguments are not legal submissions. They are matters of moment to determine whether India will continue to be the nation we are, a democracy with a proud tradition of tolerance and freedom, a refuge for persecuted mankind without, restriction of caste, community, or creed, the land of the Mahatma where humanity and humanism are honoured above all else, or whether we are no better than others in our region.
Answer this question, Prime Minister and answer it before it is too late.
(Source: The Indian Currents, 22-28 June, 1998)