Will we witness another saffron surge to prop up the somewhat sagging prospects of the (BJP) in the next Assembly elections? Perhaps. For the Ayodhya issue has proved to be enormously handy for the Sangh Parivar. Each time the parliamentary wing of the Parivar has faced a crisis, the issue has been pulled out of the closet, dusted, given a new coat of paint, and brandished anew for consumption by the body politic.
That every time the Ayodhya issue has been brought up for public attention the country has witnessed immense bloodshed, communal hatred, scarred geographies, scarred histories, and scarred psyches, does not seem to matter to the leaderships propelled solely by raw, unmediated passions to retain power. That every time the Sangh Parivar mentions Ayodhya, the chords that hold the body politic together tighten under stress and anxiety is of no cousequence to people parading politics in the garb of religion. The spectacle of vioiated and burnt corpses, destroyed and arid spaces, wrecks of communities that had learnt to live, laugh and love together, is no cause for concern when it comes to electoral gains. Expectedly, the history of India since the mid-1980s, when the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation was initiated, has been marked by animosity, avarice and cynical abuse of the religious diom. An entire generation has grown up in an atmosphere where mandirs and masjids have become synonymous with politics. And the invocation of Ayodhya has led to one tragedy after another.
For instance, in 1989, the Sangh Parivar, intent on subjecting Indian politics to political theatricals, began to collect and consecrate bricks - the Ram Shilas to lay the foundation of the Ram Janamsthan Mandir in Ayodhya ... Conversely, earth dug up in Ayodhya was redistributed to different parts of India in a heroic effort to unite all Hindus in nationhood. As the VHP was allowed by the Congress(I) government at the Centre to lay the foundation stone of the Ram Mandir, the first stone of the new Hindu Rashtra was laid.
The Shilanyas marked a successful and a decisive breakthrough in the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, representing the high point of politics as theatre, replete with symbolism and suffused with ritualism. Almost 200,000 villages sent bricks, 300,000 pujas of the Ram Shilas were performed and altogether about 100 million people attended the various processions that carried the bricks to and from Ayodhya. Even as this was happening, mahayagnas and meetings brimming over with provocative oratory and hateful propaganda assiduously nurtured a communalised atmosphere. Ritualised symbolism was to leave a trail of riots, bloodshed, mayhem, intensification of tensions and hostility, fractured communities and dismembered unities, all of which traumatised the nation ...
The close co-relation among the routes of Ram Shila Puja, the communal violence of September-October, 1989 and the electoral gains made by the BJP in the 1989 elections is clear. Analysts estimate that out of the 88 constituencies where the BJP won in the 198 9 elections, 47 were in areas that had seen wide-scale rioting – in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh ...
As the news spread of the demolition of the Babari mosque on December 6, 1992, a new phase of murderous Hindu-Muslim riots accompanied by police firing in six States began. The worst incidents took place in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Banaras and Jaipur. The spill -over of these riots was experienced in Pakistan, Bangladesh, even in the United Kingdom. Mumbai witnessed two spells of rioting from December 6 to 12, 1992, and then from January 7 to 16, 1993 ... By far the largest number of victims were Muslims. And investigations revealed that the police were active participants when it came to shooting Muslims, a fact accepted by the Police Commissioner of Mumbai, S.K. Bapat.
These two flash points of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement raised, and continue to raise, important questions of and for the future of democracy in India, and for the relationship between its people. At stake is India's claim that it is a tolerant nation, with a proud heritage of its people living together in some degree of harmony. For the movement has cast a long shadow over the very idea that people of different persuasions can live together in a geographically bounded area in some degree of amity ...
... The 1980s, which witnessed separatist movements in major parts of the country and which saw the utilisation of the religious idiom by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and later by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, provided a fertile ground for the open communalisation of Indian politics.
The 1980s, in effect, saw the final dissolution of the secular spirit that had been carefully drafted and institutionalised by the first generation of leaders in India, and its replacement by the idioms, the grammar and the symbolism and oratory of religious identification. The increased visibility of saffron-clad sadhus in politics, the shrill provocation in the rhetoric of sadhvis including Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Rithambara, and open calls for the establishment of a Hindu state organised around the liberation of the sacred site at Ayodhya, became commonplace.
- The "liberation" of Ayodhya formed the dominant metaphor in a cluster of ideological formulations that challenged practically each one of the accepted themes that went under the heading of secularism – minority rights, freedom of religion and equal citizenship. All these themes were dismissed as 'pampering the minorities', 'pseudo-secularism', 'cultural nationalism', the building of a strong 'Hindu Rashtra', and 'regenerating the Hindu spirit'. Ayodhya was transformed into a metaphor for the impoverished spirit of Hindus who could not recover their sacred spaces, for the illegitimacy of minority entitlements, a historical allegory for Muslim invasions, and a spatial one for the construction of the space of a Hindu nation. The power of this metaphor was so great that events moved rapidly from the mid-1980s onwards.
In 1984, the first Dharma Sansad demanded the liberation of Ayodhya. In the same year, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti, formed under the leadership of Mahant Avaidyanath, launched the tala kholo agitation. The year 1985 saw a series of processions - the Ram Janaki Raths from 25 places in northern India to Ayodhya.
In 1985, the VHP, which had been active since 1982- 83 with the Ekmata Yatra in southern India, filed a writ petition demanding a re-opening of the 'disputed structure' for worship by Hindus. The VHP simultaneously restructured and strengthened its organisation. In 1984, the Bajrang Dal had been formed as the militant youth wing of the VHP, with the stated intention of recruiting young and underemployed men for militant action for the establishment of a Hindu nation, and for the "liberation" of the Ram temple. By the late 1980s, the Bajrang Dal had a membership of 100,000 people in northern India. By the late 1980s, the VHP also started the Durga Vahini for young women.
Internationally the VHP organised a series of conferences to appeal to the Hindu diaspora. The success of this strategy was all too obvious during the Shilanyas when Hindus abroad sent huge funds and bricks for the Ram Shilas programmes.
The campaign yielded results, for in February 1986, a District and Sessions Judge, K.M Pandey, ordered that the doors of the Babari Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi be opened ... The Uttar Pradesh government was ordered to allow puja within the mosque. Neither Central government nor the State government reversed the decision.
... The VHP organised Shri Ram Maha Yagna from October 11, 1998 ... But matters had by then gone out of hand. The Ram Janmabhoomi became a symbol of resurgent nationhood, the concrete spatial indication of the new Hindu nation, and the icon of militant Hindu nationalism intent on recovering its patrimony. The year 1990 w as a historic one. Even as the country, the Hindu community in particular, was rent by the politics of Mandalisation, L.K. Advani launched his Rath Yatra from Somnath. Traversing 10,000 km, the Rath Yatra evoked muscular emotions ... On October 30, members of the Sangh Parivar stormed the mosque and planted a flag. Fifty people died in police firing.
The year 1991 saw an intensified campaign even as the BJP drew a large number of members from the VHP as its candidates for the elections. The election campaign was marked by the domination of the Dharma Sansad. The presence of trishul-wielding sadhus at meetings was a common feature. The 1991 election campaign was violent but the BJP became the second Iargest party in Parliament with 119 seats, expanding its vote share from 11.4 per cent in 1989 to 19.9 per cent in 1991. The rest is history – the demolition of the mosque and the transformation of theBJP into a party of government leading a coalition at the Centre following the 1998 and 1999 elections.
It is true that after the demolition of the mosque the BJP has not been able to reap the kinds of gains it wants out of the intense, communally oriented, campaigns that its affiliates have launched for the building of the Ram temple. It is true that under the compulsions of coalition politics it has had to set aside the Ram Mandir issue. But it is equally true that the Sangh Parivar has achieved perhaps a more durable victory - that of institutionalising and legitimising the discourse of majoritarianism in civil society, which carries one message. That message is that the rightful inheritor of the nation is the majority community and that it will recover its patrimony through coercion if necessary ... Theproject of Hindutva is to divide the polity. Temples meant for worship now provide cynical, amoral politics with a repertoire of strategies, which enable them to pursue their own cause. The name of Shri Ram: Maryada Purshottom, the epitome of right thinking and right action, relentless warrior in the cause of justice, inspires devotion and piety in the hearts of Hindus. (Nor) the invocation of the name by the Sangh Parivar equally inspires frenzy on the one hand and fear on the other. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of Ayodhya. (Source: The Frontline, 7 July, 2000)
Stop Ram Rath Yatra in Rajasthan
Shahabuddin Rajasthan CM, 11 July, 2000
As you know, the VHP has planned to organise a Ram Rath Yatra in October-November, 2000, from Jaipur to Ayodhya via Agra, Kanpur and Lucknow, with a model of the proposed Ram Janambhoomi Mandir and a marble statue of Shri Ram Chandraji. The purpose is not religious but absolutely political to mobilise the 'Hindu' votes for the coming Assembly election in UP scheduled for April, 2001.
All the Yatra organised by the VHP in connection. with the Babari Masjid Question - Ekatmata Yatra, the Shila Yatra, the Advani Rath Yatra have all led to tension, violence and bloodshed. And have gained votes for the BJP at the cost of communal harmony.
Moreover, the proposed Yatra is directly connected with the VHP's publicly announced unlawful object of generating support for its project of constructing the proposed Mandir on the Babari Masjid site at a time of its choice in defiance of the Supreme Court Order.
It is obvious that the BJP-led Government in UP will extend full support to the proposed Yatra, once it crosses into that State. So if the trouble is to be nipped in the bud, your Government has to act boldly and stop the Yatra in its very first lap from Jaipur to the UP- Rajasthan border, in the interest of public order and social harmony.
As you know, Advani's Rath Yatra was stopped by Laloo Prasad Yadav, the Chief Minister of Bihar.
