"Shri K.L. Sharma in his letter of 2 December, 1990 to the Prime Minister has urged him to accept Mahatma Gandhi's Formula to resolve the Ram Janambhoomi-Babari Masjid dispute.
Shri Sharma has quoted an 'article' by the Mahatma said to have been published in Harijan Sevak of 27 July, 1937. Such an article does not exist. The entire quotation is a blatant forgery.
The correct position was indicated by Jivanji Desai in Harijan Sevak of 11.6.51.
Mr. Sharma has subsequently quoted Gandhi's reply to a question in the Young India of 5.2.25. Once again he puts into the mouth of the Mahatma what he never said. Gandhiji counsels legal action to retrieve unlawfully occupied property after the owner has failed to defend it. That is precisely the course which the Babari Masjid Movement has adopted and which the VHP and BJP have rejected.
The Mahatma was totally opposed to forcible seizures or restorations. Indeed such blatant falsifications constitute a crime against the Nation. Even to impute such revanchist views to Mahatma Gandhi is an insult to his memory.
This is not the first time that the RSS-VHP-BJP have resorted to forgeries or to misquotations with significant omissions to support their cases against Babari Masjid. Their earlier efforts include 'Babar's firman' in the Modern Review, Calcutta, quotations for Abul Fazal's 'Diwan-e-Akbari' (they meant 'Ain-e-Akbari'), 'Aurangzeb Nama', several District Gazetteers, 'Hindustan Muslim And Men', a book with a foreword by Maulana S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi. BJP carries on its campaign of falsehood sometimes in a more subtle manner.
The BJP President Advani never tires of designating interlocutory orders as 'judgements' while refusing to accept the judgement of the Court. He invents also a new sequence of events, forgetting that the VHP had launched its 'liberation' campaign in 1983 while the Babari Masjid Movement came into being in February, 1986, after the Babari Masjid was unlocked, but before the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 was enacted.
The BMMCC appeals to the RSS-VHP-BJP to stop its propaganda based on falsehood and distortions and agree to negotiate to resolve the dispute in the true spirit of the Gandhian thought and the Hindu ethos."
GANDHIJI On Regaining Occupied Land
Question: What are we to do when mosques are being put up on our ground without our permission?
Answer: The question of mosques built on another's land without his permission is incredibly simple. If A is in possession of his land and someone comes to build something on it, be it even a mosque, A has the right at the first opportunity of pulling down the structure. Any building of the shape of a mosque is not a mosque. A building to be a mosque must be duly consecrated. A building put up on another's land without his permission is a pure robbery. Robbery cannot be consecrated. If A has not the will or the capacity to destroy the building miscalled mosque, he has the right of going to a law court to have the building pulled down. So long as I own property I must defend it whether by the force of law-courts or by the force of my own strong arms. The act is in essence the same When a robber comes to take away A's property he can deliver the property to him, if he recognizes in him a blood brother. If he does not feel like one but dreads the robber and would wish that someone was near to knock him down, he must try to knock him down and take the consequence. If he has the desire but not the ability to fight the robber, he must allow himself to be robbed and then call in the assistance of law-courts to regain the lost property. In both the cases he has as good a chance of losing his property as of regaining it.
(Source: Young India, 5-2-1925)