http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/03/revisiting-babri.html
(Issues in Secular Politics March 2007 II)
This 6th Dec., it will be 15 years when Babri
Mosque was demolished by the RSS combine in
a well coordinated operation. When Babri was
being demolished, it was not just demolition
of a mosque and hurting the sentiments of largest
minority in the country, it was also a blow
to the democratic Indian ethos. It was a complex
process and multiple factors were involved.
Who is to be blamed for the whole episode needs
to be understood in the perspective of the political
factors unleashed by sectarian politics. Rahul
Gandhi recently (March 2007) stated that had
Gandhi family person been around, meaning especially
Rajiv Gandhi; the Masjid could not have been
demolished. It is one of the big ifs of history.
That the then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao aided
the demolition is beyond any shadow of doubt.
Some have gone to the extent of saying that
RSS and Rao were in collusion, some have gone
to the extent of saying that Rao was wearing
Khaki shorts underneath his dhoti, like many
other Congressmen, who are ideologically compromised
and are in Congress mainly to enjoy the fruits
of power. They have nothing whatsoever to do
with the values which were the dominant part
of Congress, the values which had lions share
in leading the struggle for India's independence.
While the political phenomena have their own
logic, the values held by the leaders matter
a lot. And it is here that Rao was aiding the
RSS project of deepening the politics of hate
in India.
Let us recapitulate the events as they unfolded
in the decade of eighties in order to understand
the process of demolition. It was mainly a reflection
of the rising clout of RSS. Beginning with 1980s
one witnessed the discomfort in the sections
of middle class Hindus, who saw the 'disturbing'
change in the form of dalits coming to the fore,
the women coming out from the four walls of
the house and making their presence felt in
the social sphere. Both these sections of society,
living as subordinate and subjugated groups
for centuries saw the possibility of striving
for equality, as enshrined in Indian constitution.
This subtle but sure phenomenon of Indian society
was unacceptable to the entrenched affluent
middle classes. Their discomfort with this change
came up in the form of opposition to reservations
for dalits, Gujarat anti Dalit riots 1981 and
Gujarat Anti OBC/ dalit riots of 1986, being
just a manifestation of the same.
It is during this period that communal polarization
started coming up and the case of Shah Bano
acted as a trigger for consolidation of the
RSS supporters. This time Rajiv Gandhi's lack
of grooming in the deeper understanding in politics,
led him to bypass the court judgment. This in
turn was used as a pretext for polarizing of
Hindu upper middle classes under the leadership
of Sangh combine. This act of Rajiv Gandhi was
?successfully' propagated as appeasement of
minorities and pseudo secularism. These formulations
were lapped up by the dominant middle classes,
who started responding more and more to Yatras
and other VHP initiated campaigns. After playing
this ?Muslim card' the immature Congress leadership
decided to play the Hindu card by yielding to
the pressure of BJP/VHP and company for getting
the locks of Babri opened and later permitting
Shilaynyas for Ram temple. This pressure of
Hindu rightwing was also discernible when Rajiv
launched the campaign for 1989 elections on
the plank of Ram Rajya. These came in handy
to Hindu consolidation, which later got further
boost when V.P. Singh, for his own compulsions,
decided to implement Mandal. To bypass Mandal
BJP resorted to intensify Yatras, identity based
politics. Keeping electoral compulsions in mind,
BJP's politics revolved around Ram Temple as
its central agenda. Incidentally Ram temple
was no where on the agenda of BJP, which was
harping on Gandhian socialism, till then. Its
discovery that Lord Ram can be of great help
in garnering votes led it to put most of its
eggs in the basket of the campaign and conspiracy
to destroy the Babri Mosque.
Ram temple issue became the symbol of assertion
of affluent Hindutva politics in opposition
to the democratic values. Identity, especially
religious one, came up in a big way and waylaid
the real issues of the poor and struggling majority
of Hindus as well as other sections of society.
As Congress, after Nehru's death, had already
been open to heavy compromises on the issue
of secularism, a fertile ground was already
there starting from Indira Gandhi to undermine
the secular values and to merely pay lip service
to secularism, to use Muslims only as vote banks.
It is under these circumstances that Narsimha
Rao could enjoy his siesta when the shovels
and trishuls of RSS combine were piercing Indian
constitution, when Bari was being mauled by
the saffron foot soldiers. These foot soldiers
were indoctrinated by the ideology of Hate Muslim,
Babar as the invader, the Muslims as destroyers
of temples and killers of our mother cow. It
was the most clever and wily move by Brahminical
politics to use the down trodden to hoist the
saffron flag atop Babri and to herald the political
assertion of Manusmriti's values in the garb
of Hindu glory. While the leadership wanting
to impose Hindu Rashtra, ignited and incited,
the sections of poor community acted as the
foot soldiers behaving as if under trance, under
the spell of opium of religious identity.
Coming to the events, National Integration Council
concerned with the events took the promise from
UP chief minister Kalyan Sing of BJP that he
is under constitutional obligation to protect
the mosque. The same Kalyan Singh later called
it as a matter of honor for him to have supervised
the demolition. It is another matter that as
a weather cock he kept changing his versions
from glory to shame, depending on the political
contingencies. He was strategically located
as UP chief minister. State Government was responsible
for supervising law and order.
The RSS combine mobilized crowds, which also
included some of those elements that were specially
trained for the task of demolition. It is unlikely
that the intelligence agencies would have missed
it. Rao played the ideal foil to these designs
and not only during demolition but also prior
to that when the heat was building up, cleverly
slept over the build up for demolition. He had
the ?ideal' home minister in the form of Shakar
Rao Chavan, who had no mean role in aiding the
process of demolition.
While one does concede that probably Rao was
the worst person to be in the seat of power,
one also notes that with the rot in which Congress
had been falling at ideological level, how much
any body else could have been able to protect
the mosque is not clear. Rajiv himself had blundered
on various secular issues all through. Anti
Sikh pogrom in Delhi, opening the doors of Masjid
and Ram Shila pujan, all these showed that irrespective
of his intentions he had no ideological tools
to protect the Babri. One may partly grant Rahul
Gandhi's point, but one must look at the deeper
societal processes and the will of the leadership
to stand for values even at the cost of power.
While currently there are some encouraging signs
from the Congress top leadership on the issue
of secularism, that's not only inadequate, it
can not hold the national together on the grounds
of national community. Even Rahul Gandhi's own
statement betrays the lack of political training
amongst the leadership of Congress in general
and all non BJP parties in particular. While
BJP has the heavy influx of RSS trained volunteers,
the one's trained in the ideology of Hate other,
in the ideology of Hindu nation disguised as
nationalism.
Have the parties like Congress tried to introspect
as to what are the ideas which its cadre is
having? With the current ideological frame of
its workers it cannot be trusted to uphold the
torch of values of Gandhi-Nehru i.e. freedom
movement. As such, Rahul Gandhi's statement
grasps just a minor part of the problem. For
the nation, question is not just of this or
that leader but of the values of Indian Constitution.
It is not just a matter of Rao versus Rajiv,
but of democracy versus Hindu Rashtra. For the
nation the issue is of undertaking political
steps which should wean us away from identity
politics to the issues of people, the issue
between democratic nationalism and pseudo i.e.
Hindu nationalism. The issue relates to address
the concerns related to bread butter, shelter,
employment, health and education and bypassing
the agenda set by RSS, the agenda of temples
and similar emotive campaigns
