BABRI MASJID DEMOLITION AND NATION BUILDING.
Subramanian
Swamy
On
December 6, 1992, a super structure called the Babri Masjid standing in the
city of Ayodhya, came crashing down. It remains even today a traumatic event
for the nation, because modern Indians have not yet been weaned on a true
history of India, and hence a large section of our educated class still view
the destruction of the structure as criminal vandalism.
If
it was not, then what was it? It was a superstructure built on an existing
temple, and to have demolished the temple to build a mosque was the real act of
vandalism.
Two
years earlier before the demolition, by a coincidence, on the same month and
day, I had met representatives of the VHP and BJP at a house, next door to mine,
on Mathura Road. The newly sworn in Prime Minister Mr. Chandrashekhar had asked
me [I was then his newly sworn in senior most Cabinet Minister] that as the new
Union Law& Justice Minister, I should talk to them about withdrawing their
proposed massive nation-wide stir slated to begin on December 9, 1991 for
building a Ram temple at the site the super-structure had then stood in its
gloomy glory. He told me to assure the VHP that our government would get
removed the Babri Masjid with the consent of Muslim leaders through
discussions.
The
VHP and BJP leaders I met readily agreed to call off the stir since we were a
new government, while the stir decision was taken when V.P. Singh was PM.
Thereafter
in January 1991 talks began initiated by Chandrashekhar himself with the Muslim
leaders. Unfortunately, despite the zig-zag progress in the talks, our
government did not last long enough to fructify it.
Had
instead the government lasted for a year more, I am confident we would have
amicably liberated the Ranjanmabhoomi for building a befitting Ram temple, and
with the consent of the Muslim community, even though the Government was in the
minority in the Parliament.
From
my personal experience as a Minister in a minority government, I can therefore say
that lack of majority is no excuse for implementing any agenda, if the
leadership had the mindset to get things done.
As
a Minister of Law &Justice, for instance, I got the controversial Sessions
Judge of Faizabad, K.M. Pandey a High Court judge, despite the fact that the
previous V.P. Singh's “three-legged” government had issued orders on file that since Pandey had directed the locks on
the so-called Babri Masjid be removed in
1986, he should never be made a High Court judge.
Mulayam
Singh was our Chief Minister of UP,
but with firmness I however got his protests sufficiently moderated to his
permit me to go ahead. He cooperated because he knew I would do it anyway--
make Pandey a judge of the High Court—and hence he acquiesced since he wanted
other things done for him by me,.
The
same clarity enabled the Chandrashekhar government to get Saifuddin Soz's
kidnapped daughter freed without releasing any dreaded terrorists. There are methods
for doing that—mostly based on retaliation. In each case it is the mindset of
those elected to high office that matters, not the size of the parliamentary
majority or lack of it.
It was this mindset that enabled the
Chandrashekhar government to nearly solve by an agreement the question of building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. The government
however fell before it could be clinched.
But
could the Babri Masjid have been demolished in a more legally authorized way? Hindus
should not be defensive in the face of an onslaught by the fashionable
secularists about removing mosques built on where temples had once stood,
because the Supreme Court has held in the Faruqui vs. Union of India case
[(1994)6 SCC360], that a masjid is not an essential part of Islamic theology,
and these can and have been be demolished for public good.
Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan, and even in British undivided India, masjids have demolished mosques
to build roads. Saudi Arabia even demolished the Bilal Masjid in Mecca where
Prophet Muhammed used to read namaz.
Masjid,
like Churches are not religious places in the sense a temple is. Masjids and Churches are places for worship, i.e., buildings which serve
as facilitation centres for namaz and prayer. Namaz can be read anywhere even
on a railway platform. In USA, VHP buys disused Churches and converts them into
temples, and yet no Christian there objects.
But
temples, once it is shown that prana prathista puja was performed to build it,
is where God or deity resides, and belongs to God forever. As Union Law&Justice Minister in 1991 I
got our government legal team to prove this to the satisfaction of the House of
Lords in Britain, to bring back a Nataraja statue taken from a disused
Thanjavur temple. It was at Rajiv Gandhi’s request I took interest in the case!
Of
course, because of this fact about masjids and churches, no one in a democracy
can take law into his own hands to demolish these masjids and churches. Nor
will the Hindu public wait forever.
But
on the other hand, a Government can remove in a legal and orderly way the
masjids in Ayodhya, Kashi, and Brindavan, in fact in 300 other places, to rebuild the
original temples under law. We can get Muslims cooperation in this. I am
confident of this.
Babri
Masjid was built as an affront to Hindus. Otherwise it could have been built
anywhere else since namaz can be offered anywhere. Hindus have however
prevailed because despite 800 years of Islamic and 200 years of Christian
domination, Bharat today is still over 80% of Hindus in population, and a
continuing Hindu civilization. Hence, now we must resolve to rectify what is
essential to rectify and reclaim. For that restoration of three holy sites, in
Ayodhya, Vrindavan, and Kashi. For these three, we patriotic politicians must
resolve: Come our way or go the highway.
But
it is easier said than done to expect that politicians would do or die for it. As
our rudderless democracy has drifted, we are today in a "match-fixing
mode" even in electoral
contests. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK
and AIADMK are bitter enemies,
but in most crucial
constituencies, a match-fixing arrangements for money have been worked out for decades between Sasikala of the AIADMK
and Arcot Veerasamy of the DMK, who are alter egos of their respective top
leaders, and determined to keep out the Hindutva forces from Tamil Nadu.
The same match-fixing disease has spread to other parties
nation-wide. We have to cure it
before it completely debilitates and destroys our democracy as it has done in Banana
Republics of Latin American countries such as Colombia and Peru.
The
reluctance today to confront and expose the anti-Hindu personages in
Parliament, Academia and Media because of this disease of
"match-fixing". It is said that such attacks would be “personal” and “counter
productive”.
There
is however nothing "personal" in such directed and organized attacks.
Just as the world focused on Hitler or Mussolini, without thinking of it being
personal, therefore we should identify and expose especially the person who today
has emerged as the fountain head of the anti-Hindutva campaign today.
But
we cannot prevail in this struggle, if we have in our midst those suffering
from the "Arjuna virus" as-the late Swami Chinmayananda once pointed
out, referring to Arjuna's initially declining to fight at Kurukshetra because he could recognize his duty in the hour of
crisis. Babri Masjid legacy is that virus we still have to cure twenty years
later.
