THE Sankaracharya of Kanchi has unnecessarily complicated the Ayodhya issue by modifying his original formula. Had the eminent Hindu seer confined his well-meaning efforts to the original formula, requesting the Muslim community not to object to building a temple on the undisputed site, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) would have been under tremendous pressure to accommodate him.

Of course, the supreme court’s permission would have been necessary, for it had disallowed any structure to come up on that land. But I have a feeling that the permission would have come if both parties had made a joint request to the court.

The Sankaracharya’s original formula went to the extent of building a wall to separate the disputed area from the undisputed one so as to allay the misgivings of the Muslim community.

He also gave the assurance that the disputed site could be “discussed at a later stage.” There was no confusion. The AIMPLB would have been hard put to reject the formula because the concession sought was on the undisputed site.

Many men of goodwill, who were working behind the scenes, were at pains to convince the AIMPLB that the Sankaracharya’s formula was a good opening to hold discussions on the entire gamut of Muslim religious places which were often threatened by the fundamentalist fringe among the Hindus. Most of the 51 Board members saw the point but before they could meet they received from the Sankaracharya another formula which made everything go haywire.

I have not been able to comprehend why he changed his original formula. The pressure of the RSS and its militant wing, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), was there for all to see. Their statements were pernicious, to put it mildly. Still something else must have happened. Too many central ministers flew to Chennai to meet him after he sent the first formula and before he modified it. So it would be safe to guess that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

The second formula straightaway asks for “donation of the disputed site.” It does not mention anything about the “undisputed land.” It was not required: once there was an agreement on the disputed portion, the rest would automatically follow.

Without trying to ascribe any motive to the Sankaracharya, let me analyse the modified formula. It suggests that the Muslim community should “donate” the site where the Babri masjid once stood.

Strangely, on the one hand, the formula contains a request for donating the disputed land and, on the other, it warns the Muslims “to be mentally prepared” to hand over the Kashi and Mathura mosques. But a mere declaration by the Sankaracharya that the mosques “belong to the Hindus” is no sanction to their ownership.

They are mosques which have been sharing the same walls or premises with the Hindu temples for centuries. Those were good times when the worshipping places of different communities stood side by side, underlining society’s ethos, pluralism. Whether it is the mosque at Kashi or Mathura or the one demolished at Ayodhya, all represented India’s composite culture going back to thousands of years.

It is difficult for the RSS and the VHP to comprehend, much less appreciate, this ethos. It was fashioned by the fire of the struggle for independence. The Sangh parivar was nowhere near the national movement. Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, thousands of people and leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Sardar Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad sacrificed everything and spent years in jail to uphold the ethos. Their eyes were fixed on the India of their dreams: a secular and democratic India after independence.

By dividing the nation into Hindus and Muslims, the RSS and the VHP are only plugging their communal line: the Hindu Rashtra. It is apparent that elections are uppermost in their mind. They are not interested in resolving the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri masjid dispute but only in scheming to get more votes. They have not yet decided when to play the religious card to further saffronize society. But there is no doubt that they will do so. They should, however, remember that the demolition of the Babri masjid brought them defeat at the polls in UP, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. The voters then saw through their game. There is no reason why they will not do so this time.

The Sankaracharya is right when he says in his modified formula that a small temple of Ram is already functioning at the disputed site. But it was a forcible construction after the centre took over the UP administration on December 6, 1992. I recall that when I inquired about the construction from Narasimha Rao, the then prime minister, he said that the temple would not be there “for long.” Eleven years have gone by, the temple is very much there.

Still the Muslim community, which seems resigned to a court verdict, can probably be brought round. But this cannot be a one-sided settlement. Those who claim to represent the Hindu society should be prepared to give a constitutional guarantee through parliament that all the religious places of Muslims, including the mosques at Mathura and Varanasi, would stay intact, as they were at the time of independence on August 15, 1947.

There is already a law to this effect; only a constitutional edge has to be given to it. Once such a guarantee is in place, the Muslim community may be persuaded to forego its right on the Babri masjid site or donate it. The reaction of the RSS and the VHP is bound to be hostile. They have said that there can be no compromise on the mosques at Mathura and Kashi.

The VHP leaders have indulged in their usual sabre-rattling rhetoric: “The Muslim leadership had once again proved its loyalty to Islamic invaders...” How would the Muslim community interpret it when the VHP is a member of the Sangh parivar leading the government in Delhi?

In the meanwhile, more and more facts about the demolition at Ayodhya are coming to light. In the current hearings before the one-man Liberhan commission, the government of India’s counsel has put the blame on Kalyan Singh who was the then UP chief minister for the masjid’s demolition. But Kalyan Singh has refuted the allegation. His contention is that L. K. Advani, the deputy prime minister who is also in charge of the home ministry, and the RSS leaders had hatched “a deep conspiracy to destroy the mosque.” He said, “Their leaders had not only kept me in the dark but also betrayed me.” This remark has obviously rankled the RSS. Kalyan Singh too has earned the title of “pseudo-secularist,” the parivar’s way of labelling their critics.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is under Advani’s own department, the home ministry, has charged him before a special court for delivering inflammatory speeches and instigating the Kar Sevaks (volunteers) to demolish the Babri masjid. While I admire Advani for not trying to influence the CBI in any way, I think he should have offered to resign.

This is what values are all about.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.