The demolition of the Babri Masjid was the result of bigotry. — File Photo

The Babri Masjid issue has been a source of worry for several years — first with the controversy over whether the Ram temple stood there once and then in the aftermath of the mosque’s demolition in December 1992 by Hindu extremists.

This was a blow to secularism which India claims as its ethos. There were widespread riots in December 1992 and January 1993. Elements hailing from the Muslim community took their revenge in the form of the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

The Justice Liberhan Commission which has taken 17 years to submit a report has at least put the judicial seal on the issue. The report coming rather late in the day has tried to reconstruct the sequence of events. It has revealed the lesser-known fact that it was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which had planned the destruction in Faizabad, some 10 kilometres from Ayodhya, the location of the mosque. It was not an outpouring of frenzy at the spur of the moment. Once the RSS gave the roadmap, the BJP provided the necessary help to the Bajrang Dal, a militant wing of the RSS, to execute the demolition plan to the shame of the Indian nation.

L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and the then UP chief minister, Kalyan Singh, were among the witnesses. Some BJP leaders shed crocodile tears when they discovered that people across the country were angry.

New Delhi dismissed the BJP government in UP. But it is still unexplainable why the Congress government at the centre did not act when a determined group of kar sevaks appeared ready to destroy the mosque. P.V. Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, did nothing to prevent the incident. The Liberhan Commission refers to the lapse but it does not hold Narasimha Rao guilty. This may give an excuse to the ruling Congress to escape responsibility which nevertheless lies on the party to a large extent. True, the extremists struck the first blow, but the centre could have acted long before to ensure that the mosque, the focus of the dispute, would stay intact, particularly when the Supreme Court had ordered that it should.

I recall asking Narasimha Rao how the centre had allowed a small temple to be built on the site overnight after the UP government had been dismissed and central rule imposed. Narasimha Rao explained that central forces were flown from Delhi but could not reach Lucknow because of a fog engulfing the airport. I told him that he did not have to fly in troops because there was already a surfeit of them at Ayodhya and around it. Narasimha Rao had no answer but told me emphatically that the temple would not be there ‘for long’.

That was in December 1992. The temple is still there. Hundreds of pilgrims visit it daily and the government has vast security arrangements to protect it. No political party has ever raised the question of removing it from there. It can be said without contradiction that if the BJP government in UP was responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Congress was responsible for the construction of the temple.

The Muslim psyche is hurt. The Liberhan Commission findings put a balm on the wounds in the sense that it has recommended certain steps which the community expects to be implemented. It does not appear that this will happen.

After all, the government has not taken any action against leaders like Bal Thackeray, although the Justice Srikrishna Commission named him responsible for the Mumbai riots. Some BJP leaders mentioned by the Liberhan Commission for the same reason remain at the forefront of the party.

The Congress initiated no action against those who took the law into their own hands during the emergency (1975-77). In fact, the party punished those who brought the perpetrators to justice. Although people were not killed values and institutions were. Even fundamental rights were suspended and the press gagged.

My worry is that without the awareness of what is right and a desire to act according to what is right, there may be no realisation of what is wrong. Over the years, the dividing line between right and wrong, moral and immoral, has ceased to exist. The crucial tug of conscience, which was once there, has gone.

The Liberhan Commission has provided an opportunity to set things right. The guilty, however high in office or politics, must be punished in accordance with the constitution. Democracy is nothing but the independence of institutions. The demolition of the mosque was a consequence of the bigotry demonstrated by the people in the north at that time. Bigotry still lingers in some places and organisations. The idea of India cannot exist for long without pluralism. The institutions have to rise to the occasion.

Before the demolition when there were efforts to settle the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute peacefully, many proposals were mooted. One of them was that the Babri Masjid and Ram temple should be side by side. If the two communities can agree to this then the Hindus could build the mosque and the Muslims the temple.

My preference is that the site should be left vacant. Just as people go to Hiroshima and weep over the destruction that the atom bomb caused, we should also convert the site into a place of pilgrimage with an inscription which says, ‘Here is the place where our pluralism was murdered on Dec 6, 1992’.
The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.