The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 was that seminal moment in our national life that inalterably changed the trajectory of our history. From that day on, secular India was up against it.
Even as I write, the Bharatiya Janata Party has swept the “semi-final” assembly polls, winning convincingly in three of the four major states (not including Mizoram, which, like the other northeastern states, is treated as an appendage of the Union. Who cares what happens there!). And our prime minister – the shining star of Hindutva – has triumphed again, crushing all in his wake. His gloating victory speech predicted an inevitable hat-trick of wins for the BJP in 2024 and ended with this Caesar-like brag: “Modi’s (third person, singular) guarantee begins when hopes from everyone’s promises end.” Modi is truly unstoppable!
The irresistible saffron imprint on the body politic can be traced back to December 6, 1992, that dark day when the Hindutva project was kick-started with a brutal transgression of the law. Cocking a snook at the Constitution, the kar sevaks and their Sangh parivar handlers – with a knowing wink from the law-enforcers – brought down the Babri Masjid. This heinous act of desecration was greeted by a large section of people with the kind of wild excitement seen when India beats Pakistan in cricket. The joyous response was not restricted to the lumpen elements who brought down the Masjid but was pervasive across the country, even among denizens in boardrooms and the government.
At a more profound level, the Babri Masjid demolition was a frontal assault on our collective identity as a secular nation. More than anything else, it demonstrated the power of the ethnocentric Hindutva ideology that upholds the supremacy of Hindus and purveys a pathological animosity toward Muslims and Christians. This doctrine of Hindu exclusiveness has become a more than formidable alternative to the secular principle of pluralism and inclusion enunciated in the Constitution. It has stimulated a second partition of the country, albeit metaphorical in the sense that it is not a physical territorial split but a schismatic division of minds based on religion. From the day of the Babri Masjid destruction, the Hindutva credo of majoritarian nationalism has been in deadly political and social combat with the idea of India envisaged by our founding fathers.
Also read: Thirty-One Years After Babri Demolition, an Important Reminder
Shortly before his death, Jawaharlal Nehru assessed the threat to the nation’s security thus: “The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism.” How prophetic have been his words! While it is true that the communalism of one group feeds on the communalism of the other, it is undeniable that only majority communalism has the power to alter the nature of the Indian polity by subverting the basic principles of democracy and secularism. His warnings have gone unheeded and today the country is on the brink.
It is important to remember that at the time of Independence, the citizens of India, mainly Hindu, had outright rejected the communal for the secular. The values that embellish the Preamble of our Constitution were quite simply the will of the majority. This was the ideal that the country aspired for but given the trauma of Partition and the historical animosity between the two communities, it was always going to be a hazardous project. Even as the nation wrestled with the problems of hunger, disease and unemployment, the fundamentalist forces, Hindu and Muslim, were engaged in stymieing all attempts at cultural syncretism between the communities. Tragically, they have had unmitigated success in polarising our society on communal lines.
The trishul-waving kar sevaks atop the Babri Masjid dome represented a deviant religious militancy that undermined the country’s core values. It diminished the land of Buddha and Gandhi that was tolerant of all religions and transformed it into a deeply polarised, violent majoritarian state. At the ideological plane, the cultural eclecticism that marked the world view of Adi Shankaracharya and Gandhi was subsumed by the divisive, insular nationalism propagated by M.S. Golwalkar and V.D. Savarkar.
William Hazlitt famously observed that the garb of religion is the best cloak for power. The Sangh parivar’s calculated induction of religion into the political arena with the clear intent of bestowing divinity to their politics has been hugely successful. A venom-spewing Yogi with a bulldozer in tow is the head of the largest state in the country. Skilfully using rituals to keep the Hindu ranks together, Valmiki and Ravidas pujas are conducted for the benefit of lower castes. Today the Sangh parivar, despite mangling a great religious tradition of pluralistic beliefs, can justifiably claim to identify with and represent the collective will of a large section of Hindus.
Even on the day that the Babri Masjid was torn down, it was palpably obvious that no power on earth would be allowed to rebuild it, such was the visible might of those who engineered its destruction. It would be no exaggeration to state that on the ruins of this structure was built the irresistible political juggernaut of the saffron brigade. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement which culminated in the Babri destruction resulted in a massive boost in the political fortunes of the BJP, particularly in the Hindi belt and the West. This was reflected in the 120 Lok Sabha seats that the BJP won in 1991 and the 161 seats with alliance partners that it got in 1996, compared with the measly two seats secured in the 1984 election.
Also read: Why the Places of Worship Act Must Be Preserved
Three decades later, the BJP is the nation’s hegemon, the undisputed power at the Centre and ruling in several states. In its wake, the social ecosystem is steaming with schismatic tensions and the rhetoric of hate. Gratuitous everyday cruelty manifested in lynchings, ghar wapsi, beef vigilantism, love jihad and the crushing of dissent plays out under the benign gaze of the state.
Even the last bastion of our democracy – the Supreme Court – has bowed to majoritarian sentiment. The site of the demolished mosque has been bestowed to the deity “Ram Lalla”, and in doing so, the court has neither delivered justice nor adhered to the fundamental tenets of the law. Instead, aastha or faith of the majority community has prevailed. Today the country waits with bated breath for the grand inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya by the prime minister on January 22, 2024, a pompous ceremony that will affix an authoritative seal to the cohabitation of the state with the religion of the majority. Damn secularism!
It is significant that this regime’s overwhelming victory in three of the four states that just the other day went to the polls, has come at a time when we have never been worse off as a nation. While the rich are being provided the wherewithal to grow richer, raging unemployment and an uncontrolled price rise have obliged the government, by its own admission, to provide free rations to 80 crore people for the last two years which is to be continued for another five years. The social fabric is in tatters; Kashmir is more alienated than ever; there is a civil war in Manipur. The Chinese are stomping all over our territory and we have no friend in the neighbourhood, with even the Maldives giving us the cold shoulder.
But instead of concentrating on the real concerns of the common man, the Opposition has sought to exploit caste and religion to beat the BJP at its own game.
Whereas the ill usage of religion for political purposes has yielded massive dividends for the BJP, it has certainly boomeranged on the Opposition when it tries to play with soft Hindutva. (Of course, one cannot overlook the harmful impact of the Kamal Nath-Digvijay Singh duo for the Congress defeat in Madhya Pradesh. They ignored their INDIA alliance partners and thought that low cunning alone would see them through.)
Let’s face it. As a nation, we have irreversibly cast off the idea of India as a united, multicultural country with common goals and aspirations, a shared history and on a joint search for a better future for all. In its place we have Hindutva as the unofficial ideology of the state. And today, there is neither brotherhood nor love, but only manic hate. Jai Shri Ram!
Mathew John is a former civil servant. The views are personal.
