Commentary/ Saisuresh Sivaswamy
'Arre bhai, wahan masjid hai hi kahan?'
It's not very often that words from the past come back to haunt,
but in the case of the erstwhile Babri Masjid, there are so many
things that are out-of-the-ordinary that former prime minister
V P Singh's famous words, uttered at a meeting with the Hindu
delegation leading the Ram Janambhoomi movement, come ringing
in one's head as the news of the CBI charges against Shiv
Sena and BJP leaders filters in.
Really, it has been five years since the dilapidated structure
that held the unique record of vitiating relations between Hindus
and Muslims to pre-1947 levels was pulled down by hordes of frenzied
mobs who, incidentally, happened to be Hindus.
And I use the world 'incidentally' with great deliberation. It
was certainly not -- unlike the British Broadcasting Corporation
reported -- as if 800 million Hindus across India put their collective
shoulder behind the hands that wielded pickaxes that cold December
morning. If anything, a majority of that number was repulsed by
that sudden turn of events, by that open display of brute strength,
by that unequivocal sacrilege that went against the nation's
governing ethos of tolerance and inclusion.
The BJP certainly
lost its moral edge with that single act; there was a serious
erosion in its support base, if not voter base, and it was able
to recoup from that setback only because of an effete opposition
it faced. If, as reports suggest, its anti-Babri Masjid movement
had been so successful, the party definitely would not have put
Kashi and Mathura on the backburner -- if anything, those too would
have gone the Ayodhya way before you could say, well, 'Ram'.
The BJP has realised the impact of the absence of a hate object, something
tangible you could point to and arouse primeval sentiments. The
excessive focus on one issue leaves you toothless when that single
point is removed, as the then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao demonstrated
with his passivity in letting the mosque crumble. How can you
drive home the point of slavery to Islam when a putative symbol
of the slavery has been pulled down?
The point I am trying to make is that whether it was the Congress
under Rajiv Gandhi, the Janata Dal/National Front under V P Singh,
(Chandra Shekhar being too insignificant to deserve a mention)
the Congress under Rao, or the JD/United Front under I K Gujral,
the masjid/mandir controversy had only been treated as a political
football, to score goals against one's opponents. But somewhere
down the line, the Muslims, for whose benefit this
elaborate game is being played out, have seen through the game,
have realised the entire thing is a charade. They also learnt that
those who are supposedly playing for their team,
have long ago succumbed to match-fixing.
Looking back, Rajiv Gandhi, of course, was a political sophomore
who thought he was a Ph D. His solution to the nation's anger
at the blatant overturning of a Supreme Court ruling favouring
Muslim women was to appease the irate Hindus by doing something
equally stupid and antediluvian. By opening the doors of a disputed
place of worship in Ayodhya, which the nationhood long ago relegated
to the innermost recesses of its memory, he opened the doors
to a controversy that very nearly took the nation to the brink
of a civil war.
Regardless of whose advice he took, as the chief executive of
the nation the buck stopped with him. In the din over Bofors,
which was a pettifogging offense compared to what Ayodhya did
to the nation's innards, his culpability here was overlooked --
but in hindsight, it is very clear that the blame for stoking the
Ayodhya fires has to be placed at the doorstep of 10, Janpath.
If Rajiv proved to be politically incompetent, his one-time confidant and
friend-turned-foe V P Singh was a little worse. Gandhi merely
sought to balance the scale he had tipped against one side by
doing something stupid. But Singh, in his characteristic
way, tried to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares, with the
result that he became pariah to both sides. All it took was for
one side to blow the whistle for the scales to fall from the nation's eyes, for 'Arre bhai, wahan masjid hai hi kahan?' (Brother, is there a masjid there?) to became part
of the nation's political folklore.
But poor Narasimha Rao! He got the lion's share of the blame,
when all he thought he was doing was defanging the BJP. After all, there was no namaaz being offered
there for years, and even by Muslim theological yardsticks the
Masjid was so only in name. This is not to say he merited
the Bharat Ratna for doing what he did; but at least, part of
the opprobrium that has come his way belonged elsewhere,
to those who had covered themselves so well in sheep's clothing.
And thus we have the sight of the I K Gujral government deciding
to file charges against the main accused in the conspiracy to
pull down the Babri Masjid, almost five years after the act. While
certainly the rule of the law must prevail, regardless of who
is in the dock, the very timing of this move makes it highly suspicious
even in the eyes of those spectators for whom the game is intended.
It certainly makes for a lot of piquancy. The saffron brigade's
votebank will see this manoeuvre as a ploy to, first, destablise
the BJP's alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh
and, two, to put out of circulation the brigade's top vote-catches
-- which ought to be a clear indication that general elections are
not very far away.
But the Muslims will not remain silent anymore. They are still emerging
from the cul-de-sac up which they were led by the so-called leaders
only because they chose to keep shut -- they will not repeat the same mistake again.
In short, then, the run-up to the next elections promise to be
riveting. Book your seats right away!
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