The Babri verdict is cause for worry

IN PERSPECTIVE

For those of us who were present in Ayodhya on that fateful morning of December 6, 1992, and have observed the case wind through the criminal justice system over the 28 years since, the acquittal by the special CBI court of all 32 accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case has come as no surprise.

The case has dragged on for nearly three decades and several of the prominent people who were accused have died in that time. Some others have done extremely well post-Babri demolition -- L K Advani went on to become deputy prime minister, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati became cabinet ministers. Narendra Modi who was Advani’s ‘charioteer’ (but not an accused in the case) has gone on to become prime minster. It was unlikely that under the prevailing over- riding majoritarian sentiment, the CBI special judge SK Yadav would give a contrarian point of view.

The CBI court judge S K Yadav found that there Yadav chose to hide behind semantics emphasising in hiswas not enough proof to conclude that there was a conspiracy and that the audio and video evidences submitted were unclear and did not provide clinching evidence. For the journalists who were present at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 and who travelled to UP to give evidence before this special court, a sense of foreboding and disquiet has prevailed throughout this saga.

Former BBC correspondent Mark Tully, who was present in Ayodhya 28 years ago, saw large numbers of young men with saffron bands around their heads break three police cordons in the area around the mosque, with the policemen making no attempt to control them. Tully realised that the mosque was going to be broken down and he slipped away to Faizabad to break the story to the rest of the world.

Tully was one of the several journalists contacted by the CBI to depose before Yadav the Old High Court Building at Kesar Bagh in Lucknow, and he recounted what he had witnessed before and after the demolition.

Ace photographer Praveen Jain, then working for The Pioneer newspaper, had arrived in Ayodhya on the night of December 4, 1992, to find lakhs of kar sevaks already gathered there. On the evening of December 5, Jain saw them carry hammers, pick-axes and crowbars to a ‘rehearsal’ of exactly how they planned to demolish the mosque, and he had several photographs that reinforced his account of what he had witnessed. These photographs were also presented to the special court in Lucknow.

Obviously, these carried little weight. The key question before us is, will this judgement bring closure to this sorry saga of masjid demolition?

It does not seem so. Even during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, for instance, has chosen to rake up the issue of other mosques by asking the Centre to acquire land for “renovation” of the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura. The people of the country, Swamy maintained, were anxiously waiting for the expansion of these two places of worship. He expressed confidence that the campaigns to liberate these shrines would be launched by the RSS and the VHP at the earliest.

Swamy also recently wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking an amendment to the Places of Worship Act, 1991 which stipulates maintaining the “religious character” of all holy structures as they existed on August 15, 1947.

A quick rebuttal of such a move has come from the Mathura-based All-India Teerath Purohit Mahasabha who pointed out that there is no dispute at the Krishna Janmabhoomi and Idgah site and that this so-called ‘dispute’ had been resolved amicably by the two managements over 50 years ago. They did not want a heightening of tensions as this would affect the pilgrim traffic to Braj Bhumi, which is famous the world over for its syncretic culture.

Already a repeat of the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi Andolan’ seems to be taking place in Mathura where six litigants have filed a case in the Lucknow court stating that the mosque be removed as it has been built at the exact place where Krishna was born. These litigants are demanding ownership of this entire area and a cancellation of the earlier compromise decree.

A similar dispute has been ignited in Varanasi. Of course, during the build-up of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, one of the slogans often bandied about by the Sangh Parivar was “Ayodhya-Babri sirf jhanki hai, Mathura Kashi bhaki hai” (Ayodhya-Babri is just the start, Mathura and Kashi are next).

The Kashi Vishwanath temple (repeatedly brought down by Muslim invaders and rulers, but also rebuilt with funding from Mughal Emperor Akbar, only to be destroyed once again by Aurangzeb) was last re-built in the 18th century by Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar of the Maratha Malwa kingdom. She helped broker a peace between the two sides, ensuring that while the Hindus conducted their prayers in the temple, the Muslims could perform their prayers inside the mosque. This peace has continued uninterrupted for the last two centuries. The average Benarasi citizen does not want a build-up of tension on this issue.

But is legal sanctity enough to protect religious structures is a question that many concerned people are now asking. The demolition of the Babri Masjid and the judgement given by the CBI court on the Ayodhya conspiracy case seem to say it is not.

(The writer is a senior
Delhi-based journalist)