Daily Times

It has been 22 years since the demolition of the Babri Masjid, but in the latest sting operation by Cobrapost, it was revealed that senior Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi knew about the plan and the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh also had information a day prior to the demolition. The Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992. The Babri Masjid was one of the largest mosques in Uttar Pradesh, a state in India with some 31 million Muslims. Numerous petitions by Hindus to the courts resulted in Hindu worshippers of Rama gaining access to the site. The political, historical and socio-religious debate over the history and location of the Babri Mosque and whether a previous temple was demolished or modified to create it is known as the Ayodhya debate. As the Cobrapost investigation reveals, the conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid was hatched at the top echelons of the Sangh Parivar and those who were recruited for training for the task did not know the target till the countdown for the mosque’s fall began a month before in November. In June 1992, Bajrang Dal, for instance, conducted a month-long military-style training for 38 of its cadres chosen from various regions in Sarkhej, Gujarat. The training was given by retired high-ranking military officers. Ideological training was imparted to the cadres by the likes of Acharya Giriraj Kishore, Acharya Dharmendra, Dr Praveen Togadia, Jaibhan Pawaiya and Ashok Singhal. When the Babri Masjid was razed to dust on December 6, it was Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray who proudly claimed before the world that it was the Shiv Sena that did the job, as BJP leaders like L K Advani went about offering apologies and ascribing the incident to spontaneous mob frenzy. Thackeray’s claim was not hollow as the Cobrapost investigation establishes.

Upon the destruction of the Mosque, the then ruling Congress government had pledged to reconstruct the mosque at the very site where it existed, but to date such construction has not even started. The inaction of Narasimha Rao, the then prime minister of India from the Congress Party is remembered as a bitter memory. It is unrealistic to say that Congress is behind trying to influence the results of the impending elections by showcasing BJP’s anti-Muslim tilt. BJP’s electoral success accelerated many levels after the fall of Babri Masjid. The brutal credentials of Narendra Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat when he oversaw Muslims’ massacre in 2002 never became an obstacle in the way of his political rise. His chances of becoming the next prime minister of India are bright. The reality is that the communal divide in India has been used to further the political fortunes of both the BJP and Congress, in their own ways. The event of Babri Masjid was just a part of that effort. *