If Rajiv Gandhi had listened to Arun Nehru, Ayodhya politics would look very different

Arun Nehru, who sought to be Court Chamberlain in the Rajiv Gandhi-era, argued to continue with Indira Gandhi’s policy of playing the Hindu card in a subtle way that did not alienate Muslims.

lllustration by Manisha Yadav | ThePrint

How did you feel when you saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi on TV doing a victory lap in Ayodhya in the run-up to the Ram temple inauguration on 22 January? Did you feel: “this is a victory for the VHP in its campaign to restore the glory of Lord Ram?” Or did you wonder about the series of mishaps and opportunistic calculations that led us to this day?

I ask because I certainly felt both. Yes, the VHP had won. And yet, the saga of the Ram Mandir is also the story of miscalculations and mistakes by the so-called secular establishment over the last 50 years.

We don’t always realise this but the idea of politically mobilising Hinduism became a Congress stratagem during Indira Gandhi’s last years. At the time, it was easy enough. Hindus felt targeted by Sikh militants and worried by the openly anti-Hindu rhetoric of separatists during the Punjab crisis in the 1980s. Communities often unite in times of difficulty and adversity and Gandhi played the Hindu card to her advantage. She did it in a relatively subtle and careful way that did not alienate Muslims. But the bad feeling whipped up against the Sikhs contributed to the terrible massacres in 1984.

If the Congress had persisted with this approach, it may have become electorally invincible. Arun Nehru, who had been one of Indira Gandhi’s advisors and now sought to be Court Chamberlain in the Rajiv Gandhi-era, argued for a continuation of this policy. Nehru believed that the Congress was already India’s largest party. If it also became the party of the Hindu majority, then no one could defeat it.

He did not get his way because Rajiv Gandhi did not believe in religious politics and refused to go along. In fact, on such issues as the Shah Bano case, where Rajiv and Nehru disagreed, the Congress may have actually lost Hindu votes.

But Arun Nehru saw the advantage in pushing Hindu issues even without bothering to consult Rajiv. We can never be certain but all the evidence suggests that it was Arun who had the locks of the Ram Temple/Babri Masjid in Ayodhya opened.

At that stage, very few people outside Uttar Pradesh had even heard of the Babri Masjid issue or the dispute over the structure that had begun decades ago. But Arun hoped to turn it into a vote-winner in the Hindi belt by taking a ‘soft’ pro-Hindu stand. Unfortunately for him, he fell out with Rajiv over other issues and was sacked before he could implement this strategy.

While this Congress drama was going on, the BJP, down to two seats in the Lok Sabha, looked desperately for issues to mobilise Hindu sentiment. When Rajiv seemed reluctant to push ahead with the Ram Janmabhoomi platform, LK Advani grabbed it.

The birth of an issue, and BJP

Advani’s appeal was not full of the angry Hindutva messaging we see today. Instead, he painted Hindus as victims. The Congress was doing a lot to pamper Muslims, he said, while ignoring Hindu concerns.

Take, for instance, the place where Lord Ram was born. It was one of the holiest spots in Hinduism. But Emperor Babar had destroyed a grand Hindu temple that once stood on the site and built a mosque there. Because of a legal dispute between Hindus and Muslims over the site, the Babri Masjid had now become a disused mosque where namaz had not been said for decades.

Why couldn’t Muslims agree to shift the mosque to a nearby spot? Advani argued that mosques were shifted all the time in, say, Pakistan if they came in the way of roads or new construction. So this was no big deal. “We will help them move it brick by brick,” he declared. And then, we will build our own temple on the site.

All of this was historically controversial and dodgy. Was there a historical Lord Ram? Was his Ayodhya the same as today’s Ayodhya? Was he really born on this exact spot? Had Babar actually destroyed a grand Hindu temple? Had the so-called Babri Masjid really been built by Babar?

None of this was clear.

But Advani ignored history to focus on emotion. It did not matter what historians said, he argued. If millions of Hindus believed that Lord Ram had been born on this spot, we were obliged to respect their faith and beliefs, not to counter them with scepticism. The spot had no significance for Muslims, he pointed out. Why couldn’t they agree to move their non-functioning mosque a little further away to accommodate Hindu sentiments?

Two things could have happened at this stage (1988/89). One: the government could have got Muslims on board, shifted the Babri Masjid slightly further away so that Namaz could resume and then turned the building of the new temple into a massive national enterprise. It would have been easy to sideline Advani and the VHP if the construction had become a national endeavour. Muslim liberals could have joined the project. Hindus could have helped with the reopening of the Babri Masjid. At that stage, the Congress was in power in UP and many of the Ayodhya sadhus were pro-Congress. It was the perfect opportunity for a show of secular unity.

The other: they could have called Advani a communalist and muddled along trying to postpone a decision on the masjid/mandir issue.

Guess which option they chose?

Given the mood of those times, this was not surprising. I was called a communalist myself for advocating the first approach and every Muslim leader I spoke to was resolute: we will not shift the masjid even an inch from its location. Nobody seemed to agree with me that the masjid/mandir itself was not the only important thing.

More worrying was the political establishment’s willingness to let Advani cultivate the Hindu vote-bank that Indira Gandhi had once appealed to. Once you let the BJP weaponise political Hinduism, there was no telling what would happen to Indian secularism which—let’s face it—has always depended on the support of the Hindu majority.

I never agreed with the Arun Nehru-LK Advani approach to the issue, which amounted to cynical exploitation of religious sentiments. But equally, I thought the Congress response was knee-jerk, short-sighted and needlessly stubborn.

Once the Congress allowed the BJP to capture the national imagination as being the only party that spoke up for Hindus, there was no telling what might happen eventually. Compared to others in his party, Advani was actually a moderate.

What if the Congress had…

There are many “what ifs” in history but I think this was a crucial turning point. The Babri Masjid Action Committee and various Muslim leaders misread the mood of the country. The Congress missed an opportunity and from that point on, the BJP went from being a struggling party to ousting the Congress as the party of government.

Assume that the Congress had led a national movement to shift the mosque. Would it have lost many Muslim votes as Rajiv was told it would? Yes, possibly, in the short run. But national parties cannot afford to take a short-term view on such issues. And the Congress had such a massive majority that it could afford to take the risk.

Would Advani have asked for every masjid in India to be uprooted because a temple may have once existed at that spot? That was the excuse given for ignoring the Ram Janmabhoomi demand. Possibly, but if the Sangh Parivar had been marginalised in the national movement to build a new temple, such demands would not have gained much support. Besides, these demands are still being made anyway.

From that point, the Congress had lost the battle. It did not help when Narasimha Rao, who probably shared Arun Nehru’s perspective anyway, allowed the Babri Masjid to be demolished and slept through the terrible Mumbai riots.

Now the Congress finds itself in a bizarre and paradoxical situation where Muslims believe it betrayed them and many Hindus see it as being anti-Hindu.

When the Prime Minister returns to Ayodhya on 22 January for the opening of the temple, he will make the most of the event. But even he must know now that the Ram Mandir is a symbol of another age — when you could tell Hindus that they were being discriminated against in their own country. That message has no resonance today; the mandir is yet another symbol of Hindu triumphalism.

But as much as the BJP tries to airbrush poor Advani out of its history, the temple reminds us that without Advani and the Ayodhya issue, there would have been no BJP revival and possibly no Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

It may or may not be a symbol of a glorious era that began with Lord Rama’s birth. But it certainly is a symbol of the rebirth of the BJP.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)