It’s too much to hope for BJP to give up Mandir-Masjid or for Indians to say enough is enough

Were Indian Muslims right to reject Babri compromise? Sambhal, Ajmer is what they said would happen.

Illustration: Soham Sen | ThePrint

The tragic deaths in Sambhal and the latest crackpot campaign to claim the Dargah in Ajmer on behalf of Hindu communalism bring back many uncomfortable memories. In a sense, it all started with LK Advani and the Babri Masjid, when we should have realised that something significant was happening to Indian society.

Way back in the 1980s, when the Babri Masjid controversy was gathering steam, I thought the issue was more serious than we realised and warned that a full-fledged Hindu backlash against Indian secularism was imminent. I suggested it was time for all liberals to take a step back and think of measures that would calm passions.

One possible compromise I suggested was this: the Babri Masjid dispute dated back decades, if not centuries. For several years, the mosque had been locked, so no namaz was offered there. Nor was the Babri Masjid of any great significance to Muslims. In the circumstances, it might not be a bad idea for the Muslim community to consider accepting some kind of compromise. For instance, LK Advani had said he would help move the mosque a short distance away so the VHP could build a Ram temple on the disputed site. Might this be worth considering?

There would have to be conditions, of course. The Muslim community should make it clear that they did not act because they accepted any of LK Advani’s claims about the Babri Masjid or its origins. Muslims would be doing this only as a gesture to demonstrate how accommodating they could be in the true spirit of Indian secularism.

In return, Advani and his cohorts would have to agree that this was it. There would be no more demands for digging up mosques to try and find temples. A law should be passed to that effect.

My guess is that with his oh-so-humble hand-rubbing routine and air of injured innocence, Advani would’ve taken the deal. The Sangh Parivar’s attempts to portray all Muslims as fanatics would’ve faced a setback, and the Hindutva wave could have been stalled in its tracks.

Of course, there would always be those on the lunatic fringe who would not abide by the agreement and continue to demand that more mosques be demolished. But their leaders would find it difficult to support them.

Besides, my real concern was less with the brick-and-mortar structures and more with preventing the radicalisation of Hindus. If Muslims said they were willing to go the extra mile, even while Advani whizzed around india in a souped-up Toyota van with two extras dressed up as characters from the Ramayana (the TV show, not the epic), trying to stir up communal  passions, the Parivar’s rhetoric about the pampering of Muslims would have seemed hollow.

As we all know, even though some Muslims I knew believed that a compromise was worth the effort, the Babri Masjid Action Committee, which claimed to speak for India’s Muslims, refused to consider any compromise. It was a game of dominoes, they said. Advani would accept this compromise, make them shift the mosque, and then, two years later, he would lay claim to Kashi and Mathura, and it would all start over again.

Cranks can come up with claims

Many decades later, I wonder if the Action Committee was right. Perhaps they were, but the Muslim community lost every battle of consequence in this saga. It watched, horrified—as did the rest of us—when a gang of so-called Karsevaks destroyed the mosque in the presence of BJP leadership. Advani wept. Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti hugged each other.

Promises to rebuild the Babri Masjid came to nothing, and eventually, the Supreme Court delivered the final blow by giving the land to the Hindu side. I respect the Court too much to speculate on whether the judgment was the result of confabulations with the deity or whether it was influenced by the lure of post-retirement Rajya Sabha seats.

Even so, I believed the issue was finished and done with, especially because of the Places of Worship Act, which said that with the exception of the Babri Masjid, all places of worship would remain as they were in 1947. If a mosque was a mosque in 1947, then it would remain a mosque. It did not matter what some crank said it had been in 1747.

Of course, the cranks would keep making their demands. But the law and the courts would prevent repetitions of the madness.

I was mostly wrong.

There has been no shortage of cranks jumping up to claim that Muslim places of worship were once Hindu temples and demanding judicial intervention.

The Places of Worship Act is quite clear: it doesn’t matter what religious sites were in the distant past. What matters is what they were in 1947. So, when petitions reached the courts, the judges should’ve told the petitioners that their demands had no legal validity, given the Places of Worship Act.

But judges have found ways around the law, and the courts allowed a survey to take place at the Gyanvapi mosque to check if it had been built on the site of a temple. The courts knew that even if a Hindu temple had originally existed underneath, the mosque would remain a mosque because this is what it was in 1947. A survey would serve no purpose.

A superior court, aware of how India had been torn apart by the Babri Masjid issue, should have put an end to this trend. But in 2022, then-Chief Justice DY Chandrachud made remarks in court while hearing the Gyanvapi case that the Places of Worship Act did not preclude determining “the original character of the site”.

Chandrachud did not include this observation in any judgment, but because it was a remark made in open court and widely reported, it has been taken to mean that any crank who wants to establish that a mosque was once a temple may be allowed to do so by the courts.

In effect, this means that every single mosque in India could face demands to have its premises dug up by court-assigned teams looking for a Shivling or any Hindu symbol.

Will we avoid this conflict? 

We know what could happen next. When some surveys of mosques throw up some evidence—however tenuous—that there was once a Hindu structure on the site, politicians will start demanding the destruction of the mosque. Stories about bloodthirsty Muslim invaders will be recycled. The communal atmosphere will be poisoned. Hindus and Muslims will be encouraged to fight each other.

When passions have been sufficiently aroused, the Sangh Parivar will ask for the Places of Worship Act to be repealed, and India will be plunged once more into communal chaos.

Why would politicians do this? Well, because it works. The BJP was down to just two seats in the Lok Sabha when Advani took over the Babri Masjid agitation. This led, eventually, to today’s situation, where the BJP is the natural party of government (as Advani himself had proudly predicted).

The present BJP government, faced with anti-incumbency, unemployment, a battered stock market, inflation, and declining growth, could do with a similar distraction.

But it needn’t come to that. Politicians could choose the moral high ground. But that, I guess, is too much to hope for. The Supreme Court, under the new Chief Justice, could be firm about making other courts respect the Places of Worship Act. There are signs that this may happen, but it is too early to be sure.

Or the people of India could say: enough of this Hindu vs Muslim stuff! Where is the governance we were promised?

But will we?

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

(Edited by Prashant)