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Locks of the Babri Masjid opened on February 1, 1986

The locks of the Babri mosque were opened on February 1, 1986. Simultaneously almost, the Muslim Women’s Bill was introduced in Parliament on February 25, 1986. Advani: “No namaaz (prayers) had been offered at the Babri masjid since 1939 (Indian Express, September 17, 1990).”Maulvi Abdul Gaffar, 93-year-old imam of the mosque in an interview to Sunday Mail (July 2, 1989) said: “We used to offer namaaz inside the mosque and the Hindus prayed on the Chabutra. We never fought. I want that things should be restored to the pre-1949 days”.

Idols forcibly installed inside the Mosque, December 22, 1949

Courtesy: indiatoday.in

It is an undeniable fact of history that there had been neither any idol of Ram nor any puja (religious offerings) in the Babri Masjid prior to the night of December 22, 1949, when a band of armed sadhus (mendicants) raided and forcibly placed the idols of Ram inside the mosque. Puja began only on January 16, 1950. However VHP and BJP leaders’ statements (including the misconstructions contained in the BJP’s ‘White Paper’ on Ayodhya released in early 1993) deliberately distort these facts.

Was the site of the Babri Masjid the birthplace of Ram?

On May 17, 1989 Atal Behari Vajpayee, then leader of the Opposition said: “It was not possible to pinpoint the exact place where Ram was born thousands of years ago. The temple was built and rebuilt over the ages and had existed since Emperor Vikramaditya’s time (The Hindustan Times, May 18, 1989). Yet on September 23, 1990 he had no hesitation asserting that there is only one birthplace of Shri Ram (The Hindustan Times, September 24, 1990). The same year none less than Advani admitted in Bombay: “No one can prove that it was the birthplace of Shri Ram”. But he contended that it was a matter of belief which the government could not afford to ignore. (The Independent, October 1, 1990).

Prof. Sharma told The Times of India on April 7, 1990: “There is no proof at all of Babar going to Ayodhya.. It is an irony that a lover of Hindu art and architecture should be credited with the destruction of a temple which in any case did not exist. It is, therefore, very clear that the Babri mosque was not built by demolishing a temple of Ram at Ayodhya “. Dr. Sushil Srivastava of the Allahabad University expressed the same view (Probe India, January 1988). From Ayodhya, Sanjay Suri wrote in The Indian Express, February 11, 1987: “The disputed place is not believed even by pandits (priests) to be the birth-spot of the legendary god Ram. The pandits, who have not timed the ‘birth’ within thousands of years, have pinpointed the ‘Janam Sthan’ (place of birth) as Ram Chabutra. This Chabutra marked by a platform under a tree is outside the disputed area. The ‘Janam Sthan’ is not claimed by Muslims.”

Namaaz prayers forcibly stopped as Mosque turns into Temple

In 1988, none less than the rabid VHP presented 13 legal/historical documents to the then home minister, Buta Singh. Two of these are reports by Muhammad Ibrahim, inspector of Waqfs, dated December 10 and 22, 1948. The first said: “inside the masjid (mosque) compound there is a Hindu temple and any Muslim going towards the masjid is accosted and called names. I went to the site when I understood that many of the rumours are true. People there told me that there is a danger to the masjid from the Hindus, the wall of it. It appears that an application be lodged with the deputy commissioner, Faizabad requesting those coming for namaaz should not be troubled and since the masjid is the Waqf property, it should be protected”.

The next report of December 22, 1948 records the beating up of the muezzin and two “pardesi Muslims”. He also recorded: “When the namaazis (worshippers offering prayers) leave, shoes and stones are hurled” towards them. There are records of the mosque’s registration under the UP Muslim Waqfs Act (Feb. 20, 1944) and a judgement on March 23, 1946 by a civil judge in a Shia-Sunni dispute regarding the mosque.

Despite this historic reality, leaders of the VHP and BJP — none less than India’s home minister, actually continue to treat the mosque like a temple.

Mosque treated as Temple

“There is a temple in Ayodhya. There is no such thing as Babri Masjid now.” (interview in The Hindustan Times, September 23, 1990). This explains the VHP’s secretary-general Ashok Singhal’s cryptic remark at Hardwar on June 24, 1990 while announcing its “programme of action”. He said: “There will be no demolition of any part of the Shri Ramjanmabhoomi shrine but some remodelling and renovation will be done.” In other words the mosque will be treated as a temple.

Collussion of the Local Administration in Illegal Act

How and when did the Ayodhya problem, as we know it, arise? The first information report (FIR) lodged by sub-inspector Ram Dube, police station Ayodhya, on December 23, 1949 answers both questions authoritatively and irrefutably. (AG Noorani in the Frontline, 1993). “According to Mata Prasad (the reporting constable): ‘When I reached to Janam Bhumi around 8 o’clock in the morning, I came to know that group of 50-60 persons had entered Babri Mosque after breaking the compound gate lock of the mosque... and established therein an idol of Shri Bhagwan... Ram Das, Ram Shakti Das and 50-60 unidentified others entered the mosque surreptitiously and spoiled its sanctity’. Even district magistrate KK Nayar, who was responsible for this deed, admitted to the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Bhagwan Sahay, on December 27, 1949 that it was “an illegal position created by force and subterfuge.”

Historical distortions enter BJP’s White Paper, 1986

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ‘White Paper on Ayodhya and the Rama Temple Movement’ distorts these facts and says instead that “the idol of Rama appeared on the night of December 22 and 23, 1949” (emphasis added). This is no mere flourish. It is a deliberate lie uttered at the outset (p.23) and repeated towards the end (p.152); “The idols of Sri Rama appeared on....” The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece, Organiser, of March 29, 1987 had said it had “miraculously appeared”. “On 25th May, 1885 Mahant Raghubardass appealed to the Faizabad district judge that an order be given for the construction of temple on the Ramjanmabhoomi” (p.22). (p.151) “The first legal case for repossession of Ramjanmabhoomi was filed... in 1885.”

Chabutra Janamsthan not Mosque claimed

The mahant had sued for permission to build a temple on the chabutra outside the mosque but within its compound and claimed that as the Ramjanmabhoomi. He did not claim the mosque at all. He sued for “a decree for awarding permission to construct a temple over the Chabutra Janam Asthan situated in Ayodhya.” Para 2 of his plaint read thus: “The Chabutra of Janam Asthan is 21 feet towards north and south, and therein Charan Panya lies and there is also a small temple over it, and which is worshipped.”

The sub-judge, Pandit Hari Kishan Singh, dismissed the suit. On appeal, the district judge, Col. F.E.A. Chamier, upheld the judgement, but he was more impressed by the Gazetteer of Oudh than was the Pandit. The errors in the Gazetteer were fully exposed by Dr. Sushil Srivastava of the Allahabad University first in Probe India (January 1988) and also in his book The Disputed Mosque.

VHP enters fray in 1989

The first suit filed for the possession of the mosque was on July 1, 1989, by Deoki Nandan Agarwala, a vice-president (VHP). The ones filed in 1950 were for the worship of the planted idol. The White Paper gloats over the fact that only the use of force helped the sangh parivar gain its ends. 1949 was the starting point. The next stage was the opening of the locks on the gateway to the mosque by a court order on February 1, 1986. The last stage was its demolition of December 6, 1992.

Influencing Institutions of governance

The BJP’s White Paper on the 1986 episode: “Once the ultimatum was given, things started moving at lightning speed” (p.26). Mark the words, “and the judiciary too, responded with lightning speed” (p.32). Sample this: “So the law could not help the Hindus for more than 60 years, from 1885 to 1949. But when they physically occupied the structure after the idols of Sri Rama appeared on 22-23 December 1949, the same law-enforcing courts — the District Court in 1950 and later, in 1955, the High Court — granted to the Hindus the right to worship....” (p. 152). The Paper asserts but admits that while the VHP launched the movement in 1983, the BJP took it up for the first time in its Palampur resolution on June 11, 1989.