Ayodhya's Original Sinners: Part I

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>[bJP News]: Ayodhya's Original Sinners: Part I

>Tue, 19 Dec 2000 13:36:22 -0500

>

>Title: Ayodhya's Original Sinners: Part I

>Author: Arvind Lavakare

>Publication: Rediff

>Dec. 19, 2000

>

> The obstinate obscurants

>

> Cowards, all of them. Cowards --- from Chandra

> Shekhar to Somnath Chatterjee, from "Maulana"

> Mulayam to Mamta "Cry-baby", and from Jaipal Reddy

> to A B Vajpayee. All of them blamed each other in

>last

> week's censure motion debate in Parliament on the

> Ayodhya event of December 6, 1992. None of them had

> the courage to recall the critical path of the

> government-initiated negotiations in December 1990;

> none of them therefore had the courage to point a

>finger at the truth.

>

> And what was the truth? The truth is that the

>demolition thing would not have

> happened but for the above parleys being rendered

>sterile by i. some

> obstinate, obscurant Muslim leaders who fled from the

>last stage of debate and

> ii. the support given to those Muslims by the pink

>"historians" packed in

> Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. If future

>history is ever written

> truthfully, these two sets of people will be found

>guilty of being the original

> sinners, the perpetrators of all that befell our

>nation after the demolition on

> December 6 of the structure that, be it noted, was

>acknowledged by the

> Congress government of India's White Paper of

>February 1993 as being

> "commonly known as Ram Janma Bhumi-Babri Masjid" --

>not merely Babri

> Masjid.

>

> Let it also be noted that, according to Appendix V in

>the above White Paper, a

> structure called the Ram-chabutra (standing within

>the courtyard of the

> disputed structure) was also demolished on December

>6, 1992. Hence, worship

> by Hindus in general of that place was interrupted.

>

> We'll go to the December 1990 negotiations later. The

>basic fact is that

> Vajpayee's third "clarification" about his remark on

>Ayodhya the other day in

> favour of the Ram temple at the disputed site while

>respectfully locating the

> Masjid elsewhere is not a new solution as was

>believed by some; nor was it

> ever Vajpayee's solution. It was in fact first

>brought up by the Vishwa Hindu

> Parishad.

>

> From 1986 onwards when the VHP and Bajrang Dal, its

>youth wing, stepped

> up their campaign for the construction of a Ram

>temple on the spot where the

> Babri building stood, they had not campaigned for the

>obliteration of the old

> by the new. What they suggested was that the Babri

>building be moved to

> another site, the way the Abu Simbel temple in Egypt

>was moved out of the

> way of the Aswan Dam. India had the technology for

>this kind of operation as

> was proved when the old Kudavelli Sangameshwar temple

>in Mehboobnagar

> in Andhra Pradesh was taken apart and rebuilt 600

>metres from the original

> site to save it from submergence. (The Times of

>India, January 28, 1990).

> Vajpayee's BJP only supported the VHP proposal at the

>political level.

>

> Also little known (forgotten?) is that several Shia

>Muslim leaders had agreed

> to this shifting plan. For instance:

>

> Ashgar Ali Abbas, general secretary (in August

>1990) of the All India

> Shia Political Conference, is on record as

>having told a news magazine

> that "We are in favour of restoring it (the

>Babri building) to the

> Hindus because it belongs to them. We would be

>satisfied with a

> mosque built from the debris of the existing

>structure to which Hindus

> have already given their consent."

> President of the Indian Muslim Youth Congress

>was reported (The

> Indian Express, May 10, 1990) as urging the

>government to hand the

> Babri building to the Hindus by means of

>legislation, arguing that this

> would go a long way in bringing Hindus and

>Muslims closer together.

> He had also protested that Mohammed Azam Khan,

>labour minister in

> the UP government of Mulayam Singh, was an

>office-bearer of the

> "communalist" Babri Masjid Action Committee.

> Iqbal Ahmed, member of the BJP state executive,

>had declared "Ram

> was our ancestor and construction of a Ram

>Mandir is the moral

> responsibility as much of the Muslims as of

>Hindus."

>

> One alternative solution was to have a new temple

>that incorporated the

> existing structure. Another was to let the status quo

>continue until the judicial

> apparatus gave its final verdict in the long-pending

>suits filed over the

> ownership of the Babri site. The Hindu activists

>contended that the matter of

> ownership could not be decided by a law court because

>the Babri compound

> had been decided by Muslim invaders who legitimised

>their conquest of

> Ayodhya. Their view was strengthened on November 9,

>1989 when a

> three-judge bench of the Allahabad high court --

>called to clarify which plots

> precisely were under dispute -- observed "it is

>doubtful that some of the

> questions involved in the suit are soluble by

>judicial process."

>

> To the Babri structure campaigners all compromise

>proposals were anathema.

> Their stand was "How could a Muslim see his mosque

>defiled by the presence

> of idols and idol worshippers?" The biggest

>concession that they were willing

> to make is that a Ram temple could be constructed

>next to the masjid.

>

> That was not acceptable to the Hindu activists who

>held that that there was a

> Ram temple on that very site before it was destroyed

>by the Muslims in 1528,

> that there is a genuine tradition which considers the

>site as Ram's birthplace

> where precisely Hindu worship has been going on for

>countless long years

> since before the Muslims came and even after. Whether

>Ram was born there

> or not, it was the people's belief that had to be

>accepted just as it was accepted

> that the Kaaba was built by Abraham as claimed by

>Mohammed without

> historical evidence. After all, has anybody ever

>asked for proof of the Muslim

> claim that the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was built

>over the Prophet's

> footprint in the rock? Has, again, anybody asked for

>an attested certificate of

> Christ's birth in Bethlehem?

>

> On the other hand, court rulings have held that the

>Babri building was

> definitely not used as a mosque since December 1949

>and, according to

> inferences, possibly since 1936. And there was that

>haunting reminder to the

> Hindus of the 18th March 1886 verdict of the British

>Judge, Colonel F E A

> Chamier. In Civil Appeal number 27 of 1885 in

>district court, Faizabad, that

> judicial commissioner's assessment was "It is most

>unfortunate that a Masjid

> should have been built on land specially held sacred

>by the Hindus, but as that

> occurred 356 years ago, it is too late (sic) to

>remedy that grievance."

>

> The Chandra Shekhar government in fact, attempted

>that remedy soon after it

> assumed office in November 1990. Rajiv Gandhi advised

>it to narrow down

> the dispute to the specific point whether the Babri

>structure had replaced a

> pre-existing Hindu temple -- not necessarily a Ram

>temple, be it noted. The

> government decided to hold joint talks between the

>VHP and All India Babri

> Masjid Action Committee, AIBMAC. The latter,

>interestingly, had been

> formed after the split of the Babri Masjid

>Co-ordination Committee, BMCC

> following an ego clash in which Syed Abdul Bukhari,

>Imam of Jama Masjid,

> found BMCC convener, Syed Shahabuddin, a difficult

>man to work with

> though he had emerged as the leading spokesman for

>Muslim causes.

>

> The first preliminary meeting between the VHP and

>AIBMAC took place on

> December 1, 1990 in the presence of Subodh Kant

>Sahay, Union minister of

> state for home affairs, Sharad Pawar, Bhairon Singh

>Shekhawat and Mulayam

> Singh Yadav, chief ministers of Maharashtra,

>Rajasthan and UP respectively.

>

> At the second meeting on December 4, 1990, it was

>agreed that a. both sides

> should furnish evidence to the minister of state for

>home by December 22,

> 1990; b. the minister would make photocopies of the

>evidence available to the

> two sides by December 25, 1990 and c. the two parties

>would meet again on

> January 10, 1991 for reviewing the evidence.

>

> It was not as though the VHP had till then concealed

>its evidence. It had, in

> fact, been put before the public on the basis of

>findings by archaeologists and

> scholars. But the JNU historians and Shahabuddin

>himself had been making

> points favouring the hard-core Muslim stand but

>tangential to the central point

> now pinpointed by the Union government.

>

> The Chandra Shekhar government's announcement of

>focussed parleys

> stunned all the pinkos -- the Stalinists and their

>innumerable supporters in the

> "secular" English press. Time for intellectual

>masturbation by "eminent"

> historians was now over. Time had come for the real

>thing.

>

> Next Week: Cowardly Retreat From the Truth

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