Phenomenal World

On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, marking a triumph for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and far-right Hindu groups including the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The temple was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque illegally destroyed by 150,000 Hindu extremists in 1992, in a campaign which incited communal violence across the country. 

In a 1994 book, NILANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY examines the political actors involved in the temple campaign and the 1992 demolition. 

From the text:

“The manifold growth of the BJP in 1989 stemmed from two factors. First, by shrewdly aligning itself with the anti-Congress opposition parties, and sensing that the Indian electorate was keen to jettison the Congress if a viable alternative appeared in the offing. Second, the BJP also reaped the benefits of the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) Ram temple agitation. It projected itself as the only political party that considered the temple agitation to be a legitimate one, and a right one at that, to undo the ‘historical wrong.’ The BJP was also aided in its rise to the pivotal position by the inability of other non-Congress parties to assess the ultimate plan of the BJP. This was evident in the manner in which non-Congress opposition parties forged alliances with the BJP, solely to defeat the Congress and paid scant regard to what the BJP could gain from such alliances. This included the communists, who forged indirect political alliances with the BJP, in the general elections of 1989 and in the elections for state assembly in Haryana in 1987. The BJP’s new thrust began in 1986, when Advani was elected president. Shrewdly, the BJP did not get directly embroiled in the VHP agitation. Instead, the party waited for the agitation to gain momentum, and when the political developments started snowballing towards a crisis, the BJP cleverly played the ‘temple card’ and reaped electoral benefits from the supporters of the temple agitation. From the time the VHP launched its temple agitation and started its campaign, the BJP had virtually two machineries at its disposal: its own cadre drawn from the RSS fold, and the neo-converts to the VHP fold.” 

+  “The VHP’s case is based on false history.” AG Noorani in 1989. Link. And see Noorani’s two-volume The Babri Masjid Question 1528-2003, an extensivedocumentation of the political and legal battles around the mosque. Link. 

+  “One of the most sinister features of the recent Hindutva movement has been the foregrounding of the militantly communal Hindu woman.” Tanika Sarkar in 1991 on the RSS women’s wing. Link. And Sudha Pai on caste and communal violence in Uttar Pradesh after 1992. Link. 

+  “A high court in independent India, swearing by the lofty ideals of the Constitution, relies on the ‘faith and belief of the Hindus’ to decide a property dispute, thereby retrogressing to pre-modernity.” Anand Teltumbde on the 2010 Supreme Court decision. Link. And a recent op-ed by Ashoka Mody on the decline of secularism. Link.