It will be difficult to resolve the temple issue within the existing Constitution, says Girilal Jain
Protagonists of Hindutva are as confused about what is happening in the country as their opponents. They are finding it as difficult to distinguish the essential from the accidental as the latter.
The accidental in this case is the proposal to build Ram temple on the Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya and the demolition of the Babri structure which stood there on December 6. And the essential is the reconstitution of the Hindu psyche after a millennium of battering and self-assertion by that psyche. The essential and the accidental are clearly inter-connected. It is no longer material to debate whether the essential is responsible for the accidental or vice versa.
The story of Hindu renaissance, beginning with Raja Rammohan Roy in the first quarter of the 19th century and nourished by mighty spirits such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekanand and Sri Aurobindo, has not been staple of the Indian public discourse in recent decades as it was earlier. But, the process of Hindu self-renewal and self-assertion has continued uninterrupted, though it has not been seen as such. The vision of our dominant elite has been too clouded by borrowed theories.
Seen in the perspective of Hindu self-renewal, secularism has been an expression of the Hindu personality inasmuch as it has meant the right of non-Hindus to practise their own religion, however different from Sanatan Dharma, and live their own lives even if that has involved rejection of a common civil code and insistence of Shariat-based Muslim Personal Law. But secularism has been unacceptable to that psyche in its deep recesses inasmuch as it has involved a false parity and blurring of distinctions of the most fundamental kind. The Congress has engaged in both these efforts. More than that need not be said now.
While, as the ruling party, the Congress has not sought to deny the Hindu spirit in the process of reconstitution as an integrated whole, it has sought to sidetrack it. Equally important, it alone could do so in view of its history, appeal and ambivalence. If, therefore, the status quo based on false parity and denial of the basic differences between Sanatan Dharma and Semitic faiths had to be preserved, the Congress had to retain its appeal and hold. Many of the secularists of today, whether politicians or publicists, have been wholly insensitive to this reality and have made their contribution to the discrediting of the party. The same has been true of Muslim leaders like Syed Shahabuddin and Imam Bukhari. The decline of the Congress can be dated back to 1962 when Pandit Nehru was thrown off balance and his foreign policy exposed to be what it was by the Chinese attack. The results of the next general election in 1967 could leave no room for doubt that the party was in deep decline. It was then that the Jana Sangh with its Hindi platform emerged as a reckonable factor in Indian politics and with it the possibility of a radical departure, though its leaders too, trapped in the theory of nationalism, were no more aware than their detractors that it was Hindu civilisation and not nationalism that was seeking to assert itself.
While this process was held in check by Mrs Indira Gandhi, she could not reverse it. The political scene was a hodge-podge not only till the time of her assassination in 1984 but up to the end of 1989 when Mr Rajiv Gandhi was driven out of office.
The Jana Sangh, now rechristened the Bharatiya Janata Party, was not principally responsible for the discrediting of Mr Rajiv Gandhi and defeat of the Congress. That role was played by Mr VP Singh. But, in the process, he also facilitated the rise in influence and strength of the BJP. The sluice gate had thus been opened a second time. Mr Gandhi was not under an intolerable pressure when he got the locks of the Babri structure with the Ramlalla idols in it opened in 1986. Apparently, for him, it was no more than a move to appease Hindu sentiment just as he had appeased Muslim sentiments in the Shah Bano case.
The critical point is not so much that he failed to anticipate the consequences of this move as that these consequences would not have been as dramatic as they have turned out to be if Mr Gandhi had not been driven to desperation on the Bofors issue and felt obliged to get shilanyas performed outside the disputed site on November 9, 1989, on the eve of the forthcoming poll, if the Congress had not been defeated in the 1989 poll and if the BJP had not risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes to which it had been reduced in 1984. The VHP had mobilised massive support for the temple with the site in question as part of it in 1989.
The movement could probably again be sidetracked if, as Prime Minister, Mr VP Singh had not driven the BJP leadership into a corner by his twin decisions, among others, to recall Governor Jagmohan and to implement the Mandal Commission report. Mr LK Advani undertook the rath yatra in 1990 more as a riposte to Mr VP Singh than as a move to mobilise support for the mandir. But whatever Mr Advani’s calculations, the die was cast not on the Mandal but the temple issue.
In the wake of the 1991 poll, there was an opportunity, not to sidetrack the popular pressure for the temple, but to delink the temple from the assertion of Hindu psyche in an unambiguous matter. Muslim leaders should have realised, and Mr Narasimha Rao should have helped them realise, that to seek to preserve the status quo would strengthen that very process of Hindu assertion they wished to prevent.
On the face of it, Muslim leaders were not perceptive enough. And Mr Rao was either too preoccupied with other problems such as economic reforms, or too concerned with being out-manoeuvred by Mr Arjun Singh, or too much a prisoner of the Congress culture of ambivalence. Be that as it may, the fact remains that he too opted for preserving a status quo which had become untenable. He may have had other intentions at the back of his mind. But that is besides the point. We are concerned with his actions.
To set the record straight, it must also be added that the BJP leadership as a whole too favoured preservation of the status quo. The UP government’s assurances to the Supreme Court and Mr Advani’s utterances cannot leave the slightest scope for doubt. It is less than fair of Mr Rao to accuse them of betraying him. If it was a case of betrayal, it was a case of self-betrayal.
The BJP leadership has been as committed to the existing constitutional arrangements as anyone else. As in the past, it may find itself pushed by events; leaders often lead from behind. But that is another matter. To be more specific, it is evident that the Janmabhoomi and temple issues remain unresolved. It is doubtful that they can be resolved within the parameters of the existing Constitution.
Assuming that the government issues ordinances incorporating decisions it has taken and assuming that the two trusts are set up, implementation of the decision to build the temple and the mosque is bound to get stalled in view of forthcoming proceedings in the Supreme Court. Muslim leaders have decided to appeal to it against the government’s decisions and they cannot go back on this decision. So we shall be back to square one with the difference that the Babri structure is gone. Hopefully, the government has managed to defuse immediate tension by allowing darshan of Ramlalla in the makeshift temple. Beyond that lies uncertainty and confusion. It is open to the media and academia to add to this uncertainty and confusion by trying to frustrate the fulfilment what has been in the works for close to two centuries. But while the temple can be stalled, the spirit cannot be denied. It has become too powerful to be denied.
As it happens, no instrument is in place to preserve the status quo. The Congress is a ghost of its former self. The Janata Dal is a house divided within and against itself. The Left does not count for much outside of West Bengal and Kerala and there too, its position is by no means secure. The leaders of these parties are too self-centered to come together and hold together. An anti-BJP front has been a non-starter from the very beginning. Mediapersons address one another and do not reflect the dramatic shift in public opinion. The scene is set for radical change.
The Observer of Business & Politics, 30 December 1992