Four points should be obvious to any discerning observer in relation to the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue in the relatively quiet atmosphere Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s deft handling of the crisis last month has produced.
First, the consequences will be grave if the problem is not resolved during the brief respite Mr Rao has bought for himself and the country. As the crisis last month amply demonstrated, the stage is past when the issue could again be put on hold. The first casualties of any attempt to do so will be men and women of moderation and goodwill in the Congress and the BJP-VHP-RSS combine. But much more than the future of some individuals and even the government is at stake. By no reckoning is this the time to invoke some abstract principles and side-step the reality on the ground.
Explosive Potential
Secondly, a strange, indeed unique, series of developments spread over more than four decades, beginning with the placement of idols in the already unused Babri Masjid in 1949, have cumulatively given the dispute the explosive potential it has acquired. Such developments cannot possibly be repeated to give rise to another similar problem. As such, it is not only possible but necessary to treat it as an altogether special case.
In plain terms, the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute should not be used to raise the spectre that similar campaigns and demands will arise in respect of other mosques which have allegedly been built on the sites of demolished temples often with their material.
Thirdly, the Supreme Court cannot resolve this problem, brave declarations by some of its judges notwithstanding. It will indeed be highly surprising if the court can cut through the legal maze that has grown around the issue since the first petition was moved in the Allahabad high court over 40 years ago. But what if it does perform such a miracle?
The critical issue in this case is in fact no longer legal at all. The heart of the matter is why the site in question has been known as Janmasthan as far back as we go into its history and whether a temple stood there earlier. Surely these are not questions the apex or any other court can settle. These are clearly matters for archaeologists and historians to decide and since many of them are passionately committed on one side or the other, they cannot be depended upon either to agree among themselves, or to tender agreed recommendations to the court.
The Supreme court can only help prolong the status quo as the Allahabad high court has done all these years. Indeed, that is perhaps one reason why Babri Masjid Action Committee leaders are so eloquent in their promises to abide by the court verdict in this case. They have not always been so respectful towards the judiciary. Witness the denunciation by some of them of the same Supreme court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case and the pressure they successfully mounted on Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to annul it by way of a new parliamentary enactment.
The VHP leaders are not being deliberately provocative and subversive of the rule of law when they refuse similarly to commit themselves. In their rather inelegant way, they are only saying that the status quo is not acceptable to them. It cannot suit the country either.
Fourth, the Prime Minister is in a position to take up the thread where his predecessor, Mr Chandra Shekhar, left it in terms of presentation of evidence by the two sides in respect of their claims and counter-claims, specifically on the question of the presence or otherwise of a Hindu temple earlier on the present Babri Masjid site and simultaneously to institute a governmental inquiry in that regard in order to equip himself with the facts of the case. Since Muslim leaders, including Syed Shahabuddin, committed themselves at one stage to handing over the site if it was established that a Hindu temple existed there, this approach can work. For, there cannot be much doubt about the existence of the temple.
Muslim Leaders
But this will not be an ideal solution. A prime ministerial verdict would not help lighten the heavy burden of the chequered history of Hindu-Muslim relations which continues to cast its dark shadow over the present and to threaten to overwhelm the future. A solution can emerge only if Muslim leaders agree, on their own, to the shifting of the mosque to a mutually agreed place so that the construction of the proposed Ram temple can begin in a proper atmosphere.
Indian Islam has no more been a fixed category than Hinduism. It has changed from time to time depending on the exigencies of the situation. In our era, it changed dramatically in 1947 when many of those who regarded themselves as legatees of the Mughal empire by virtue of their foreign descent, real or imaginary, the status of their forefathers under Muslin rule and their distinct culture, left what is our India today for the new state of Pakistan.
The self-perception of this elite is evident in the writings and utterances of Sir Sayyid Ahmed, among those of others. Partition was in no small way the result of the self-perception and activities of this class, though leadership was provided by Jinnah who came from a very different background. Indian Islam can broadly be said to have moved from militancy to orthodoxy in 1947.
Hopeful Feature
Indian Islam underwent another radical change in 1965 and 1971 when the myth of superior Muslin valour was laid to rest on the battlefield. This is not a pleasant thing to say in polite society and it is not being said in a spirit of narrow chauvinism. But to avoid it is also to neglect a hopeful feature of the scene.
A third change will have been initiated if and when Muslim leaders voluntarily agree to hand over the Babri Masjid site before and indeed without a final and official determination that a temple existed there. This symbolic gesture will do much more than help dispose of the specific Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue. It can help promote fresh thinking and attitudes. That will meet a Muslim need as much as a Hindu one – the need to grapple with the past. There is no other way to exorcise the ghost of the past. Secularism and rule of law are noble concepts and they alone can constitute the foundations of the Indian state. But these are not independent and absolute categories. They were born, and they have prospered, in certain historical circumstances. As such they have to be related to the compulsions of circumstances. The law of necessity is as pertinent as the rule of law.
For a number of historical reasons, the Indian elite has a special fondness for abstract principles divorced from social, economic and political realities. A significant section of this elite has indulged in this trait without restraint in a number of cases in the past, the intense hatred of Indira Gandhi for example, and it has done the same in respect of the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy. That is a road to disaster.
The Times of India, 14 August 1992