Jyoti Punwani: December 6, 1992, All Over Again?

Can ordinary citizens counter this backward march?

Can peace activists ensure that the two communities retain their bonds? Do they have a choice, asks Jyoti Punwani.

If December 6, 1992, was a turning point in our history, so was November 27, 2024. That was the day a Rajasthan court entertained a petition for a survey of the Ajmer Sharif dargah.

That day marked a milestone in our journey backwards from when Babri Masjid was demolished.

On that Sunday in 1992, as the grey imposing mosque was brought down by frenzied hordes, it seemed to bring down with it the secularism that had guided State policy since Independence, in howsoever flawed a manner.

That had not been the first blow to the secular spirit that we had taken for granted. That blow had been struck on June 6, 1984, when army tanks moved into the Golden Temple and shelled the Akal Takht, the holiest shrine of the minority Sikh community.

In 1992, the demolition of a minority place of worship was not carried out by the State, but it was facilitated by it. In fact, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh of the BJP, was formally punished by the Supreme Court for going back on his commitment that the almost 500-year-old masjid would not be touched by the lakhs expected to gather in Ayodhya on December 6. His government too was dismissed, on the Centre's advice.

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The contrast today couldn't be starker.

Courts now entertain petitions from all and sundry for 'surveys' to determine that ancient mosques have been built over temples. The Ajmer Sharif petitioner, Vishnu Gupta, has multiple FIRs against him, and three of his petitions on other matters have been dismissed by high courts and the Supreme Court.

Secondly, unlike the Babri Masjid, the mosques being targeted today are very much in use. Indeed, worshippers were present when the second survey of Sambhal's Jama Masjid was conducted on November 24. According to the affidavit filed in the Supreme Court by the mosque committee, the namazis were asked to leave so that the survey could be carried out. The wazu khana (ablution tank) was then drained, with water flowing on to the road.

All of this sparked off rumours that the mosque was being excavated, leading to violence which left 5 Muslim youth dead in firing. The police have denied that they fired.

The Sambhal Jama Masjid is the oldest surviving Mughal era mosque in the country.

In Ajmer, even as a court has sent notices to the ASI, the ministry of minority affairs and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah Committee over Vishnu Gupta's petition, preparations by the city's authorities have already begun to receive the 5 lakh visitors -- Hindus and Muslims -- for the annual urs of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti due next month.

Will the prime minister continue with his practice of sending a chaddar on the occasion to the dargah, or will he validate Vishnu Gupta's petition by ending this practice?

Incidentally, even after relinquishing the Rajasthan CM's post, the BJP's Vasundhara Raje continues to send a chaddar to the dargah.

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The years following December 6, 1992, seemed relatively free of communal violence, until Gujarat 2002. About a hundred did die in Hindu Muslim violence in Hubli, Bengaluru and Coimbatore, in 1994 and 1997, but compared to the thousands who had been killed in riots between 1985 and 1993, during the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi campaign, and after the demolition, this seemed a small number.

Again, during 2004-2014, when the UPA reigned, communal riots declined. Those years saw targeted killings of both communities in bomb blasts, but even these didn't spark off communal violence. It seemed like the fire that had consumed thousands of lives earlier had been quenched. The 1991 Places of Worship Act, which banned any future claims over places of worship, helped in producing a sense of security.

Today, it is as if this Act does not exist.

Over the last two years, the slogan of the Ayodhya campaign: 'Ayodhya toh ek jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura baaki hai' is back with a bang. It's being acted upon, not by mass mobilisation as was the case with the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, but through the judiciary.

For the first time, Sangh Parivar spokespersons, who used to shout from the rooftops that matters of religious belief cannot be abjudicated by courts of law, are declaring their faith in courts to reclaim the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura.

And why not? After all, the Supreme Court had granted the land on which the Babri mosque stood to the Hindu side, and even directed the government to build a Ram temple on it, in its 2019 judgment.

The process set in motion then appears to be inexorable now.

In 1992, a Kalyan Singh could actually promise the Supreme Court that the Babri Masjid would not be touched. Everyone knew this promise would not be kept -- after all, Singh's own party men were out to destroy the masjid. But such was the belief in the authority of the Supreme Court that it was expected that the Centre would intervene to protect the masjid.

When that didn't happen, the party at the Centre paid a price. The Congress lost the next Lok Sabha elections and didn't come back to power at the Centre till 2004.

The BJP lost UP, too, coming back to power only in 1997.

Thirty two years later, the political climate has changed to such an extent that nobody pays the price. The BJP did lose Ayodhya this year in the Lok Sabha election, but that wasn't due to anger over the Ram Mandir being built, but the way land was acquired for its surroundings.

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There is one section, though, that does pay a price.

As courts continue to give concessions to Hindu petitioners, with a district court even allowing Hindus to pray inside the Gyanvapi Masjid, it is easy to imagine what Muslims must feel. The BJP might cry 'vote jihad', but is it any surprise that it lost to the Samajwadi Party in the Lok Sabha elections in UP?

However, while Muslims may vote to defeat the party that hasn't stopped tormenting them since it took over in 2014, no general or state-wide election can be won or lost on the Muslim vote alone.

Additionally, electoral defeats don't always change ground reality, as is evident in the rallies asking for demolition of mosques in Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh. On court orders, three floors of the Sanjauli mosque in Shimla, a 125-year-old place of worship, were demolished by the mosque authorities themselves in October.

It is not just Muslims who are unhappy. Ordinary Hindus who have been living in harmony with Muslims in all these ancient cities don't want such poison to foul their air. Nor do those who believe in the secular character of the Indian State.

As petitioners set their sights over national landmarks such as Delhi's Jama Masjid and even the Taj Mahal, we face a scenario that never could have been imagined.

With every institution complicit, can ordinary citizens counter this backward march? Can peace activists ensure that the two communities retain their bonds?

Do they have a choice?