About closure, not justice

Neerja Chowdhury

Senior Political Commentator

In November 2019, the Supreme Court gave its go-ahead for building a Ram temple where the Babri masjid once stood. And now the special CBI court has given its judgment that no one is guilty of having demolished the mosque on December 6, 1992. The judgment may bring a closure to the Ayodhya chapter. But it has not brought justice.

It was no less than the country’s Supreme Court which had in 2017 and in 2019 pointed out that the demolition of the masjid was ‘a calculated act’, ‘unlawful’, and ‘an egregious violation of the rule of law’.

The special CBI judge has cited lack of evidence against LK Advani, MM Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati and 28 others and acquitted them. Forty-nine of them were originally charged — 17 died during the pendency of the case — of criminal conspiracy and lesser crimes like incitement, rioting and creating enmity between communities. They have been pronounced not guilty on all charges.

CBI judge SK Yadav has attributed what happened on that fateful day to a spontaneous outburst of anger and emotion. A few hundred angry people can climb atop the 16th century mosque but cannot desecrate it with their bare hands in the heat of the moment, all within five hours. There were photographs and eyewitnesses showing kar sevaks using shovels, pickaxes, rods, ropes and more. So they, at least a group, had come prepared and knew what to do. Who were these faceless people? Even if they were ‘Pakistanis’ or ‘terrorists’, as alluded by the judge, we are nowhere nearer the truth about their identity.

Twenty-eight years — and six PMs belonging to the BJP, Congress and the Third Front — down the line, we still do not know who was responsible for it. That does not say much for a nation of a billion-plus people, a system of parliamentary democracy we have taken pride in, or our institutions, be it the judiciary or the investigating agencies. If anything, the judge puts the CBI—the ‘caged parrot’ or ‘its master’s voice’ in the words of the Supreme Court seven years ago — on the mat for shoddy investigation. Even minimum requirements like the authentication of documents and videos was not done.

It is really our institutions which are in the dock today. And the Ayodhya judgments have once again underlined the new reality of how much these institutions have undergone a change. That it should take 28 years to get a judgment speaks volumes about the state of affairs in the judiciary. By this time, the accused could have lost their memory, and they deposed only a few weeks ago. Advani is 92 years old, Joshi and Kalyan Singh 86 years. India has also moved on. Today, two out of three Indians have no familiarity with Ayodhya or the demolition, with 65% of the population under 35. And half the Indians were not even born in 1992 and would accept whatever they are told about what happened years ago.

The trial started seriously only three years ago. No other issue has determined the trajectory of Indian politics in independent India as has Ayodhya. A verdict, either way, after 28 years, is anyway a mockery of justice.

Had the verdict, hypothetically speaking, held any of these senior BJP, RSS or VHP leaders guilty, it would have brought them centre stage again as charioteers of a movement which catapulted the BJP from a pathetic two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to 80-plus in 1991 with the graph climbing upwards after that. The foundations of the edifice later erected by Vajpayee and Modi were laid in those years of Advani’s Ram rath yatra in 1990, and the temple movement that followed. It created the ‘mahaul’ which led to the demolition. Had Messrs Advani, Joshi and others been charged, they would have gone in appeal, and the focus would have shifted back to them again. Today, they are on the margins.

As things stand, the Ram mandir is getting identified with Modi. The ruling for the temple has come in his tenure. It is he who laid the first brick for its construction on August 5 this year. It is he who is fulfilling the Sangh Parivar’s core agenda. In all likelihood, he will inaugurate the temple when it is completed in the run-up to 2024 General Elections. It may give the BJP some electoral advantage in UP in 2022, and nationally in 2024. The mandir today has become more about Modi than about Advani, Joshi, Kalyan, Katiyar or Uma.

There was a time when Advani had made an offer to the Muslim leadership — that if they agreed to let the mandir be built in Ayodhya, the BJP could let go of its claim on Kashi and Mathura. But this was neither acceptable to the Muslim side nor to the VHP at the time.

In the last few weeks, the Mathura-Kashi issues have come to the fore again. Petitions were filed for the removal of the Gyan Vapi mosque and the Shahi Idgah located inside the Kashi and Mathura temples. The Place of Worship Act, 1991, was also challenged in June this year. Legislated during PV Narasimha Rao’s premiership, it prohibited any change in the status of any religious place as it existed on August 15, 1947, barring Ram Janmabhoomi. Therefore, it went to protect Kashi and Mathura as they stand today, with the mosques inside their premises.

With the two judgments on Ayodhya, Hindu militant groups may now be tempted — and emboldened — to push the envelope to ‘reclaim’ Kashi and Mathura. It was part of the VHP agenda. From the moves made recently, it seems that they may keep it as an issue in reserve, which can be hyped up if the economic hardship increases in the months to come. So the mandir story may be far from over.

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