It happened 30 years ago, in far-away Tubingen. Some of us from India were attending a seminar on Hinduism. We were having our breakfast one morning – it was October 31,1990 – when someone announced that the Babri Masjid had been razed.We were stunned into silence. The unthinkable had happened. Even as, in utter disbelief, we smarted under the shock, there were subdued queries about when and how. And then, like the proverbial last straw, emerged the thought that it could – must – be a rumour.That is what it soon turned out to be. It was a great relief. Yet, paradoxically, the confirmation that the unthinkable had not happened was also an intimation that it could. The unthinkable, suddenly now, needed to be guarded against.October 30, 1990: the first major assault on the Babri Masjid by Hindutva kar sevaks. Photo courtesy: Anand Swaroop VermaSuddenly there began to loom the threat of a cognitive-cultural metamorphosis, the very overturning of everything precious and noble within us as Hindus and Indians. Destroying the rich, ample cultural-constitutional basis of our collective being, it would forcibly fit our society and nation into the narrow Procrustean bed of Hindutva.The threat has loomed, inexorably, larger since that assault on the Babri Masjid. The event planned for August 5 in Ayodhya – the triumphal bhoomi pujan for the Ram Mandir on the site of the Babri Masjid – is an index of the ominous metamorphosis in the intervening 30 years.Also read: On Eve of Ram Temple Bhoomi Pujan, Those Who Demolished Babri Masjid Go UnpunishedI feel diminished and violated. Diminished and violated as a Hindu, as an Indian, as a human being. I am but one among many.I owe it to all those many that I speak. I owe it to my father and grandfather, to all my noble mythological and historical progenitors, and to Gandhi that I speak. I owe it to my Sughra mausi, to my Mahmudul Hasan chachaji and chachi, to Professor Mujeeb and his nephew Irfan Habib, to Gulammuhammad Sheikh, to Ahsan Raza Khan, and to so many more of my living and dead Muslim friends and benefactors that I speak. I owe it to the Jamia Millia Islamia, to the Aligarh Muslim University, and to the Banaras Hindu University that I speak. I owe it to the victims and also the masterminds of that metamorphosis that I speak.A meeting of the VHP’s central governing body (the Kendriya Margdarshak Mandal) being held on December 5, 1992, for a discussion on the ‘karseva schedule’ on December 6. Photo: T. NarayanOf the multiple identities that constitute my being, there is not one that is not diminished and violated by what passes for Hindutva. But here I speak primarily as a Hindu.I was born in a Brahmin family. My grandfather was a freedom fighter and a zamindar. My father was a judicial officer who devoted the 37 years that he lived after retirement to the study of Panini’s great treatise on grammar, Ashtadhyayi, and to writing poetry in Sanskrit. A quintessential Hindu, he loved Hindustani classical music, and wished to die listening to Ustad Faiyaz Khan. I grew up calling my mother Ammi. Ammi, Sarojini Mishra, used to discourse regularly on the Ramcharitamanas. Her discourses have been published as Shri Ramcharitamanas mein navadha bhakti. She had two sisters. But I had three maternal aunts, the third being my Sughra Mausi.Once, my father was transferred when my classes had begun, and no accommodation was available in the college hostel. It was to their friends, Janab Mahmudul Hasan Saheb and Begum Mahmudul Hasan, that my parents turned to then, and I was privileged to live with them for the rest of the year.I am one of the very few scholars, if not the only one, who have been associated with the Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, and the Banaras Hindu University. I was in Delhi during the anti-Sikh violence of 1984, in Surat during the December 1992 anti-Muslim violence, and in Baroda during Gujarat 2002. I know what violence means.Such an upbringing and such influences, fortified by my academic training, made me deeply suspicious of narrow identities, especially my Brahmin-Hindu identity. Later on my doctoral research on the emergence of national consciousness in modern India showed me, in addition to its liberating role and romance, the seamy and exploitative side of nationalism. More so when unquestioned submission is commanded in the name of the nation-state. Thus, even national identity came within the category of narrow identities.The 1990 Hindutva assault on the Babri Masjid jolted the long-slumbering Hindu within me into awakening. What was being done in the name of Hindus was flagrantly un-Hindu. I could not, I realised, let my precious Hindu heritage be demeaned and hijacked.L.K. Advani during his 1990 rath yatra, flanked by Narendra Modi, who was then an RSS pracharak. Photo: Reuters/FilesMy defining image of Hindutva comes from L.K. Advani, the man whose rath yatra led to the first assault on the Babri Masjid and made Hindutva a formidable political force. I vividly recall his face on my Doordarshan screen as he said: Bhagwan Ram ke nam mein hinsa ho hi nahin sakti. Connect – and contrast – this with the violence of October 30 in Ayodhya, and you get the reality of Hindutva. Remember also that when the deed had been finally done on December 6, 1992, Advani described that as the saddest day of his life.Remember, further, chief minister Kalyan Singh’s solemn assurance to the Supreme Court that no harm would be permitted to the ‘disputed structure’. Mark also that not one among those charged in that mockery of law – the Babri Masjid demolition case – has had the courage to proudly assume responsibility for avenging what they believe to be a historical humiliation.Also read: Justice A.K. Ganguly: ‘If Babri Masjid Was Still Standing, Would SC Have Had it Demolished?’What sort of an ideal this Hindutva is that it can inspire endless lying and deception, callous pursuit and abuse of power, but generate no readiness for sacrifice? Maybe there are stray exceptions to prove the rule, the ones swearing by Hindutva are often crass, crude and ignorant. Their ignorance, especially when they are in a position of power or influence, is combined with arrogance. Even of the Hindu religion and culture, they have little knowledge. Their most potent weapon, and shield, is their certainty. They harangue, don’t ever listen.‘Hindu, Hindutva, Hindustan’, by Sudhir Chandra, Delhi, Rajkamal, 2003. The cover is by well-known artist Gulammuhammad Sheikh.My first, and very ample, experience of this came during a visit to Ayodhya within weeks of the October 30 assault. I went there along with five other academics. A detailed account of it, written jointly by historian Gyan Pandey and me, is available in my Hindu, Hindutva, Hindustan (Nayi Dilli, Rajkamal Prakashan, 2003, pp. 55-74).Here are a few details to indicate why the Hindu in me is revolted by Hindutva. Within hours of reaching Ayodhya, we met a young Provincial Civil Service (PCS) officer who was posted there as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate. On learning that we meant to see the Babri Masjid, his response was: “You call that a mosque? Where is the mosque? Go there and see for yourselves. There is not even the trace of a mosque. Since 1951 no namaz has been held there. It’s a proper temple with regular worship. Akhand – non-stop – kirtan has been going on since 1949.”This young officer also told us that on October 30, the Hindutva kar sevaks, unaided by any means, managed to mount the high, slippery domes of the mosque within the twinkling of an eye. As against them, the commandos who were sent up to save the domes needed an hour-and-a-half to reach there. The popular belief, we soon learnt, was that it was Bhagwan Ram’s monkeys who had stormed the domes.Particularly telling was our visit to the Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir (as the disputed structure was then called). Immediately upon entering the complex we found a small office of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad where propaganda literature was available. In the main room of the Masjid-Mandir – called garbha-griha, or sanctum sanctorum – was the idol of Ram Lalaa, whose praakatya – appearance – occurred on the night of December 23, 1949, when K.K. Nair, ICS, was the district magistrate of Faizabad. Nair, in turn, was honoured with a place in the garbha-griha where his portrait was prominently displayed. He was also installed in the makeshift exhibition that was set up near the garbha-griha and extolled as “a model officer committed to justice and constitution”.Ignoring that there was no constitution in 1949, this valorisation of an officer like Nair reveals the kind of understanding Hindutva has of pivotal issues of civilised national existence like justice and the constitution.Also read: Ayodhya Dispute: Was Public Peace Privileged Over Justice?The exhibition presented a most communally charged and provocative ‘history’ of the Ram temple. The history commenced with one miracle and ended with another. The original miracle portrayed King Vikramaditya, guided by Prayagraj, discovering Lord Ram’s birthplace, and building a temple on that very spot. The concluding miracle showed thousands of kar sevaks needing a split second to scale the domes on October 30, 1990. Relentlessly demonising the Muslims – Babar ki aulad – the exhibition had a picture with the exhortation: “To kill cow killers is the religious duty of every Hindu.”The exhibition was a heady mix of myth, history, religion, and politics brought together with singular unconcern for truth and human decency. It was designed to so produce an excess of faith and belief as to render facts irrelevant. It also provided a preview of the Hindu rashtra with which Hindutva aspires to substitute the liberal secular Indian nation.Mahant Ram Chandra Das Paramhans at a press conference with Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal, in Ayodhya, 2002. Photo: Reuters/Jason ReedNothing in our Ayodhya visit was so chilling and portentous as our audience with Mahant Ram Chandra Das Paramhans. Here is an abbreviated account. Seated under a large peepal tree, the Mahant had barely begun speaking when a leaf flew into his luxuriant white beard and a zealous devotee rushed to remove it. A beatific smile appeared on the old man’s face as he said: “Birds used to turn the beards of our rishis and munis into their nests and have their eggs and little ones there. And you will not let even a little leaf rest there!”This tender heart then told us that he was 40 when he approached the Allahabad high court to obtain justice for the Ram Mandir. After a futile wait of 40 years he withdrew the case. This prompted the judge to ask how, then, would there be a decision, and the Mahant replied: “The same way as Babar did.” “What has been lost to the sword,” he clarified, “would come back by the sword.”“You may ask,” he continued, “whether felling the mosque is not paap [sin]. What Babar did, was that punya [virtuous deed]? Would you cleanse paap with punya or with paap?”Also read: Ayodhya Verdict: The Poems that Could Have Changed HistoryThen, as the Mahant referred to the police firing on October 30 and November 2 – in which 16 kar sevaks were killed – the Durvasa in him came out: “The temple shall, of course, be built. But the issue today is not the temple. I have lost 1,500 of my children. I want 15,000 in return. Only then will we talk of building the temple.” He did not specify it, but everyone understood that he wanted 15,000 Muslims in return.A lone Durvasa in a multitude of mythological munis may be amusing. But an idea that sustains itself by spawning Durvasas is a nightmare. Hindutva is precisely that.What happened on December 6, 1992, was a political-cultural calamity. Yet, there was some hope of better sense prevailing. I had myself, writing in The Wire on December 9, 2018, sought to show that the reconstruction of the Somnath temple rendered obligatory the rebuilding of the Babri Masjid where it was and as it was in its heyday. What is planned, sadly with the blessings of the Supreme Court, for August 5 in Ayodhya will altogether rule out the undoing of the wrong of December 6, 1992.An early 20th century archival photograph of the Babri Masjid. Photo: British LibraryThis may seem too late, but those who care for their religion and their country must, in this dark hour, heed the ever neglected warning of Gandhi, the greatest Hindu of our day:The world’s largest mosque, the Jama Masjid, is situated here. What will happen to this mosque if we kill most of the Muslims, and the ones who survive go to Pakistan driven by fear? Will you send the mosque to Pakistan, or raze it, or convert it into a Shivalaya? Suppose a Hindu even presumes to build a temple, or the Sikhs think of building a gurudwara there. That, I tell you, would be to try and bury the Hindu and Sikh religions. Religion cannot be preserved this way.No juridic chicanery, no Hindutva hubris, no coercive State apparatus will count on the day of reckoning. Sudhir Chandra is the author of The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India and Gandhi: An Impossible Possibility (both published by Routledge).
