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Revisiting December 6, 1992

Seven years is not a long time in a nation's life; at best it can measure up to a pause, a semicolon, which thankfully is far removed from a period. But listening to the emotionally surcharged Opposition rave and rant against the Bharatiya Janata Party government -- an opposition that does not miss out on the significance of the day to recharge its secular batteries -- one can be excused for concluding that the Babri Masjid represents the weft and the woof of the nation's secular fabric.

Taking this point of view further, it not only seems that secularism as an Indian ethos died the day the Babri Masjid was pulled down, but that commemoration of an invasion's detritus was the acid test of one's commitment to a faith that does not need to be enshrined in the Constitution to become an Indian article of faith.

In reality, however, there cannot be a more distorted view than equating Babri Masjid with secularism. Nothing can be more barbaric than the wilful tearing down of a place of worship, especially in a land that has since time immemorial served as a haven against religious persecution. Sceptics, of course, may direct their questions at Parsis, Jews, Ahmediyas, Tibetans who have made India their home.

My contention is that much as the nation may have bled over the demolition of the mosque, which had long ceased to be one, in retrospect it was not as bad an event as it was made out to be. Let us try and examine what the perception then was, and the reality of the situation today is.

THEN: The BJP was reviled as a party of mosque-breaking Hindu fundamentalists, in whose reign the minorities will find no succour.

NOW: Seven years later, the nation has come to terms with the BJP and its lunatic fringe. Has the nation changed? Yes, but not as much as the BJP itself which has had to jettison all of its contentious agenda for the sake of power. And no further proof of this transformation is needed, than the presence of the leading lights of the conventional brand of 'secularism' like Nara Chandrababu Naidu, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, George Fernandes et al on the BJP bandwagon.

This, in fact, is the backbone of my contention that what politicians perceive to be secularism is not what the people believe in. The former's brand has to do with votes; the latter's is a credo, a modus vivendi.

THEN: The minorities have no future in the country if the BJP comes to power.

NOW: The BJP may not have had the minorities rooting for it, but in various parts of the country where the BJP has been in power the minorities did not undergo any extra level of discrimination than what they had been undergoing earlier, under far more 'secular' dispensations. Maharashtra, for instance, when it was under the BJP-Sena rule, did not experience communal riots. Saying that the rioters were now in power and hence no riots, is being glib; the reality is that communal riots were being used as a tool for browbeating the minorities, for corralling them in a state of backwardness. Everyone knows who the perpetrators of this horrific game were; it needs no repetition. But the reality is that just as non-BJP rule was no 'Ram rajya' for the minorities, BJP rule is no nightmare either.

THEN: The pulling down of the Babri Masjid was an indelible stain on the country's image.

NOW: Yes, the demolition was a terrible act that struck at the root of India's self-image as a tolerant society. To me, however, it seems unfair to single out the BJP and its various cohorts for the demolition. Indubitably, its lunatic fringe tore down the structure, but to me everybody who was responsible for raising the political temperature in the country then to such a fever pitch is equally culpable, even if, at the time of the actual demolition, they were sitting miles away.

THEN: P V Narasimha Rao watched the situation deteriorate and did nothing to prevent the demolition and hence he is guilty of criminal abetment.

NOW: Yes, but Rao's inaction was not part of his legendary inertia. He let the demolition squad get on with it, since he realised that the only way to stop the BJP's steroid-inspired growth was to cut at its root. So long as the mosque -- a crumbling place of worship where namaaz had not been read for decades -- stood, there was no stopping either the BJP or its divisive agenda from gaining ground, was Rao's reading of the situation. And seven years later, I have no problem in admitting that Rao was right, while the rest of us who pilloried him for his inaction have been proved wrong.

Saying the above, however, is not to absolve the BJP leadership. It rode the tiger, something it had no business doing, since it had no clue about when or how to get off it. It drove a stake through the heart of India, divided its people, and brought shame on a peaceful land. Justice, meted out by an impartial forum, will be done, of that there need be no doubt.

But in the meantime the people have already read out their sentence. By denying the party a majority of its own in Parliament. By thus forcing it to go in for alliances for which the quid pro quo has been the dilution, if not actual deletion, of its controversial agenda. By placing it on probation, as it were, in the Lok Sabha.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy