The month, December, in 1992
when hate destroyed a mosque.
Based on a planted narrative
in the name of my religion.
That day in 1992
when hate destroyed a mosque.
December 6, 1992.
December 6, 1992.
Thirty years have passed.
I had just entered college. The wintry month of December was National Service Scheme (NSS) camp.
A small group of us students had gone on the camp truck to the local market to get vegetables for the camp. The cool December air wrapped our faces as we sat on the back of the truck, the warmth of the sun pleasantly interrupting the cold air.
As the afternoon rolled in, the news spread that Babri masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (the place; although the Hindu epic Ramayana refers to Ayodhya as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, there is no empirical evidence archeologically or historically to suggest that the Ayodhya of Ramayana is the same as the place Ayodhya), had been attacked by Hindutva mobs (referred to as kar sevaks) who had razed it to the ground. The kar sevaks that made up the violent mob were affiliated with a range of Sangh organizations including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
I had just entered college. The wintry month of December was National Service Scheme (NSS) camp.
A small group of us students had gone on the camp truck to the local market to get vegetables for the camp. The cool December air wrapped our faces as we sat on the back of the truck, the warmth of the sun pleasantly interrupting the cold air.
As the afternoon rolled in, the news spread that Babri masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (the place; although the Hindu epic Ramayana refers to Ayodhya as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, there is no empirical evidence archeologically or historically to suggest that the Ayodhya of Ramayana is the same as the place Ayodhya), had been attacked by Hindutva mobs (referred to as kar sevaks) who had razed it to the ground. The kar sevaks that made up the violent mob were affiliated with a range of Sangh organizations including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The VHP had started organizing a political campaign to build a temple dedicated to Ram at the site of the mosque in the 1980s, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) offering political legitimacy and gaining political leverage around the campaign. The party went from having two members of Parliament (MPs) to having 88 in the 1989 elections.
Then came the materializing of the campaign with the demolition of the mosque. The RSS and its affiliates organized a rally that involved 150,000 VHP and BJP supporters at the mosque. Hindutva mobs, mobilized by BJP leaders who delivered rousing speeches, stormed into the structure of the mosque, climbing it and starting to attack it with axes, hammers, and grappling hooks. Within a few hours, the structure of the mosque was leveled. In the riots that followed across the country, over 2,000 people died.
In 1990, a chariot procession (rath yatra) had been organized by Hindutva organizations, mobilizing and collecting mobs around the nation, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the leader of the party, L K Advani, traveling across the expanse of North India to Ayodhya.
The procession, echoing with the chant, "Jai Shree Ram," announced the arrival of a new Hinduism, one that is bold and proud, seeking to undo what it saw as the wrongs of the past, reclaiming a Hindu future.
This new Hinduism was a political project, molten from fascism and built around constructing India as a Hindu Rashtra (nation). The 1990 Rath Yatra led to Sangh Parivar supporters reaching the mosque and attempting to attack it.
The Rath Yatra functioned as an organizing trope for Hindus around hate, securing a large-scale electoral presence for the BJP in the elections to come, and building a voter base of Hindus consolidated around Islamophobic hate.
Observed an India Today report,
"The scenes will return, like deranged ghosts, to haunt those of us who were at the graveside to witness the burial of a secular dream. The screams of exultation with each blow of a pickaxe, each thrust of a rod, each dome that came crashing down. If there were no implements, the frenzied hordes would have used their bare hands to the same effect, so powerful was the poison that coursed through their veins in those few hours of madness."
It was 1992, and Hindutva had arrived. Colonizing Hinduism to serve the agenda of hate, co-opting Hinduism as the illegal destruction of a mosque by its extremist foot workers, and mobilized by the extremist speeches of its ideologues. Giving effect to the fascist political project of Hindutva.
The account offered by the India Today report captures the violent frenzy that marked the demolition of the Babri masjid,
"The provocative exhortations over the loudspeakers that rose even above the roar of the crowds. The forest of gleaming trishuls raised high in militant victory. And, the twin plumes that snaked to the skies: the dust from the demolished structure, and smoke from nearby Muslim houses torched in the orgasmic fever. Religion was their opium and it returned Ayodhya to the medieval ages."
Within a decade, Hindutva traveled from the fringes where it bred its extremist ideology to the mainstream of India, an India that took pride until then in its constitutional politics as a postcolonial nation anchored in the principles of socialism, secularism, sovereignty, and republicanism that drew from the anti-colonial struggle placed in dialogue with colonial era acts such as The Government of India Act and The Indian Councils Acts.
It was the end of the year 1992 and Hindutva had secured its hegemonic hold over the political and public spheres, interrupting the narrative arc of an India whose postcolonial commitments to secularism were organized around safeguarding the rights of its minorities, albeit with many gaps in implementing the commitment effectively.
The images of Hindutva mobs, weapons in their hands, and climbing the mosque were everywhere. They occupied the public spaces, the front pages of print media. and the screens of Doordarshan, the state-owned television.
It was 1992 and the arrival of Hindutva as the chanting crowds became mainstream.
The slogan, "Jai Shree Ram" turned from a celebration of the Hindu God Ram into a call to Hindus to take up arms to protect their/our religion (the origins of the narrative, "the Hindu is in danger"), save it from invaders, and mobilize to return it to its past.
The attack on the Babri masjid was built on the constructed narrative that the temple was the birthplace of Lord Ram. Note here the absence of empirical evidence that documents this, including documenting that the place Ayodhya is the same place mentioned in the epic (including in the recent Supreme Court verdict of 2021 that is unable to establish these two claims on the basis of empirical evidence).
The mythological significance of Ayodhya as the birthplace of Lord Ram was turned into the narrative infrastructure of hate, devoid of empirical registers and committed to the essentialist notion of reclaiming Hinduism through traditional cultural markers from the past. To establish a sacred mythology into a material space in the contemporary, Hindutva undid a key tenet of Hinduism, its pluralism, that does not legitimize the attack on the sacred space of another faith tradition.
Returning to our interrupted shopping trip, our purchases needed to be hurried amidst news of riots breaking around India and the declaration of a curfew. We climbed into the truck with our food supplies. When returning on the camp truck, we kneeled over in the back of the truck, putting our heads down.
The cool winter afternoon had suddenly turned into an eerie evening, where the air felt cold and we could feel the anxiety and the shame wrapping us up.
I could palpably feel the shame in every breath I took, letting it sink in that this destruction was carried out in the name of my religion.
I wondered how I would face Gulam-da and his family, our Muslim family friends who were connected with my family across generations. The darkness all around was sinking in and I felt I was drowning in it.
December 6, 1992.
The year would mark the beginning of many fictions, organized around religious nationalism and legitimized by the emotions of religious patriotism they invoke. "Jai Shri Ram" would travel through the ecosystem over the next three decades, becoming the rallying cry connected to the violent images of mobs perched on top of the temple, chipping away at the temple with their hammers.
December 6, 1992.
This would be the beginning of the organized attack of fascists on the postcolonial commitments of India to safeguard the rights of its minorities (these commitments have made India a global exemplar of pluralism for five decades since its independence). This would be the beginning of a dangerous path of religious nationalism that would threaten the relationships of social cohesion and communal harmony, not only in India but across the Indian diaspora globally. The hate we are witnessing today in India and across the Indian diaspora, including here in Aotearoa (in response to a lecture I had delivered on the Hindutva destruction of Babri masjid, both the CARE team and I were trolled, with Hindutva supporters in Aotearoa accusing me of hate speech and threatening violence), has been shaped by the events of this date.
December 6, 2022
Three decades have passed. To seek to undo history and redo it to turn the clock back is an illusion.
This is the illusion of returning to a glorious past that preoccupies Hindutva.
For progressive movements of resistance against the hate organized by Hindutva, to look forward is to struggle to address the injustices in the fabric of India.
To look forward is to draw upon the lessons and commitments of the past to reimagine a future that challenges the forces of hate and divisiveness.
The past teaches us that culture is as much transformative as it is regressive.
These possibilities for transformation are held resolutely by those at the "margins of the margins" who have been historically erased by the (post)colonial structure.
Listening to the hitherto erased voices at India's margins holds the anchor to building these imaginations for the future. These voices offer us hope. In their lived struggles, they show us the multiple registers through which the hate politics of Hindutva is resisted and will continue to be resisted. In their refusal to hate, they create hope.
Singing in conviction and courage, these voices render visible the lies planted and circulated by Hindutva. These voices speak in spite of the violence unleashed on them by Hindutva. These voices teach us that the ideology that led to the destruction of the Babri masjid and started the process of destroying India's constitutional essence will too one day be dismantled.