Site in the city of Ayodhya, where some
claim the god Rama was born; since the
early 1980s this spot has witnessed some
of India’s most intense postindependence religious conflict. The site has
long been a source of controversy
between the Hindu and Muslim communities, and British sources record
hostilities there in 1855 and 1934. Until
1992 Ram Janam Bhumi was occupied
by the Babri Masjid, a mosque constructed in 1528 by command of Mir
Baqi, a general of the Moghul emperor
Babar (1483–1530). Local tradition holds
that the mosque was built after the razing of an existing Hindu temple there,
although there is little evidence for this
claim. A few months after India gained
independence in 1947, several local
Hindus secretly installed images of the
child Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother
Lakshmana in the mosque, claiming
that the images had miraculously
appeared in a ball of light. The government, having only recently quieted the
Hindu-Muslim massacres that accompanied the partition of British India into
India and Pakistan, was loath to ignite
religious passions, and its solution,
therefore, was to padlock the compound’s gates and send the case to the
courts for resolution, where it languished for almost forty years.
The early 1980s saw renewed controversy over the site, when the Vishva
Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist organization, first began calling for
the site’s “liberation,” proclaiming that
the existing mosque was an insult to all
Hindus. The VHP’s campaign portrayed
the mosque as a symbol of Muslim iconoclasm and depicted government efforts
to protect it as an attempt to appease
the Muslim community and retain their
votes. In 1986, the VHP’s drive to liberate
the site was aided by Rajiv Gandhi’s
national government. Together, the VHP
and the Gandhi administration
560
Rameshvaram
succeeded in unlocking the compound’s gates so that Hindus could
worship there, though observers called
the action a clear bid to attract the
Hindu vote.
Pressure throughout the 1980s, culminated in a series of campaigns to
begin construction of a new temple at
Ram Janam Bhumi. Many of these campaigns coincided with national elections, and the emotion that they
generated boosted the electoral fortunes
of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a
political group with close links to the
VHP. The final campaign came on
December 6, 1992, a day that was scheduled to have “symbolic” meaning, and
ended a little over five hours later with
the mosque’s demolition. The whole
operation was carefully planned—
demolition crews ordered the destruction of all television cameras prior to
leveling the building in order to prevent
any media coverage by outsiders. The
razing was also carried out with the
blessing of the BJP-led state government,
which made no attempt to protect the
temple. Riots ensued, particularly in the
city of Bombay, where over three
thousand people were killed, most of
them Muslims.
Even after the destruction of the
Babri Masjid, the site remained an area
of contention between Muslims and
Hindus. Immediately after the demolition, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao
promised to rebuild the mosque but did
nothing to accomplish this during the
next five years he was in office.
Meanwhile, various Hindu groups have
been calling for the construction of a
Ram Janam Bhumi temple, including
traditional religious leaders such as the
Shankaracharyas. Seeing nothing but
trouble ahead, the government again
sent the matter to the courts for resolution, where it remains to this day and
may remain for decades to come. For
further information see Christophe
Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist
Movement in India, 1996.