Revisiting the Ayodhya dispute: History and the aftermath

The disputed Babri Masjid- Ram Janmabhoomi site has been a socio-religious and political debate for decades. DNA revisits history to spell out the chronology of events.

Where it all began

The story begins at Ayodhya. The locale derives its name from the Sanskrit term 'Ayudha' meaning 'without war', and is located on the banks of the Sarayu river near Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. A certain Mughal general, Mir Baqi, on the orders of Mughal Emperor Babur 1528-29 AD (Hijri Year 1935), constructed a mosque in the city after allegedly demolishing a local temple, which 'locals believed to be the birthplace of Lord Rama.' The mosque acquired the name Babri Masjid and became the centre of a dispute between the local communities, especially after the decline of Mughal power in the mid-nineteenth century.

In 1853, a local Hindu sect called Nirmohi Akhara, began to claim ownership of a courtyard adjunct to the mosque, named 'Ram Chabutara'. The dispute was sporadically violent in the 1850s, till the local colonial administration stepped in to construct a boundary in the compound between the Ram Chabutara and the Babri Masjid, with the local Hindus offering prayers in the outer courtyard and the Muslims praying in the inner courtyard.

In 1885, the dispute became the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by Raghubar Das, the Mahant of Ram Chabutara, before the Faizabad Sub Judge and later the District Judge who acknowledged the grievance of the local Hindus but ordered a status quo to be maintained as it was "too late now to remedy it."

In 1936, the Shias of the United Provinces (roughly covering the same as current Uttar Pradesh) claimed ownership of the mosque land since Mir Baqi was a Shia. However, the courts favoured the Sunni Waqf Board ruling, since Emperor Babur who commissioned the mosque was a Sunni Muslim, the land belonged to the Sunnis.

In December 1949, a body called the Akhil Bharatiya Ramayana Mahasabha (ABRM) conducted a nine-day recitation of the Hindu epic, Ramacharitamanas. At the end of the recitation, an idol of infant Rama, Rama Lalla was said to have 'appeared miraculously' at the disputed site on the night of December 22, 1949. There were counterclaims from the Muslims that it was 'planted' by the Hindu lobby. Although Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru favoured the removal of the idol, the local administration under District Magistrate KK Nayar, sat on it, claiming it would lead to greater communal violence. The matter came to a close when the government ordered to lock the gates of the site and called it 'a disputed structure'.

In 1961, the local Sunni Waqf Board filed a case claiming the entire land and asking for the removal of the idols from the structure. The period saw little activity beyond these court matters until the 1980s when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a movement for reclaiming the land. Formally the site began being called 'Ram Janmabhoomi' and the VHP proposed building a new temple at the site dedicated to Lord Rama. The movement aimed at galvanizing various sections of the Hindu society led to the rekindling of the controversy with both sides claiming ownership of the land.

In January 1986, the District Judge of Faizabad Court passed an order to open the gates of the Masjid for Hindus to offer prayers, responding to a lawsuit filed by a local Hindu lawyer. The Muslim community retorted by forming the 'All India Babri Masjid Action Committee' to oppose the move which they believed was unjust. The central government led by Rajiv Gandhi did not oppose the opening of the gates as his government thought it could assuage 'Hindu opinion' by the move, in view of his government's leniency to a section of orthodox Muslims in the controversial Shah Bano case.

In 1989, just before the national elections, the VHP conducted a Shilanayas program for laying the foundation of a Ram Temple in a plot adjacent to the disputed structure.

On September 25, 1990, the BJP launched a Rath Yatra led by its new President Lal Krishna Advani, to galvanize public opinion for building the temple and conducting a symbolic Karsewa at Ayodhya on October 30, 1990. The chariot's journey began symbolically from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh with public gatherings along the route.

On October 22, the Rath was stopped in Samastipur, Bihar, by Lalu Prasad Yadav, Bihar's Chief Minister and member of the Janata Dal, who detained Advani and brought the yatra to a stop. Consequently, a number of Hindu youth, Karsewaks, rushed to Ayodhya for the supposed ending of the Rath Yatra on October 30, 1990. The then Chief Minister of UP Mulayam Singh Yadav, asked for the detention of many Karsewaks and also ordered the paramilitary forces to attack them leading to the death of 20 people. It led to the fall of the national government led by Prime Minister VP Singh and the rise of new players, a central government led by the Congress and headed by PV Narasimha Rao. The UP elections resulted in a BJP government headed by Kalyan Singh as Chief Minister.

The national elections of 1991 saw the BJP win 120 seats in the 10th Lok Sabha, its highest tally so far, and a government in UP. The central government and the state government of UP began working on charting out solutions to douse the controversy. The VHP began mobilising its core support base around November 1992, for a 'temple construction' at the site. The central government also tried to organise discussions between VHP leaders and the Babri Masjid Action Committee. However, the discussion failed and the central government relied on UP's assurance of 'protecting the disputed structure' as its chief obligation in the Supreme Court. In December 1992, a large number of karsewaks rushed to the disputed site and this mobilization led to the demolition of the three domes of the sixteenth-century mosque by huge mobs who could not be restrained in lieu of the state government's orders to not shoot any person at the site. The falling of the Babri Masjid structure led to communal riots, and a reported death count of over 2000 Indians from both communities.

Play of politics

Politically, the centre dismissed four BJP-led state governments in UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The Babri Masjid demolition led to a new polarisation of the Indian politics between the BJP and its ideological affiliates on one side and other 'secular' parties opposed to its brand of politics. The BJP however, re-emerged in the coming years by leaving the issue to the courts, thus angering a section of its core supporters in the VHP.

The central government appointed the Justice Liberhan Commission to investigate the Babri Masjid demolition on December 16, 1992. The committee gave its report to the Congress-led UPA government in 2009, allegedly indicting several leaders from the BJP, especially its top leadership and the UP government led by Kalyan Singh.

The hostilities engineered by the report was cynically utilised by Dubai-based gangster Dawood Ibrahim, to trigger 12 blasts in Mumbai in March 1993. Later, several jihadi organizations like the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen, who conveniently cited the demolition of the Babri Mosque as an excuse for their terrorist activities including a foiled attack on the makeshift temple at the disputed site in July 200,5 ramming its boundary with an explosive-laden jeep.

The VHP again tried to organize a move to begin the formal construction of the Ram temple in March 2002. But it led to the horrific incident of burning a train returning from Ayodhya with Karsevaks at the Godhra junction and the Gujarat riots of 2002, with increased mudslinging between political organizations all over the country.

The Allahabad High Court in January 2003 ordered an archaeological excavation to decide whether there was a temple at the site before the mosque was constructed. The excavation results were said to contain remains of a temple structure which was disputed by several archaeologists and historians. However, based on the excavation reports and other findings, the three-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court passed a judgement on September 30, 2010, which recommended a three-way division of the disputed site between three parties, Ram Lalla 1/3 to be held by the Hindu Mahasabha, 1/3 for the Nirmohi Akhara and 1/3 to the Sunni Wakf Board. However, this solution was also rejected by both the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha and the Sunni Wakf Board, who approached the Supreme Court of India challenging the verdict in December 2010.

The Supreme Court's two-member bench stayed the verdict of the Allahabad High Court in March 2011 stating that neither parties wanted a split in the area of the disputed site and ordered a status quo be maintained much like the British District Judge of Faizabad District Court in 1886.

The controversy has in its wake led to a lot of unnecessary debates and endless litigation with animosities between the two communities on either side of the divide. It has benefited cynical politicians of all hues whether secular or nationalist parties and has also served foreign agencies like the Pakistan's ISI working against the Indian nation find a justification for their unholy activities. However, the common man on the street has lost a lot in the process all in the name of faith, with one version of truth pitted against another version of events, too distant and hazy in time to find an empirical solution to it ever.