Babri dispute and threat to secularism

M Rajivlochan

Just at the time when the Supreme Court of India has promised to come out with its judgment on the Babri Masjid dispute, Madhav Godbole weighs in with his views about how and why the Babri Masjid was demolished. The book expresses a clear hope that Godbole’s recollections will be able to influence the judgment of the Supreme Court, not materially but certainly by influencing the minds of the judges. The underlying argument, as stated in the blurb and at numerous places in the book, is that if the Babri Masjid is not rebuilt, or if a Ram Mandir is built, it will demonstrate the death of secularism in India and will undermine the basic principles on which India stands.

The book ends with a section titled ‘The Way Ahead’. Here, it is mentioned that Hinduism is a tolerant faith. This is pointed out, through a quotation attributed to Justices Ahmadi and Bharucha, that Hindus would not appreciate a temple in place of the demolished Babri Masjid. It is also recommended that (i) the Constitution be amended to separate religion from politics, (ii) policing and public order be shifted from the State List to the Concurrent List and (iii) a constitutional commission on secularism be set up to ‘avoid the recurrence of more “Ayodhyas” (p. 242).

Essentially, it is a polemical book of the old-fashioned kind that explains why things happened the way they did in the past. Most of it is in the form of I said this, did this, he said this, did this; I am correct, he is lying; I am good, he is bad; things would have been different had I been able to have my way. Mostly it relies on reporting stuff about other people rather than about matters in which Godbole was personally involved. No sharing of information about government meetings and informal discussions in this book other than that which is widely known and now available on the Internet.

It starts with 1949 when, it alleges, an idol of Ram Lalla was ‘clandestinely’ placed in the Babri Masjid (p. 21). It notes that KK Nayar, ICS (1930 batch), then DM, Faizabad, refused to remove the idols. Godbole notices that Nehru did express concern but did little more. Then it informs that four decades later Rajiv Gandhi refused to say that the Babri Masjid would not be demolished. Instead, he asked the state government to allow shilanyas at the site. At this point, people like LK Advani took over and insisted on demolishing the Babri Masjid, which, according to them, symbolised the intolerance, tyranny and oppression from the past. 

The courts, on their part, refused to take any position. Godbole is censorious of PV Narasimha Rao, for his view that the matter had nothing to do with Hindus or Hinduism. It was sheer politics. Godbole remains kind to Rajiv Gandhi but dismisses as frivolous Rahul Gandhi’s statement that his father would have stood in front of the Babri Masjid rather than let it be harmed. 

He also takes it for granted that the Babri Masjid belonged to the ‘Muslim’ community and that its demolition hurt ‘Muslim’ sentiments. It is this homogenisation of the ‘Muslim’, giving primacy to their religious identity, that is at the root of the two-nation theory. It ‘others’ people. But this is an error that liberals have been making for over a century now, with disastrous results for those of the Islamic faith. Englishmen like WW Hunter had floated it in the 1870s, by way of explaining why those of the Islamic faith did not take to modern education, kept themselves cloistered. They are moping, Hunter pointed out, since they lost power over India. Hunter then insisted that it was the duty of the Raj to mollycoddle them to normalcy. Syed Ahmed Khan disagreed, insisted that the Muslims needed to get on with modern scientific education and he started the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College towards this end.

‘Are we at a dead end in dealing with communalism?’ (p. 168), asks Godbole. His suggestion of making Constitutional amendments will only create mayhem. Not providing fair governance, forcing governance and justice to be politically aligned, has created disasters in the past. Hopefully the present government will follow a different path.