The Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babur) was located in Ayodhya, India, and was one of the largest mosques in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The mosque was built in 1528CE, on the
478 Richman, Questioning Ramayanas, 9.
479 Dwijendra Narayan Jha, “General President’s Address: Looking for a Hindu Identity,” Proceedings of the
Indian History Congress 66 (2005): 2.
480 Morey and Tickell, Alternative Indias, xxii.
125 orders of the Mughal emperor Babur.482 A common understanding among citizens was that
the mosque’s construction involved the destruction of a temple of Rama on the same site, and in the decades leading up to 1992 there had been a dedicated and growing movement among
Hindutva supporters calling for the destruction of the mosque, or at least the allocation of part
of the site to Hindu worshippers for constructing a Hindu shrine to Rama.483 This narrative was widespread and presented as objective fact by Sangh Parivar groups; for example, a cultural knowledge exam taken by students at all RSS schools includes the following section:
Q: Which Mughal invader destroyed the Ram temple in 1582? A Babur
Q: From 1582 till 1992, how many Rambhakts [Rama worshippers] sacrificed their lives to liberate the temple?
A: 350, 000.484
There is in fact no tangible evidence supporting the pre-existence of a temple at the Ayodhya site, and whether any potential demolition was related to the consequent
construction of the Babri Masjid.485 Even if this were true, the notion that 350 000 Hindu lives were lost in attempts to ‘liberate’ the area is somewhat ridiculous. Nevertheless, this popular myth contributed particularly to the rise of populist Hindu nationalism and to the construction of a historical narrative where the Mughal Empire represented an egregious attack by Muslims on the traditional Hindu homeland.486 This narrative also ignores claims
482 S. P. Udayakumar, “Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing History: The ‘Ram Temple’ Drama,” Social
Scientist 25, no. 7/8 (1997): 11, https://doi.org/10.2307/3517601.
483 Sushil Srivastava, “The Abuse of History: A Study of the White Papers on Ayodhya,” Social Scientist 22, no. 5/6 (1994): 39.
484 Sundar, “Teaching to Hate,” 1609.
485 Bidwai, “Understanding a Political Chameleon,” 133.
486 Roger Friedland and Richard Hecht, “The Bodies of Nations: A Comparative Study of Religious Violence in Jerusalem and Ayodhya,” History of Religions 38, no. 2 (1998): 102.
126 by Jains and Buddhists that the mosque was built over religious constructions of their
respective faiths. In any case, this led to a Muslim-exclusionist narrative.
Anti-Muslim resentment specifically related to the Babri Masjid had been slowly building even from pre-Independence; a Hindu-Muslim riot in 1934 resulted in some damage to the mosque. Throughout the post-Independence period, Hindu organisations and Hindu nationalists attempted to enact claims on the grounds as a rightful place of Hindu worship. This was exemplified in 1984 by a campaign by the VHP to allow Hindu access to the Babri Masjid, as well as other buildings that had apparently been built over Hindu shrines and temples. In 1986, Hindus were given access to the site and the mosque, and the area began to operate in some ways as a Hindu temple. Sangh Parivar groups and Hindutva proponents were not the only ones to use the disputed territory as a political tool. The INC chose to unlock the site, to launch their 1991 electoral campaign from a town near Ayodhya, and allowed the laying of foundation stones for a future temple to Rama near the Babri Masjid.487
This culminated in on 16 December 1992, when BJP, VHP and RSS representatives offered prayers at the site. Following this, a large number of young male volunteers from these militant Hindu organisations attacked the mosque. The Babri Masjid, a 464-year-old structure, was destroyed in five hours, the volunteers managing to construct a makeshift temple to Rama in its place by the time government forces eventually took control of the site.488
The riots that ensued in the immediate aftermath of the incident and which continued through January 1993 resulted in the mass deaths, most of whom were Muslims. 489 While exact death tolls were different to ascertain at the time, particularly as violence broke out in
487 Hasan, “Gender, Religion and Democratic Politics in India,” 944.
488 Manju Parikh, “The Debacle at Ayodhya: Why Militant Hinduism Met with a Weak Response,” Asian
Survey 33, no. 7 (1993): 673.
489 Ruparelia, “Rethinking Institutional Theories of Political Moderation,” 317; “17 Years since 6 December
127 other parts of the country, at least 1000 people died and estimates were as high as 3000.490
Government action was belated – somewhat due to the fact that it had relied on assurances from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh, a BJP party member.491 Singh instead ensured that government troops did not arrive at the site till after the demolition before resigning from his position as Chief Minister.492 While Prime Minister Narasimha Rao eventually acted decisively by banning the RSS, the VHP, and Bajarang Dal (the militant youth wing of the VHP), this was largely ineffective and criticised as dictatorial.493
The Liberhan Commission was established after the event to investigate the
demolition. After a delay of 17 years, in 2009 the report confirmed that senior figures of the BJP, RSS, and VHP were at least partially responsible for the demolition. This correlated with accusations from Muslim groups that the attack had been pre-planned and involved state government collusion.494 The event in Ayodhya served nevertheless as both publicity and propaganda for the BJP.495 Despite the consequent archaeological findings that there had
been no standing temple at the time of the construction of the Babri Masjid, and the implication of BJP members in the event, this myth continues to serve as fuel for the conservative narrative of Muslims as invaders and destroyers of classical India.
The temple-mosque issue in Ayodhya indicates the way in which the political agenda of the BJP was revealed to be explicitly bound up in the principles and ideologies of the VJP and RSS, in a process that almost wiped out the Muslim population in Bhagalpur.496 Later findings aside, the episode indicated a rapidly growing trend towards citizens identifying themselves predominantly as Hindus rather than as Indians, with the eventual hope of
490 Parikh, “The Debacle at Ayodhya,” 675; Friedland and Hecht, “The Bodies of Nations,” 103. 491 Parikh, “The Debacle at Ayodhya,” 673.
492 Parikh, 674.
493 Parikh, “The Debacle at Ayodhya.”
494 V Krishna Ananth, “Liberhan Commission: A Critical Analysis,” Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 4 (2010): 12.
495 Doshi, Revolution at the Crossroads, 22.
128 merging the two.497 Due to this, the Ayodhya dispute continued to offer the BJP political and
social support, allowing them to ride the wave of Rama-based popularity that brought them to prominence in Uttar Pradesh.498 While this influence waned somewhat over the following decade, it was dramatically reinvigorated with the 2002 Gujarat incident.