POLITICS-INDIA: Pro-Hindu Govt Revives Temple Issue

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 28 2001 (IPS) - Faced with polls in a politically crucial state, the party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has ratcheted up the issue that brought it to national power — the building of a temple on the site of a mosque at Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Vajpayee of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) surprised many by announcing on Sunday in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, that secret negotiations were on with Muslim leaders to resolve the temple issue by March.

That is the time the state, India’s most populous with 175 million people, elects a new assembly.

But Muslim leaders in the capital quickly denied that negotiations were underway. They said the dispute over ownership of the site, where the Babri Masjid stood before its demolition by Hindu fundamentalists, was pending before the Supreme Court.

“We are not aware of any negotiations,” said Syed Shahabuddin, convenor of the Muslim minority community’s best-known spokesman. He added that the only body entrusted with negotiations, the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, had no knowledge of any talks.

Shahabuddin accused the prime minister of pandering to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu-fundamentalist organisation that earlier vowed to begin construction of temple by Mar. 12, come what may.

“They (VHP) want the Muslims to hand over the site but the Muslims are not ready to give even an inch,” said M A Siddiqui, vice president of the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) told journalists.

On Monday, Vajpayee reiterated in Parliament that secret negotiations were on to settle the issue through dialogue, but refused to name the Muslim individuals or organisations involved. “The names cannot be disclosed in public interest,” he told agitated legislators.

The BJP came to power by whipping up majority Hindu sentiments over the Babri Masjid, said to have been built by invading Muslims on the spot where the legendary god-king Rama was born at Ayodhya some 540 km south- east of the capital New Delhi.

Rebuilding the temple at Ayodhya was the BJP’s main plank in the 1991 general election, which saw the emergence of the party from relative obscurity to the position it occupies today as the largest single political entity in the country.

On Dec. 2, 1992, Vajpayee and top leaders of his Cabinet, including Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani and Human Resources Development (HRD) minister Murli Manohar Joshi, led a frenzied mob to the site and tore down the three-domed mosque with crowbars and explosives.

The demolition triggered off communal rioting across the country, in which some 3,000 people lost their lives. In the western metropolis of Mumbai, the rioting took on the aspect of a pogrom against the Muslim community.

However, the BJP, which finally came to power at the centre leading a coalition government in 1998, could never muster enough support with its largely regional and secular allies to have the temple built on the site at Ayodhya.

Vajpayee, seen by the allies as a moderate, has expressed regret and even shame at the razing of the Babri Masjid and the riots that followed. At the same time however, critics have seen this as posturing to keep intact the disparate the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition.

But the VHP, defying Vajpayee and his commitments to the NDA, never ceased work at a nearby site where carved pillars, beams and other structural elements for a three-storied pre-fabricated temple are being readied.

Political leaders say Vajpayee must now do a balancing act between pleasing the VHP and other Hindu fundamentalist organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and his increasingly uncomfortable allies in the NDA.

The allies, most notably the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) that rules southern Andhra Pradesh state, has threatened to pull out of the NDA if attempt is made to revive the temple issue.

Recently, the TDP opposed a new education policy which the government has been attempting to foist on the country. The policy seeks to glorify the Hindu culture by rewriting school syllabi and textbooks and promoting the daily use of Sanskrit, a language long limited to Hindu religious rituals.

Joshi has also sought to accord recognition for Hindu astrology as a science and ordered universities to provide regular degree courses in the subject.