The destruction of the Babari Masjid and the crisis in which it has plunged the nation is the sordid finale of the vote bank politics which has come to afflict democracy in this country... . Politics based on communal vote banks is not new to this country. The tragedy, however, is that... the so-called secular political parties, have fraternised with these communal elements from time to time in ... quest for power. Communal forces which were regarded as the pariahs of Indian politics after the partition of the subcontinent on religious lines and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi gained respectability when the non-Congress secular parties decided to join hands with them in 1967 in this struggle against the Congress Party and repeated it in 1977. It is worth recalling that in the 1984 elections to the Lok Sabha which the BJP fought on its own, its performance, with only two seats in the Lok sabha, was far more dismal than those of the other national parties. Unfortunately this phase did not last very long and the BJP was accepted as a partner again by the Janata Dal in the 1989 elections to the Lok Sabha. While the NF [National Front] government may have had the satisfaction of ruling this country for 11 months, there is no doubt that the biggest beneficiary of this arrangement was the BJP. It not only gained in electoral strength, it manoeuvred itself in the driver's seat and behaved as it wanted with the V.P. Singh government. It ultimately even pulled it down.
Somehow, the non-Congress centrist secular parties never mustered the self-confidence in their struggle against the Congress to keep away from the BJP and go to the people on their own. This mistake was made in 1977 and repeated in 1989. But alas, we were not conscious of our own strength either in 1977 or in 1989 and carried the BJP on our shoulders from strength to strength.
But, while the then Janata Party and the then Janata Dal are guilty of joining hands with a communal party on these occasions, they cannot be accused of giving in to them on issues concerning communalism and secularism. Babari Masjid was not desecrated during the regime of either Morarji Desai or V.P. Singh. Mulayam Singh Yadav preferred to incur the wrath of the electorate rather than allow the mosque to be damaged. The Congress party on the other hand, is guilty of communalising politics itself in the quest of votes. By oscillating between one extreme and another in its desperate bid to attract first the Muslim vote bank and subsequently to hold on to the Hindu vote bank, the Congress has unleashed the process which has today culminated in the destruction of the Babari Masjid... In the Shah Bano case... capitulation before the Muslim fundamentalists on the part of the then Congress government ... led to the sudden unlocking of the doors of the Babari Masjid to placate the Hindu fundamentalists. The politics of appeasement was at its peak. The BJP and its allies had tasted blood ... It was in this background that they projected the demand for the demolition of the mosque and construction of a Ram temple there. The shilanyas of the temple by the Congress government just before the 1989 elections was yet another act of appeasement. Religious fanaticism soon became the declared electoral platform of the BJP. The capture of power in UP led it to believe that it could capture power at the Centre also by the same tactics. It is at it with full vigour...
[Here follows a strong and justified attack on Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's handling of the Ayodhya crisis.]
The Prime Minister had time enough to act. He had the full authority of the NIC... of all the secular parties in Parliament to act. He had the supreme national duty to act. He was committed by the manifesto of his party to protect the mosque. He was under constitutional obligation to protect the mosque. He was bound by his commitment to the people, Parliament and the NIC to protect the mosque. He miserably failed to do so. This failure ... has plunged the nation in this unprecedented crisis.
India is being pushed back into the dark ages by obscurantist, fundamentalist and fascist forces... Their appeasement... has today given them the strength and the audacity to seek to destroy the very basis of our nation state. This is the gravest and most formidable challenge before us... The secular forces will have to unitedly and determinedly meet this challenge if India is to survive as a democratic, secular, progressive, liberal and modern nation.
We do not want India to become a Pakistan or an Iran... We do not want a theocratic state. We must fight those forces of darkness and defeat them... Appeasement of fundamentalists, regardless of the community... must stop whatever the electoral cost... The task is difficult but not yet impossible... All liberal elements (should) unite to save India.
(Excerpts from an article published in The Sunday Observer, December 14, 1992)
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