Babri Mosque demolition exposes system of justice in India

After a bizarre Supreme Court decision in November 2019, the mosque effectively become a relic of the past, but in 2020, those responsible for its demolition were acquitted by a special court in Lucknow, further burying justice

By Iftikhar Gilani

Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the demolition of the historic 16th century Babri Mosque, an event that profoundly changed the socio-political landscape of India.

On the night of December 6, 1992, the BBC Urdu Service interrupted its broadcast to announce that Qurban Ali, a correspondent of the Sunday Observer, had arrived in the city of Faizabad from Ayodhya, where Hindu fanatics had gathered to demand the construction of a temple.

Then we heard Ali’s voice informing the world that the Babri Mosque, built in the 16th century on the orders of Mughal emperor Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, no longer exists.

By the time he had left Ayodhya, it had already been reduced to rubble.

Since noon that day, the newsrooms in Delhi and elsewhere had been unable to contact their reporters in Ayodhya.

The government was claiming that a mob had attacked the mosque and caused minor damage, but the security forces had pushed it back considerably.

When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched the Ram temple movement, I witnessed the march led by L.K. Advani in Delhi.

Armed with swords and spears, they chanted slogans denouncing the descendants of Emperor Babur and promised to build the temple. The march passed through the busy Chandni Chowk market in the old city of Delhi.

Although the late Pramod Mahajan was the main organizer of the trip, the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi used to brief the press about the program at the BJP office in Delhi.

After a bizarre Supreme Court decision in November 2019, the mosque had indeed become a relic of the past and in 2020, those responsible for its demolition were acquitted by a special court in Lucknow, further burying justice.

The trial, which had been going on for 28 years, had given little hope, but when the Supreme Court handed over the land of the mosque to the Hindu deity Ram Lalla, it also recognized three critical arguments from the Muslim side.

The Supreme Court conceded that the installation of the idol of Lord Ram in the sanctum sanctorum of the mosque in 1949 and its demolition in December 1992 were criminal acts.

Moreover, archeological investigations referred to by the court confirmed that there was no place of worship at the site in 1528 when the mosque was built. During excavations, objects were found that pointed to a building from the 11th century that had since been destroyed, indicating that there had been no structure on the site for 500 years.

These arguments had raised the faint hope that the construction of a large temple on the site of the mosque would lead to exemplary punishment for those who demolished the mosque.

However, Justice Surendra Kumar Yadav of the special court dismissed all 32 accused, ignoring the Supreme Court’s direction and all the evidence.

I witnessed how this case was handled.

The prosecution called 351 witnesses in court, three of whom were close associates of mine who provided me with consistent information.

Even before Modi took office in 2014, secular parties like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which ruled the state of Uttar Pradesh intermittently and relied heavily on the support of Muslims, showed no interest in prosecuting the accused.

Not even a basic notice was issued that would have allowed the special court to pursue the case. When a notice was finally issued, it was riddled with technical errors, which after much back and forth were rectified by the Allahabad High Court in 2010 by consolidating all the cases before the special court in Lucknow.

Ordeal of the witnesses

Renowned photojournalist Praveen Jain had not only captured the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992, but also documented the groups of kar sevaks or Hindu volunteers who stayed near Ayodhya days earlier to rehearse for the demolition.

These pictures were published by his newspaper The Pioneer after the demolition of the mosque. The prosecution called him as a witness. During the trial, he faced harassment and a hostile attitude from the lawyers and court staff.

When summoned, he traveled by train from Delhi to Lucknow a day before the hearing. After waiting outside the court all day, he was told that there would be no testimony that day because either the judge was not present, or the prosecution or defense lawyers were not present.

According to Jain, after years of such proceedings, on the day his testimony was finally to be recorded, an elderly lawyer approached the witness stand, whispered threats in profane language and intimidated him.

Jain raised his voice to alert the judge, who asked him to put his complaint in writing. As soon as the complaint reached the judge, the defense argued that it must first be clarified who had insulted and threatened the witness.

This caused an uproar in court, so the witness’s testimony was postponed to another date, and he was told to hire a lawyer as the case of intimidation would be resolved in court first. Frustrated, Jain withdrew the case and applied to register his statement about the Babri mosque demolition.

When his statement was finally recorded after several appointments, he was told that the pictures alone were not enough; he would also have to prove his presence in Ayodhya that day.

Somehow, after months of effort, he managed to retrieve an old hotel record from Faizabad, the district headquarters of Ayodhya, and obtained a certificate from his former employer, The Pioneer.

But then the court informed him that these papers were not enough. Finally, he found a decades-old train ticket that confirmed his presence in Ayodhya on that day after many years.

However, he was then told that his photographs were not credible, so he had to produce the negatives in court.

During his absence in Delhi, burglars had ransacked his apartment and left it in disarray, suggesting that they were looking for something. According to him, cash, jewelry and other valuable items were missing, but the negative prints of the pictures had survived because he had kept them safe in another place.

The court was shown pictures of the demolition of the mosque and of formal rehearsals carried out by two civil engineers and an architect to train the kar sevaks to demolish the building.

Their faces were clearly recognizable in the pictures.

Similarly, my Kashmiri Pandit journalist friend Sanjay Kak, also a witness, had revealed through a sting operation before the demolition of the mosque that it would be demolished on December 6.

At the time, the use of a hidden camera for sting operations was not common. He worked as a reporter for The Statesman.

According to Kak, the driver of his official car had told him on his way home at night that something significant was going to happen in Ayodhya.

The editor gave him permission to go to Ayodhya the next day. However, Kak decided to go as a kar sevak and not as a journalist and registered at the BJP office in Delhi to get a kar sevak card.

Despite being a Hindu and Kashmiri Pandit, he was interrogated several times on the train and in Faizabad.

“Maybe I was a new face; they kept looking at me suspiciously. I introduced myself as an engineering student who had to quit his studies unfinished due to the deteriorating situation in Kashmir,” he says.

When he reached Ayodhya, he was again interrogated by six or seven people. After asserting his identity as a Kashmiri Pandit, he was finally accepted into a group of kar sevaks and allowed to stay in a tent overnight.

A sadhu with a walkie-talkie was the leader of the group, who led them to a graveyard the next day and ordered them to destroy the graves. He repeatedly instructed them to learn how to use their hands.

The kar sevaks discussed among themselves that they had to demolish the mosque in the same way. The sadhu had warned him that no journalist or intelligence officer should come near them. The repeated interrogations, the rehearsals and the attitude of the kar sevaks towards journalists had frightened Kak.

He fled from the tent in the dark of the night, first reaching Faizabad and then driving to Delhi, where his report was published in three parts in The Statesman that preparations for the demolition of the mosque had been completed.

Journalists locked in rooms

Qurban Ali, who announced the demolition of the mosque to the world at 9pm (local time), had been in Ayodhya for several days with Mark Tully, the BBC’s South Asia bureau chief.

Although rumors were circulating, they had no idea about the destruction of the mosque. According to him, Kar Sevaks stormed towards the mosque at 11:30 am. Another group rounded up the journalists, beat them and locked them in rooms.

Tully and Ali managed to escape from Ayodhya and reach Faizabad, where they sent the message from the Telegraph office to Delhi.

This was the last news that reached the world.

By this time, units of the Central Reserve Police Force stationed in Faizabad had started marching towards Ayodhya. On their return, they saw that the Central forces had been stopped short of Ayodhya.

The duo entered the city of Ayodhya through a different route but were soon spotted by the crowd and locked up in a room of a dilapidated temple.

At first, they discussed killing them. Then their leader told them to wait until the mosque issue was fully resolved, then they would decide their fate.

In the evening, another group unlocked the door and brought the two before VHP leader Ashok Singhal, who was familiar with Ali and Tully.

He set them free. But leaving the city was still so difficult. Hindu extremist volunteers had taken over every nook and cranny, preventing anyone from leaving the city.

Ali says that the 10 kilometers distance from Ayodhya to Faizabad felt like hundreds of kilometers that day, and when they entered a hotel in Faizabad, the night broadcast of BBC Urdu was on, which they contacted by phone to get the message out to the world.

Many faces unmasked

The late author and columnist A.G. Noorani exposed the conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid in the third volume of his book “Destruction of Babri Masjid: A National Dishonor”

According to him, the Indian judiciary and administration played a major role in the destruction of the mosque, revealing its communal mentality.

Not only did the delays in the lower courts facilitate the demolition, but the methods of the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Venkatachaliah, also paved the way for it.

Noorani revealed that Justice Venkatchaliah was not concerned with upholding the Constitution and the law, but with the health of the kar sevaks.

This is probably why he was appointed head of a high-level commission after the formation of the BJP-led coalition government in 1998.

According to former Home Minister Madhav Godbole, his ministry was also aware of the preparations for the demolition of the mosque and had therefore recommended that Uttar Pradesh be governed centrally. Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, however, rejected this advice.

Noorani explains that Rao was directly involved in the demolition of the mosque. He says that during Congress minister Indira Gandhi’s tenure, an agreement was reached with the Vishva Hindu Parishad to allow the construction of the Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid.

Although the Parishad had discontinued its movement after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi revived the agreement.

Before that, however, he wanted to favor the Muslims. To this end, his associates raised the issue of a divorced Muslim woman, Shah Bano, and passed a law in Parliament that the court could not change the Muslim personal law.

According to the author, he had advised Rajiv Gandhi that it was pointless to drag this issue and that it could be resolved under Shariah and not Anglo-Mohammedan law, but he wanted to politically hoodwink the Muslims to advance the deal with the Parishad.

And that is exactly what happened.

It looks like everyone was involved in the Babri Masjid demolition and saved the culprits from punishment, including secularists and Hindu nationalists. Both have blood on their hands. The demolition and the subsequent court case have exposed many faces.

As India marks this day, the struggle for a cohesive national identity continues, underscored by the need for empathy, justice and a unified stance on historical grievances.