The foundation stone for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya will be laid on Wednesday, August 5, but a journalist who saw the Babri Masjid being demolished at the same spot in 1992 says she is not sure if this marks the closure or the natural culmination of a process that began 28 years ago.
“It is the end of a very troubled part of India’s journey which started on 6 December 1992 and the beginning of something new. I don’t see it as closure or as a settlement but I get the feeling of watching another milestone develop,” says Seema Chishti, the veteran broadcaster and journalist.
Chishti, formerly with the BBC and the Indian Express, was covering the kar seva in Ayodhya which ended up in the demolition for the now-defunct video magazine Eye Witness published by the Hindustan Times group and hosted by Karan Thapar.
Ayodhya was a watershed
“1992 is not so much about God alone, or a place of worship. It weds the idea of being a citizen with your faith. It marks a break in Nehruvian India, and marks the huge cracks which were to finally fell or threaten the foundations of the Republic. And a party or an ideology which is doing that, does not get defeated and pushed back at the hustings.”
1992 sowed seeds of Islamophobia
“The demand for a Hindu nation had been there since the 1920s. With his ability to modernise it, to render it kosher and welcome, L.K. Advani played a huge part in dealing a savage blow to the idea that India belongs to everybody. It was not a calm transition or a coolly happening event. The ghosts of Partition came alive.”
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Demolition distracted the nation
“It took away the energy of a young country. We should have been talking numbers, about education and public health, but it all got snowed under by large identity divisions because you had a whole lot of young people being deployed in the service of deepening this difference.”
Rajiv Gandhi’s ploy didn’t work
“Rajiv Gandhi’s government added fuel to the fire of a Hindu grievance, of a wounded majority. He actually starts his election campaign by invoking Ram rajya, his deputy home minister sits in at the shilanyas. These overtures to the injured Hindu consciousness didn’t help the Congress. The party has never been able to get a majority on its own after its 1984 win.”
Journalists were different then
“A whole lot of journalists had to be beaten up in order to stop them from telling the demolition story. Today, when there is so much technology, so many tools, there is so much of refusal to really shape your story. At least then it took sticks and stones and a lot of thwacking and thumping for us to be shut up.”
Muslims are bitter but hopeful
“They are not going anywhere, they are very clear that they are rooted in this land. There is certain amount of bewilderment, but it is surely giving way after the 2019 re-election of the BJP into a sort of sobriety and a realisation that they need to be careful and sort out their existential questions like survival, representation and the economy.”
Listen to the Seema Chishti podcast
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