Ayodhya Ram Temple, 1949 to 2024: Nine dates that changed everything

The demand by various Hindu groups to gain the right to construct a Ram temple adjacent to, or in the place of, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, began being articulated through protestations and legal petitions from the mid-19th century.

Paradoxically, this was first in the form of a localised movement and a wider agitation subsequently, backed by people from large parts of the country, only after India became an independent country.

The seven-decade wait for the objective to be realised had its share of major watershed events. Despite the emotiveness of the issue, there were lengthy interludes when Sangh Parivar leaders found it tough to arouse people’s enthusiasm to either throng the streets or congregate in the temple-town.

Yet, every few years, although interludes were varied, the movement would get revived. On such occasions, almost spontaneously, the boisterousness of foot soldiers would make a comeback, and like always, constructing the temple would appear to be a mere milestone in the larger objective of revamping India into a Hindu state.

Ritualised consecration

The day for the ritualised consecration of the idol(s) of Ram is almost on us. This ceremony, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi shall be no less than a presiding deity of a different sort, will, for all practical purpose, kickstart his campaign to equal Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of successively leading his party to three parliamentary polls.

On this occasion, which would undeniably remain for long the climactic moment in the Ram Janmabhoomi Andolan, unless overshadowed by a presently inconceivable event of greater import in future, we recapitulate some of the major turning points that have brought the nation to its current state.

Key date 1: December 22-23, 1949

In Hindutva lore, the intervening night between these two days is the day of divine manifestation, or, as followers of the Sangh Parivar say, jab Ram Lallaprakat huae (when the Child Ram made an appearance).

If you were to cast belief and faith aside and evaluate the events in those few hours on the basis of law, this was the night of Ayodhya’s ignominy because of an act of gross illegality. The conspiratorial events in the course of which the Babri Masjid was desecrated and the idol placed was so crassly against the law that almost 70 years later, India’s Supreme Court accepted the misdeed as completely unlawful. This was not an end to the violation of law and maladministration.

On the morning on December 23, 1949, District Magistrate KKK Nair, an Alleppey-born Malayali, who was a co-conspirator in the plan, chose not to abide by law. He did not direct the removal of the idol and restore the mosque to Muslims.

Instead, he allowed the mythology of Ram Lalla’s magical appearance to spread far wide. As a result, people gathered in thousands from the depths of the countryside and they added to upsurge of devotees from the twin towns of Faizabad and Ayodhya. Within days, the Babri Masjid was locked up, the Muslims were dispossessed of their place of worship, Hindu priests were allowed to daily open the locked gate and offer prayers and conduct rituals.

The foundation was laid for a protracted legal and political dispute.

Judge becomes MP

To a great extent, the seemingly endless case dragged on in various courts till the final verdict by the Supreme Court on November 9, 2019, because Nair was instrumental in getting an injunction issued to prevent the idols from being removed from the mosque and from interfering in puja being performed at regular intervals every day.

For his role in this sinister takeover of a mosque and converting its basic character, Nair’s wife, Shakuntala, was immediately gifted a nomination by the Hindu Mahasabha to successfully contest the 1952 Lok Sabha election from the adjoining Gonda parliamentary constituency. In time, the Nair couple was elected to the Lower House as representatives of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Sangh Parivar’s political arm which preceded the Bharatiya Janata Party.

After the events of this cold December night, Ayodhya emerged as a political volcano, erupting at times, and lying dormant for longer periods of time.

Key date 2: December 18, 1961

Twelve years after losing possession of the Babri Masjid, Ayodhya’s Muslims mustered courage for the first time to stake legal claim to the locked up shrine, which by then was affixed the ‘disputed’ tag.

Several Hindu parties moved court seeking grant of the title. The first of these cases was filed on January 13, 1950 by Gopal Singh Visharad. He was a key co-conspirator in the installation of the idol and the Hindu Mahasabha president in Ayodhya. Two more cases were moved subsequently by Hindu parties.

But, for the first time on this day, the Sunni Central Waqf Board and nine Muslim residents of Ayodhya staked their claim to the property in the court of the Civil Judge of Faizabad. They sought a declaration that the entire disputed site of the Babri Masjid was a public mosque and asked for its possession after removal of the idols.

A little more than two years after the much-delayed and long-deliberated suit was filed by the Waqf Board, on January 6, 1964, all the cases were consolidated and the one filed by the Muslim side was made the leading one. In time it came to be referred as the title suit.

Key date 3: February 1, 1986

After lying dormant for a quarter of a century, the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute erupted with fury in an India where communal tensions were already simmering in the wake of the Rajiv Gandhi government’s capitulation to Muslim orthodoxy, who successfully pressured the Centre into passing a law to nullify the apex court judgment in the Shah Bano case.

Much before this date, on September 23 1984 to be precise, the Sangh Parivar had formally kickstarted the agitation for the ‘liberation’ of the Ram Janmabhoomi by rolling out the Shri Ram Janaki Rath from Sitamarhi, Bihar, a town considered by belief and according to mythology as the birthplace of Sita.

The yatra reached the edge of Delhi on October 30 after winding its way through the plains of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, including Ayodhya. They had drawn plans to submit a petition to the prime minister the next day.

In the course of this first yatra, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Sangh Parishad’s sword arm for this political movement, resolved to “liberate Ram Janmabhoomi from the clutches of barbaric invaders”; Indira Gandhi’s assassination, however, poured cold water over plans to escalate the agitation.

Rajiv Gandhi's approach

Rajiv Gandhi’s weak-kneed approach when faced with threats from Muslim conservatives on the Shah Bano issue enabled the VHP to revive the demand for opening the gate of the Babri Masjid for Hindu devotees.

With more than a little aid from within the government, the gate which for 26 years remained locked, except to enable the priest to conduct the daily rituals, was ordered by a Faizabad court to be opened. Rajiv further granted Hindu devotees permission to enter the Babri Masjid for darshan of the idol of Ram Lalla.

Muslims protested against this directive as a result of which the Ayodhya dispute moved to the centre-stage of Indian politics. The issue cast its shadow on Hindu-Muslim relations initially, and subsequently triggered bloody riots across several cities.

The events following the opening of what had been a functional mosque till 1949 to Hindus enabled the Sangh Parivar to conduct in a calibrated manner the biggest and longest mass movement in India after the freedom struggle.

Eventually, the Ayodhya imbroglio became an electoral issue and over two Lok Sabha polls in 1989 and 1991, catapulted the BJP from two seats in the house to emerging as the second largest party with 120 seats. At that point, LK Advani haughtily declared that the BJP was the “government in waiting.”

Key date 4: November 9, 1989

A day globally known as the one when the Berlin Wall was pulled down, the declaration for epochal events on this day in Ayodhya was made nine months before, on February 1. On this day, the VHP organised a meeting of the Hindu priests in Allahabad. Most of them were already on board of the Ayodhya Ram temple campaign.

From the venue during the ongoing Kumbh Mela, they announced on November 9, that the foundation would be laid for a new Ram temple that would be built after ‘removing’ the Babri Masjid. This chosen day was also the day when the annual festival of Utthana Ekadashi or Devothan Ekadashi (a religious festival when the gods are supposed to rise from months-long slumber), also a day heralding the beginning of an auspicious period.

Mass mobilisation

On this day, a large crowd in Ayodhya was assured. In order to mobilise support for this programme, the VHP announced the Ram Shila Yatra programme under which special consecrated bricks with Jai Shri Ram inscribed on them would be produced in large numbers and then transported in to the temple-town in processions. The yatras, which began rolling across India triggered the next round of communal riots at several place, most violently in Bhagalpur, Bihar.

Importantly, in the months between the VHP announcing the programme of Shilanyas and the start of the Ram Shila Yatras to drum up support for the final act which was shrewdly timed with the 1989 Lok Sabha elections campaign, the BJP in a crucial National Executive meeting adopted a resolution endorsing the demand for the Ram temple and pledged to be a part of this movement.

With the movement gaining support, the Congress party buckled down and Rajiv Gandhi launched his party’s electoral campaign from Faizabad-Ayodhya just days before the shilanyas, instead of from Nagaur in Rajasthan, where it was previously planned for.

Shilanyas done

The shilanyas ceremony was conducted after the government bent further and the Union Home Ministry controversially declared that the site, yards away from the main eastern gate to the Babri Masjid, was not under dispute. The religious ceremony of this day was conducted, in a shrew ploy by Kameshwar Chaupal, a Harijan member of the VHP.

He was subsequently deputed to the BJP and became an MLA from Bihar before being made a member of the Ram temple trust in 2020. Ashok Singhal, the VHP helmsman, declared after the successful ceremony that the foundation stone laid was not just of the Ram temple, but of Hindu India.

The BJP formally declared in a white paper it released in 1993 that after the ceremony, it was evident that the Ram temple issue had emerged as the central issue in national politics and set the political agenda of the nation in the years that followed. As India prepares to vote one more time in 2024, the ominous foreboding of these words comes back to haunt those who doubted Singhal’s claim.

Key date 5: December 6, 1992

In the aftermath of the lamentable sequence of events leading to this day, former president KR Narayanan described the demolition of the Babri Masjid as the “greatest tragedy India faced since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.” For a long time, the mass movement for the liberation of the Ram Janmabhomi was more about the demolishing the Babri Masjid and less about constructing a new Ram temple.

With this task ‘accomplished’ the support for the BJP did not increase as its leaders expected. This was the primary reason why the BJP failed to regain power in Uttar Pradesh when state assembly polls were held in November-December 1993. It was also one of the explanations for the BJP moderating its stance – evident in re-anointing Vajpayee as its prime ministerial candidate.

Simultaneously, when it became evident that a few contentious matters stood in the way of new allies committing to being part of a coalition in 1998, the BJP put the pledge to construct the Ram temple on the back seat. It also relegated other core Hindutva issues, abrogating Article 370 and enacting a Uniform Civil Code, to the background and made little mention of these commitments.

Mosque razing

The demolition of the Babri Masjid was mainly due to the Sangh Parivar reneging on its promise to perform ‘symbolic’ Kar Seva and not allow any damage to the Babri Masjid. This was compounded by the naiveté or was a tactical ploy of Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to take the commitments of the VHP, RSS, the BJP and the UP government with BJP’s Kalyan Singh at face value.

LK Advani termed December 6 as the “saddest day” in his life, but his wretchedness may have been more with the realisation that with the demolition, he and his party had lost a ‘symbol’ of Hindu ‘humiliation’ at the hands of Muslim rulers in medieval India.

For more than three decades since then, the demolition is recalled by today’s triumphalists as a day of victory and valour. For others, however, the day represents one when the chance for a non-violent settlement of the issue was lost forever.

Key date 6: February 28, 2002

Godhra is almost 1,500 km from Ayodhya. Yet, the two cities are umbilically tied because of the attack on the Sabarmati Express and the riots that were allowed to erupt across Gujarat.

Innumerable questions about the sequence of events remain unanswered but the entire episode revived the core sentiment at the root of the Ayodhya agitation. Although not articulated explicitly till the horrific Gujarat riots, the events following the Godhra carnage enabled prejudice and dislike towards Muslims to be stated more unabashedly.

This incident facilitated mainstreaming of the Hindutva ideology and allowed rabid Islamophobia to gain respectability. The fact that then Chief Minister Narendra Modi could electorally swing back the state in BJP’s favour marked the moment when a significant section of Indians began believing that there was nothing wrong in viewing the country as populated by two communities: ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Modi had the confidence that the time had come for efforts for ‘otherisation’ of Muslims would succeed and the sentiment could be articulated without any qualms. His assumption proved correct.

2014 Lok Sabha elections

Eventually, it only required the veneer of non-communal vocabulary, like during the 2014 elections for securing the most decisive mandate since 1984. This lingua franca remains at the core of the political yarn of the regime, but almost a decade after, the intended objective is more categorical. Unless there is a miraculous turn of events, it is just a matter of time that the disputed shrines in Varanasi, Mathura and several more, shall go the Ayodhya way.

Key date 7: September 30, 2010

On this day the Allahabad High Court delivered a judgment what can be called in legalese as the “original proceedings” from the four suits that were clubbed together in 1961. Although it appeared at that time to be unfair to every party, in hindsight the court’s verdict that each of the three parties, the primary representatives of the Hindus and Muslims besides the third, the Nirmohi Akhrara, were ‘entitled’ to one third of the disputed property each, was possibly the ‘best solution’ for a pluralistic India.

Prior to this, the only other proposal for an amiable settlement was the proposal made by several leaders and groups in the 1980s. Under this, it was suggested to convert the disputed site into a ‘national monument’ and place it in the custody of the Archaeological Survey of India.

Instead of the two warring communities taking out their ire on one another, the fury would have been directed at the state and with time and possibly some collateral damage, this would have been contained and the issue would have gradually ebbed out from public discourse.

Key date 8: November 9, 2019

Till the final adjudication on the Babri Masjid title suit on this day, there was hope of its resurrection, if not as exact replica, but, at least in idea. Despite rising support for majoritarianism, a harebrained optimism was retained by significant sections of Indians. They hoped that a structure emblematic of the demolished mosque would eventually be constructed at the same site.

The Supreme Court on this day, importantly in an unsigned but unanimous verdict, recognised the illegality of the conspiratorial installation of the Ram Lalla idol in 1949 and the brazen destruction of the mosque in 1992.

Yet, it handed over custody of the place to the Hindu parties and directed the government to form a Trust to construct and manage the temple. The judges in fact, perpetuated the principle of forcible usurpation and subsequently securing holding rights on the sole basis of ‘possession’.

Supreme Court decision

The judges chose not to restitute to the Muslims the structure whose demolition violated the Constitution and the nation’s secular foundations.

Among the five judges from whom there were many expectations, partisan and non-partisan, was one who soon accepted a Rajya Sabha nomination from the government. Another judge took his place in the apex court and before relinquishing office of the CJI, admitted a plea challenging the constitutionality of the Places of Worship Act, 1991. A third is the CJI now.

There is need to recollect that the verdict by the five judges sung paeans for this law enacted by the Narasimha Rao government at the height of the campaign that led to the mosque’s destruction. Shortly before frenzy began building up over the impending consecration of the still under construction temple in Ayodhya, a member of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation confessed in agony that the judgment, however fraught with partiality, was accepted by some sections among Muslims, at great risk of marginalisation within the community, because they expected the PoW Act to act as a bulwark against further majoritarian onslaught against other shrines ‘claimed’ by Hindu organisations.

Pandora’s Box

But in December 2023, the same apex court, albeit a different Bench directed, the Varanasi trial court to decide the five title suits filed by various Hindu parties within six months. This raises the possibility of the local court speeding up hearing and delivering the judgment prior to Lok Sabha polls.

The future of the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah in Mathura and an inestimable number of Islamic places of worship in the country remain unknown because of developments since the Ayodhya judgment on this day. History will certainly recall this verdict as one which paved the way for constructing the Ram temple. Sadly, it may also be given kudos for opening yet another Pandora’s Box.

Key date 9: August 5, 2020

Modi astutely chose the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 to conduct Bhoomi Pujan for the Ram temple. This was another instance when he fused issues pertaining to the nation’s politics with religious matters.

With Modi playing the role of the yajmaan, or the person who conducts a particular religious ritual, during this ceremony in Ayodhya, the final lines of separation between religion and the state disappeared. It also ensured that Modi had decided that the final symbolic signature over the Ram temple, from foundation to its tip, shall be his and not anyone else’s – either Kameshwar Chaupal or Lal Krishna Advani’s who backed him in 2002 when Vajpayee had wanted Modi to step down as Gujarat chief minister.

Importantly, the ceremony in Ayodhya was conducted at the time when the wrath of the pandemic was not yet in the past. If not indicative of this regime’s priorities, was this suggestive of anything else?

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)