Ram temple consecration: IAS officer recalls celebration of Babri Masjid demolition

Mumbai, Jan 22 (PTI) A senior Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1992 batch took to social media to claim she and several of her colleagues, who were undergoing training at the time, celebrated the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

In a long post on Sunday on Facebook which started with the slogan 'Jai Shri Ram', Manisha Patankar Mhaiskar, currently the state's Additional Chief Secretary (Public Works Department), said "life had come a full circle", a reference to the Ram Temple getting inaugurated during the day in Ayodhya on the site of the demolished mosque.

"Life comes a full circle and'¦ How!!! 6th December 1992 was a very cold day in Mussoorie. 1992 Batch of IAS were at their Foundation Course. News was slowly trickling in of the seminal developments at the Ram Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya. A very spontaneous meeting had got organised but very discreetly, by invitation only," she wrote.

"My staunch Nagpur roots were considered good enough for an invitation. At the meeting venue some probationers were chanting Jai Shri Ram'¦ I remember eating one full Kesar pedha and at that moment on the very cold night of 6th December 1992, I knew that the happenings at Ayodhya were the beginning of something very positive, very powerful, very auspicious," she added.

Nagpur is where the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is located, which gives Vidarbha's largest city a prime place in all affairs related to Hindutva.

The IAS official said the news of their celebration, however, got leaked and participants were issued notices.

"The 1992 batch was termed disappointing, comprising mainly of easily excitable small towners. Whatever had happened to the posh, smart, privileged kids of the Lutyens and such like? Whatever is happening to Secularism? they said," Patankar-Mhaiskar further said in the social media post.

She said life continued "with all its vicissitudes" but the "belief held firm" that the events of December 6, 1992 were the beginning of "something powerful, something positive, something auspicious".

The IAS official ended the post by saying she had eaten a 'kesari pedha' (sweet usually distributed during auspicious occasions) on the eve of the idol consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and remembered the "seminal 6th December moment" and the positive and auspicious feeling it had invoked.

Along with the message, she also posted a photograph in which she is seen feeding sweets to her husband Milind Mhaiskar, a 1991 batch Indian Administrative Service officer as well as Indian Institute of Technology Bombay alumnus. PTI