"Ayodhya Issue" In: the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race
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Ayodhya Issue around this cause. The situation was different five years later. During the 1989 election cam- CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT paign, RSS activists, VHP religious figures, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS Paris, France and BJP candidates canvassed thousands of towns and villages to consecrate bricks Ayodhya, in today’s Uttar Pradesh, is known stamped with Ram’s name and destined in Hinduism as the capital of a kingdom to be used to “rebuild” the Ram temple in whose famous king was Lord Ram, one of the Ayodhya. The bricks were carried in proces- mostpopulargodsofNorthIndia.According sions imitating those organized for religious to Hindu nationalist ideologues, a temple celebrations in which idols are carried along hadbeenbuiltonthebirthplaceofGod a precise itinerary. In several places, these Ram (Ramjanmabhoomi); but in 1528 Babur, processions resulted in riots that followed an the first Moghol emperor, had this temple identical scenario in each case: a procession replaced by a mosque, the Babri Masjid. in the form of a show of strength (some- Although there is no definite archaeological times involving over ten thousand people) evidence for the existence of a temple on stretched along several kilometers; despite that site, Hindus continued to worship Ram the local authorities’ recommendations or there and, after independence in 1949, Hindu interdictions, they entered the Muslim neigh- nationalists placed the statues of Ram and his borhoods, where they chanted slogans such wife Sita in the mosque, by way of reclaiming as Pakistan aur Kabristan (there are only the place (Jha and Jha 2012). Prime Minis- two places for Muslims: Pakistan and the ter Nehru had the building sealed, and the cemetery); these provocations prompted the issue died out for years. It was resurrected inhabitants to throw stones from neighboring in 1984, when the Hindu nationalist move- homes, to which procession members, who ment, also known as the Sangh Parivar—the often turned out to be well armed, retali- “Family of the Sangh,” that is, the Rashtriya ated with bloody assaults (Jaffrelot 1999). In Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS; the Association Bhagalpur (Bihar) more than one thousand of the National Volunteers)—launched a people, mostly Muslim, died. campaign for the (re)building of the temple. This pre-electoral communal violence was The religious wing of the Parivar, the Vishva a clear component of the strategy of the Hindu Parishad (VHP; the World Hindu BJP, which wanted to polarize the electorate Congress), was the key actor in a movement along religious lines and thus deepened the whose central theme was that Ram should be Hindu group identity, so that its members “liberated” (Van der Veer 1987). would end up “voting Hindu”—a scenario This agitation failed to influence the that Steven Wilkinson has analyzed in a 1984 elections because of the overwhelming larger perspective, with special reference to impact of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and Uttar Pradesh (Wilkinson 2004). Recourse to thefactthatthepoliticalpartyoftheSangh so-called religious processions thus proved Parivar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; the crucial in mobilizing people. The Ayodhya Party of the Indian People), did not rally temple campaign contributed to bringing up The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, First Edition. Edited by John Stone, Rutledge M. Dennis, Polly S. Rizova, Anthony D. Smith, and Xiaoshuo Hou. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663202.wberen644 2 AYODHYA ISSUE the score of the BJP in the Lower House of wholaidclaimtothesiteonwhichHindus, Parliament from two (out of 543) seats in just after having demolished the mosque, 1984 to eighty-five seats in 1989. had built a small temple amid the ruins, to In 1990 L. K. Advani, the BJP president, house statues of Ram and Sita. The Alla- launched a huge “procession” across India habad High Court had handed down a highly (the “Rath Yatra”) in order to mobilize sup- controversial judgment in 2010. The three portforbuildingaRamtempleinAyodhyain justices in charge of the case were divided. spite of the stay order that the Supreme Court OneofthemreferredtoHindumythology had given. In many cities, Advani’s meet- to recommend that the site be handed over ings ignited Hindu–Muslim riots. Advani entirely to the majority community. The other wasarrestedbeforereachingAyodhya,but two judges, a Hindu and a Muslim, wrote activists stormed the Babri Mosque and a majority opinion that was based on the dozens of them were killed in police repres- principle that the mosque had been built on sion.Themovementhaditsmartyrs,whose the Ramjanmabhoomi. ashes were taken all over India, in proces- The court in Allahabad thus went against sionsthatinturnbecametherootcausefora established Supreme Court jurisprudence. In new wave of riots. When mid-term elections December 1992, Narasimha Rao’s govern- were held the following year (1991), the BJP ment petitioned the Supreme Court to know jumped from eighty-five to 119 seats in the “ifaHindutempleoranyotherreligious Lower House of Parliament. structure existed prior to the construction The Ramjanmabhoomi movement culmi- of the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid, nated in the demolition of the Babri Mosque including the premises of the inner and outer by Hindu nationalists on December 6, 1992. courtyards of the structure” (Report of the This move was presented as a spontaneous Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Inquiry upsurge of Hindu activists by the BJP leaders, 2009). After pondering on the issue for who claimed that they had nothing to do with two years, the Court finally replied that the it. But the Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of question was superfluous and pointless. The Inquiry—whose conclusions were leaked in judges thus finally admitted that they were 2009—showed that the BJP had contributed not equipped to decide on matters of belief. toorchestratethewholeepisode,inspiteof Sixteen years later, however, lower-ranking the judiciary—an authority the party did not judges felt that they were in a position to respect. settle the issue. This prompted a remark from Ittookthecommissioninchargeofassign- the great Indian lawyer Rajeev Dhawan, who ing responsibility for the event seventeen congratulated them for their “theological” years to hand in its report. In fact this expertise. report was not submitted to parliament until The two Allahabad justices deduced from November 2009, after it had been leaked to thesepremisesthatitwasappropriate,not thepress.Thedocument,draftedbyJustice to rebuild the demolished mosque, as many Liberhan, a former Supreme Court justice, Muslim organizations were asking, but to held the leaders of the Hindu nationalist grant the Hindu contesting parties the por- movement responsible for the act, and in no tion of the land that was found under the uncertain terms. To date, however, no trial central dome of the mosque—an area that has been scheduled on the judiciary’s agenda. they held to be the holiest of holy places of But at the same time the courts exam- the temple once built, according to them, ined complaints from Muslims and Hindus on the Ramjanmabhoomi. Furthermore, AYODHYA ISSUE 3 the magistrates only awarded the Muslims construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya” one-third of the land, which was not enough (Bharatiya Janata Party 2014: 14). for rebuilding a mosque, and awarded the other two-thirds to the two Hindu parties, SEE ALSO: Collective Action; Conflict; India; Islamophobia; Religious Nationalism; Riots the Nirmohi Akhara and the Vishva Hindu Parishad respectively. All three litigants appealed the verdict REFERENCES before the Supreme Court, which in May Bharatiya Janata Party. 2014. Election Manifesto, 2011 deemed the verdict that had been 2014. Accessed July 15, 2015. http://www.bjp. handed down by the Uttar Pradesh regional org/images/pdf_2014/full_manifesto_english_ court “strange,” simply in virtue of the fact 07.04.2014.pdf. that it recommended a course of action that Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1999. The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics. New Delhi: Pen- none of the parties had asked for: partition guin. of the land. The Court was careful not to Jha, Dhirendra K. and Krishna Jha. 2012. Ayodhya: opine as to the existence of a temple that The Dark Night. New Delhi: Harper Collins. preceded the mosque, or as to the notion Report of the Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Ramjanmabhomi. But the fact that the of Inquiry. 2009. Accessed July 11, 2015. Allahabad court used this notion as the basis http://www.thehindu.com/news/report-of-the- for its verdict reflects a change of mindset in liberhan-ayodhya-commission-of-inquiry-full- text/article54082.ece. legal circles; and the judges may have to inter- Van der Veer, Peter. 1987. “God Must Be Liberated! vene again, because, during the 2014 general A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya.” elections campaign, the winner, the Bharatiya Modern Asian Studies 21(2): 283–301. Janata Party, has declared: “BJP reiterates its Wilkinson, Steven. 2004. Votes and Violence: Elec- stand to explore all possibilities within the toral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. framework of the constitution to facilitate the Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..