Given that the temples of different religions Khajuraho are now a World Heritage Site, and therefore having a measure of protection nationally and internationally, the destruction of the Mosque at Ayodhya is an example of the way places of religious meaning can become a focus of contention when a secular social framework begins to break down. The demolition of this Mosque in 1992 was a moment that now has a historic significance in modern India, reflecting a significant increase in Hindu nationalism within a divided society. For Muslim Indians a secular society is a protection, for Hindu nationalists it is politics and identity mixed with the assertions of religious entitlement.
On 6 December 1992, a large crowd of Hindu Kar Sevaks (activists) demolished the 16th-century Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh. The demolition occurred after a political rally at the site turned violent.
In Hindu tradition, the city of Ayodhya is the birthplace of Rama. In the 16th century a Mughal general, Mir Baqi, had built a mosque, known as the Babri Masjid, at a site considered by some Hindus to be Ram Janmabhoomi, the birthplace of Rama. In the 1980s, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its political voice. Several rallies and marches were held as a part of this movement, including the Ram Rath Yatra led by L. K. Advani. On 6 December 1992 the VHP and the BJP organised a rally at the site involving 150,000 volunteers, known as kar sevaks. The rally turned violent, and the crowd overwhelmed security forces and tore down the mosque. A subsequent inquiry into the incident found 68 people responsible, including several leaders of the BJP and the VHP. The demolition resulted in several months of intercommunal rioting between India's Hindu and Muslim communities, causing the death of at least 2,000 people. Retaliatory violence against Hindus also occurred in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In Hindu tradition, the birthplace of the deity Rama, known as "Ram Janmabhoomi", is considered a holy site. This site is often believed to at the place where the Babri Masjid stood in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Historical evidence to support this belief is scarce, and several historians have stated that Ayodhya became a religious centre with a number of temples only in the 18th century. In 1528, following the Mughal conquest of the region, a mosque was built at the site by the Mughal general Mir Baqi, and named the "Babri Masjid" after the Mughal emperor Babur. Popular belief holds that Baqi demolished a temple to Rama to build the mosque: limited historical evidence exists to support this theory. Archaeological evidence has been found of a structure pre-dating the mosque. This structure has been variously identified as a Hindu temple and a Buddhist structure. For at least four centuries, the site was used for religious purposes by both Hindus and Muslims. The claim that the mosque stood on the site of a temple was first made in 1822, by an official of the Faizabad court. The Nirmohi Akhara sect cited this statement in laying claim to the site in later in the 19th century, leading to the first recorded incidents of religious violence at the site, between 1853 and 1855. In 1859 the British colonial administration set up a railing to separate the outer courtyard of the mosque to avoid disputes. The status quo remained in place until 1949, when idols of Rama were surreptitiously placed inside the mosque, allegedly by volunteers of the Hindu Mahasabha. This led to an uproar, with both parties filing civil suits laying claim to the land. The placement of the idol was seen as a desecration by the users of the Masjid. The site was declared to be in dispute, and the gates to the Masjid were locked. In the 1980s, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its political voice. The movement was bolstered by the decision of a district judge, who ruled in 1986 that the gates would be reopened and Hindus permitted to worship there. This decision was endorsed by Indian National Congress politician Rajiv Gandhi, then the Prime Minister of India, who sought to regain support from Hindus he had lost over the Shah Bano controversy. Nonetheless, the Congress lost the 1989 general election, and the BJP's strength in parliament grew from 2 members to 88, making its support crucial to the new government of V. P. Singh. In September 1990, BJP leader L. K. Advani began a Rath Yatra, a political rally travelling across much of north India to Ayodhya. The yatra sought to generate support for the proposed template, and also sought to unite Hindu votes by mobilizing anti-Muslim sentiment. Advani was arrested by the government of Bihar before he could reach Ayodhya. Despite this, a large body of kar sevaks or Sangh Parivar activists reached Ayodhya and attempted to attack the mosque. This resulted in a pitched battle with the paramilitary forces that ended with the death of several kar sevaks. The BJP withdrew its support to the V. P. Singh ministry, necessitating fresh elections. The BJP substantially increased its tally in the union parliament, as well as winning a majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. On 6 December 1992, the RSS and its affiliates organised a rally involving 150,000 VHP and BJP kar sevaks at the site of the mosque. The ceremonies included speeches by BJP leaders such as Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. During the first few hours of the rally, the crowd grew gradually more restless, and began raising slogans. A police cordon had been placed around the mosque in preparation for attack. However, around noon, a young man managed to slip past the cordon and climb the mosque itself, brandishing a saffron flag. This was seen as a signal by the mob, who then stormed the structure. The police cordon, vastly outnumbered and unprepared for the size of the attack, fled. The mob set upon the building with axes, hammers, and grappling hooks, and within a few hours, the entire mosque was leveled. Hindus also destroyed numerous other mosques within the town. A 2009 report, authored by Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, found 68 people to be responsible for the demolition of the Masjid, mostly leaders from the BJP. Among those named were Vajpayee, Advani, Joshi and Vijay Raje Scindia. Kalyan Singh, who was then the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, also faced severe criticism in the report. Liberhan wrote that he posted bureaucrats and police officers to Ayodhya, whose record indicated that they would stay silent during the mosque's demolition. Anju Gupta, a police officer who had been in charge of Advani's security on that day, stated that Advani and Joshi made speeches that contributed to provoking the behaviour of the mob. The report notes that at this time several BJP leaders made "feeble requests to the kar sevaks to come down... either in earnest or for the media's benefit". No appeal was made to the Kar Sevaks not to enter the sanctum sanctorum or not to demolish the structure. The report notes: "This selected act of the leaders itself speaks of the hidden intentions of one and all being to accomplish demolition of the disputed structure." The report holds that the "icons of the movement present [that day]... could just as easily have... prevented the demolition." In a 2005 March book, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Joint Director, Maloy Krishna Dhar claimed that Babri mosque demolition was planned 10 months in advance by top leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ("RSS"), BJP and VHP and raised questions over the way the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, had handled the issue. Dhar claimed that he was directed to arrange the coverage of a key meeting of the BJP/Sangh Parivar and that the meeting "proved beyond doubt that they (RSS, BJP, VHP) had drawn up the blueprint of the Hindutva assault in the coming months and choreographed the 'pralaya nritya' (dance of destruction) at Ayodhya in December 1992. The RSS, BJP, VHP and the Bajrang Dal leaders present in the meeting amply agreed to work in a well-orchestrated manner." Claiming that the tapes of the meeting were personally handed over by him to his boss, he asserts that he has no doubts that his boss had shared the contents with the Prime Minister (Rao) and the Home Minister (S B Chavan). The author claimed that there was silent agreement that Ayodhya offered "a unique opportunity to take the Hindutva wave to the peak for deriving political benefit." In April 2014, a sting operation by Cobrapost claimed that the demolition was not an act of frenzied mobs but an act of sabotage planned with so much secrecy that no government agency got wind of it. It further said that the sabotage was planned several months in advance by Vishva Hindu Parishad and Shiv Sena, but not jointly. On 16 December 1992, the Union home ministry set up the Liberhan Commission to investigate the destruction of the Mosque, headed by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan. Totalling 399 sittings over sixteen years, the Commission submitted its 1,029-page report to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. According to the report, the events of 6 December 1992, in Ayodhya were "neither spontaneous nor unplanned". In March 2015, the Supreme Court of India admitted a petition alleging that, with a BJP government in power, the CBI would not pursue conspiracy charges against senior BJP leaders including L. K. Advani and Rajnath Singh. The Court asked the CBI to explain its delay in filing an appeal.
In April 2017, Supreme Court of India reinstated criminal conspiracy charges against L. K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar and others. On 5 December 2017, Supreme Court of India Full bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Abdul Nazeer has set 8 February 2018 as the date for final hearing on the case. On 6 April 2018, Supreme Court of India rules against immediate constitution of a larger bench to hear the case.
Ram ke Naam: a 1992 documentary by Anand Patwardhan. The film explores the campaign waged by the Hindu-nationalist Vishva Hindu Parishad to build a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, as well as the communal violence that it triggered. A couple of months after Ram ke Naam was released, VHP activists demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, provoking further violence. The film earned Patwardhan a wide recognition, and received several national and international awards.
Ram ke Naam explores the VHP's campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid and build a temple to Rama in its place. The film begins with a clip of an organizer describing Advani's rath yatra in 1990. It then shows scenes from the yatra, with young men dressed in saffron seen in Ayodhya, followed by a video prepared by the VHP. The video depicts an incident at the temple in 1949, when an idol of Rama "appeared" inside the mosque. In the VHP's retelling, Rama is shown descending from the sky and miraculously appearing in the mosque, watched by astonished spectators, followed by a member of the VHP telling the same story.
The documentary then shifts to interviews with Muslim residents, who state that they do not have access to justice, and describe the destruction that occurred during communal riots in 1986. Patwardhan then interviews young male members of the VHP, who say that they will take Ayodhya by force if they need to. One of the men is unable to answer a question about historicity of Rama's date of birth. The film then shows Advani's yatra entering the state of Bihar, and several provocative speeches by politicians of the BJP. This is followed by an interview with a tax inspector, who was fired for objecting to irregularities in the tax returns of the VHP. The film concludes with a clip of people at a BJP rally attempting to justify the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse.
The film received a positive reception from critics, and also received several national and international awards. A review in the magazine Manushi stated that the film was a reminder of "that rare commodity called truth," and went on to say that although the film might be considered to have flaws of a technical nature, it should be mandatory viewing for people who wished to understand the Ayodhya dispute.
The VHP and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar reacted with hostility to the film, stating that it was "anti-Hindu." In 1993 volunteers of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh prevented the documentary from being screened at a college in Mumbai. In 2002, the VHP also prevented the movie from being screened at the American Museum of Natural History. After a screening of the documentary at ILS Law College on 27 December 2014 was cancelled due to threats from right wing organisations, Patwardhan officially released the documentary on YouTube.
Patwardhan was already fairly well known thanks to his earlier films, such as Prisoners of Conscience, which critiqued the state of emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid 1970s. However, Ram ke Naam earned him a wide recognition for the first time.
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