EDITORIAL

Assert India’s Unity

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, People’s Democracy is reproducing its editorial dated December 13, 1992.

WE bow our heads in shame. The vandals masquerading as religious heads, their political mouthpieces and their fanatic foot-soldiers have been able to accomplish the most despicable job of destroying the four and half centuries old structure known as the Babri Masjid. In order to do it, their religious ethics did not come in the way of resorting to every conceivable subterfuge, deception and blatant lies. On December 6, they almost succeeded in killing India. And 6th of December will be known in the historical calendar of this country as BLACK SUNDAY.

All patriots, and the Left in particular, have always taken great pride in and stood as the defenders of a united India, indivisible, and hence indestructible.  In one of his first poems, Rabindranath Tagore, one of the India’s greatest poets and visionaries, proclaimed how the Shakas, Huns, Pathans and Mughals had come as invaders, but in time became absorbed into and contributed another rich segment to the tapestry of Indian culture. Thus was built the glory and majesty of Indian civilisation.

While therefore, ethnically, culturally, linguistically, religion-wise and now to a great extent politically, India has come to consist of divergent groups, all of them pledged to remaining together in one country called “India, that is Bharat”. Some two centuries back a famous English poet had said that when a part of the whole dies, the whole dies to the extent of the part.  Therefore, “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. A part of India was sought to be murdered on BLACK SUNDAY and because of it the whole of India is writhing in excruciating pain.  Hundreds of lives, nobody knows for sure the exact number, have already been lost in a fratricidal war.  How many hundreds are yet to be sacrificed? As Indians, believing in the secular and democratic destiny of the country, we are forced to bow our heads in shame that such things could actually be perpetrated. How this dastardly purpose was achieved through bluster and deceit is now common knowledge, and has been detailed elsewhere in this issue.

The BJP, the common mouthpiece of these fanatic outfits, which assured the Supreme Court, the parliament of India and the country that karseva would be confined to bhajans and kirtans only, is not only not repentant or apologetic about what incalculable harm it has done to the secular and democratic fabric of India’s body politic, it is stridently justifying what has been done in the name of faith. When logic and reason fail to dissuade such betrayers, then it is time to unleash the organised force of the state to bear upon them.

But who is to perform this job? Obviously, the government. But still two days after the event the government of India was still seemingly under paralysis and numbed. Clearly if the BJP was the perpetrator, Narasimha Rao was the abettor.  If he seriously believed that two and a half lakh people were coming to Ayodhya for ‘bhajan and kirtan’, he was a simpleton. And a simpleton cannot be retained at the helm of affairs of a country.  It was the case that he was afraid to take early action immediately after the non-BJP secular opposition gave him a carte blanche to do whatever he thought fit to foil the suspected nefarious designs of the sangh parivar, he must be deemed to be too timid, to say the least, to occupy the exalted position of prime minister of a great country as in India.

Internationally, we are fast becoming a pariah. Pakistan is finding justification for its misdeeds, and the Arab countries, with whom we had excellent relations, are reconsidering these relations, perhaps even an oil embargo. Even Bush, despite his own black record vis-à-vis the blacks and Hispanics in his own country, has found an opportunity to express his ‘displeasure’. Thus India’s fair name is being dragged in the mud.

To keep the secular flag aloft was the duty, obligation and responsibility of Narasimha Rao. He has failed and failed miserably.  He must go.  He no longer enjoys the moral right to continue. Meanwhile the sternest possible measures must be immediately adopted to contain the escalating threat of a fratricidal war. Deterrent punishment should be meted out to those responsible for the destruction of the structure, with no quarter given to them. This is time to act with courage, determination and decision.