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What's wrong with     President's Rule     anyway? Let's start a party! The mute spectators The true verdict

The drama in Ayodhya

Po-faced television anchor: 'Do you think the Centre would be heaving a big sigh of relief?'

Straight-faced 'correspondent in the field:' 'Yes, indeed, I think the Centre would be heaving a huge sigh of relief.'

At around 1750 hours on Friday, March 15, I fell off my chair laughing at that very serious, and oh-so-insightful, exchange. Couldn't help myself -- the mental image conjured up, of a bunch of ministers drawn from 14 different points of the political compass gathering around a table, taking in a collective deep breath and going one-two-three-woosh, was irresistible.

Seconds later, a few sobering thoughts intruded -- as sobering thoughts will -- to spoil my fun.

One of R K Laxman's brilliant cartoons shows a mob dashing headlong in one direction. Well behind them, sprinting desperately, was a figure in Gandhi cap who, pausing in his headlong rush, tells the ubiquitous Common Man: 'They are my followers -- I have to catch up with them!'

Funny? No -- frightening, actually, if you consider a few highpoints in the recent history of the Ayodhya movement.

On October 31, 1991, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders address thousands of karsevaks who have assembled in Ayodhya at their behest. The speakers range from VHP President Ashok Singhal to BJP leader L K Advani -- but the message is the same. 'You have given us power in Uttar Pradesh. And in return, the Kalyan Singh government has acquired the land, handed it over to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas for temple construction, and even performed a bhoomi pujan for the second pillar of the main entrance. Now we need you to go back home and work to bring the BJP to power at the Centre -- only then can we remove all obstacles and construct the temple here.'

The karsevaks who had travelled to Ayodhya from remote corners of the country, and in the preceeding days been primed to the gills with emotional and religious fervour, were outraged. They had come to work for the Ram temple, not to listen to political propaganda -- for kar seva, not kaan seva.

Their expressed their disgust through abuse hurled at the leaders (Bajrang Dal chief Vinay Katiyar barely escaped physical assault on that occasion), and followed it up by breaking the security cordon, clambering atop the Babri Masjid, and hoisting a saffron flag on top of it.

On December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was demolished. In its aftermath, the BJP and the VHP repeatedly said that it was 'a spontaneous reaction' by the assembled faithful. So what were the karsevaks 'spontaneously reacting' to?

Disappointment. Yet again, they had been brought together from various parts of the country, yet again an enormous amount of emotional energy and religious fervour had been whipped up, and yet again, they found themselves watching a token ceremony and listening to a lot of speeches. Enough is enough, they said as they proceeded to storm the masjid and say it with pickaxes and hammers.

Cut to March 15, 2002. Yet again -- this time braving the most stringent security clampdown yet witnessed in the region -- a few hundred karsevaks manage to infiltrate into Ayodhya. Yet again, fervour and emotion are systematically whipped up over the preceding fortnight. Yet again, karsevaks are led to believe that actual construction will commence.

The shila daan procession commences. Without warning, Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas president Ramchandra Das Paramhans switches plans, scurries inside his akhara, and announces that he will hand over the shila right there.

The move angers the assembled sadhus and karsevaks. The sadhus abuse the VHP and the mahant -- 'Is this why you asked us to assemble here? Is this why you put the people of Ayodhya through so much hardship?' they demand. The karsevaks raise angry slogans accusing the VHP of a sell-out. A housewife makes an angry speech accusing the VHP of corruption and of toying with people's sentiments -- and the crowd that had gathered at the behest of the VHP cheers her on.

The situation turns ugly.

VHP International President Ashok Singhal is reduced to asking the security personnel to clear the akhara premises, to protect him from his followers. He is also, by way of amusing sidelight, forced to ask for the summary ejection of the media -- after all, which leader wants prime time viewers to see video footage of himself being abused by his own followers?

Do you see a pattern here? Time and again, the VHP has worked up national fervour bordering on hysteria. Time and again, the VHP has then left its followers unsatisfied. And time and again, the disappointed followers have boiled over in rage. On two of those occasions, the fallout has been "unfortunate." In the latest instance, it wasn't -- only because of the extremely strong security presence.

You can't, they say, fool all the people all the time. The VHP has been trying to buck that trend, by repeatedly announcing programmes, getting the collective adrenalin pumping, and then backing off. Calling what happened a 'triumph of Hinduism,' as VHP general secretary and resident spinmeister Praveen Togadia did on March 15, fools no one -- the 'triumph' in actual fact consists of moving a carved pillar a distance of a little over one undisputed kilometer, handing it over to a government bureaucrat in a triumph of tokenism, and watching as it is carted away for 'safe-keeping' in the local police station.

Was that what the karsevaks braved all kinds of hardships, bans, and bandobast to participate in?

Have you ever been in a theatre where the audience, dissatisfied by the performance, resorted to booing and when that proved inadequate to express their collective frustration, said it with missiles? Think now of the karsevaks as both participants and audience in the successive Kabuki plays staged by the VHP-BJP-RJN (Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas) combine. And ask yourself this -- how much longer will it be, how many more such dramas will it take, before the genie slips irrevocably out of the bottle, the Parivar loses control of its followers, the karsevaks erupt in "spontaneous" combustion, and the resulting flames inflict third-degree burns on an already burnt and bloodied nation?

That in sum is the very real problem. So where lies the solution?

Part II: Will the VHP clean the Ganga now?

The Ayodhya dispute

Prem Panicker