Religious based conflict in India, Comparative Understanding of Gujarat riot in 2002 and the Ayodhya conflict

Current Issues1 2 I S I M N E W S L E T T E R 1 0 / 0 2

I n d i a

J A N - P E T E R H A R T U N G

When on 27 February 2002 the Sabarmati Express at the train station of Godhra in the Indian state of Gu- jarat was assaulted and set on fire, and when, as a re- sult, the whole state of Gujarat turned into the most severe riots in India since about 10 years, an issue was brought back to the awareness of the world community, that had long been forgotten outside India: the so-called 'Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi', or Ayodhya conflict.

T h e A y o d h y a C o n f l i c t a n d M u s l i m L e a d e r s h i p

The Ayodhya conflict is a dispute over sa-

cred space between the two largest reli-

gious communities in South Asia: Hindus

and Muslims. It is, moreover, tightly bound

to colonial thinking and colonial politics in

1 9t h-century British India, and thus nowa-

days an inseparable part of what has been

named the 'post-colonial predicament'. Tak-

ing both together, the Ayodhya conflict is

the paradigmatic embodiment of a phe-

nomenon known as 'communalism': an ide-

ology that perceives society entirely as di-

vided into distinct religious communities

which have nothing in common. In India,

this ideology found its most pithy expres-

sion in the so-called 'Two Nations Theory' by

Muhammad Iqbal in 1930.

After the tragic events that accompanied

the partition of India in 1947, and the cre-

ation of Pakistan as the state of Indian Mus-

lims, the vision of the first prime minister of

the Indian Union and leader of the National

Congress Party, Jawaharlal Nehru, that India

shall become a secular democracy, seems

from the very beginning to have fallen prey

to communalist tendencies within Indian

society. Hindu communalism became a

major tendency in post-independence

India, taking up this assumption and argu-

ing that the Indian Union was to politically

safeguard the interests of the Hindu reli-

gious majority. Thus the idea of a unified,

strong and self-confident Hindu 'nation'

came into being, and turned communalism

into Hindu 'nationalism'.

The bundling of the various Hindu nation-

alist forces was achieved by the Sangh Pari-

var, an umbrella organization, under which

outfits like the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh

(RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) or the

Shiv Sena, could coordinate their activities

and work out strategies to reach different

layers of society. Out of one such strategy

today's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

emerged in 1980. The rhetoric of this new

political association included, besides a na-

tional political economy and the topos of

'justice versus corruption', more and more

religious symbols as core strategies of politi-

cal mobilization within the process of com-

munalization of the political sphere.1 M a j o r

symbols are sacred law and sacred space;

the first became manifest in the debate on

Uniform Civil Code versus Muslim Personal

Law which reached its peak so far in the so-

called Shah Bano case in 1985,2 the second,

sparked off by the mosque-temple dispute,

found its climax with the destruction of the

Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December

1992 by militant Hindu nationalist outfits.

Ba ck gr ound to th e confli ct Much has been written about the issue

since the culmination of the conflict in the

early 1990s, which centres around the ques-

tion of whether the mosque in Ayodhya,

erected in 1528 by order of the first Mughal

emperor Babur, replaced a Rama temple

which had been destroyed only for this pur-

pose.3 Nineteenth-century colonial construc-

tions of the Orient historicized religious

myths and, introducing different topoi,

helped create distinct religious communities

competing for political and social superiority.

Growing self-confidence among Hindus in

this process became evident in the utilization

of sacred space in Ayodhya when a part of the

Babri Masjid was occupied by a renowned

Hindu priest that year, setting up a raised

platform for worship in its courtyard, claiming

the place to be the historical birthplace of

Rama (ramjanmabhumi). This incident, 145

years ago, marked the beginning of the actu-

al Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi dispute.

C ommuna l pola r iza tion What followed, up to today, might be de-

scribed as flux and reflux of juridical and ac-

tivist conflict. For about one hundred years

the issue was left to the court, while the

sources prove that the British colonial ad-

ministration was more concerned with

maintaining a status quo than with taking

sides with one of the conflicting parties. But

when, on the morning of 23 December 1949,

idols of Rama and his wife Sita were found

under the middle dome of the mosque, the

Indian government took occasion of the

riots following, declared the mosque a dis-

puted area and closed it down for both con-

flicting communities. Another three decades

of juridical struggle followed, during which

Hindu nationalist thought entered almost

every strata of the Indian society. As its clear

expression, the VHP in 1961 openly called for

the demolition of the mosque. In 1984, a

'Committee to Sacrifice for the Liberation of

Rama's Birthplace' was founded and, finally

in 1986, by decision of the district court of

Faydabad, the mosque reopened for Hindus

only. From here it took only a short step to a

secret agreement between VHP and the

Union Home Minister in 1989 to erect a tem-

ple in place of the mosque and to the demo-

lition of the mosque in 1992.

The Indian Muslim intelligentsia was

aware of the danger of communal polariza-

tion of Indian society at quite an early stage.

Attempting to jointly face these develop-

ments, a number of non-governmental bod-

ies were set up, comprising otherwise even

hostile fractions within the Muslim commu-

nity. As early as 1964 the All-India Muslim

Majlis-i Mushawwarat (AIMMM) was found-

ed, followed by the All-India Muslim Person-

al Law Board (AIMPLB) in 1972. Even though

the latter refers primarily to another issue

within the communalist dispute, it cannot

be seen as separate from a joint effort of the

Muslim communities in India to unite in

view of the menace to their cultural identity

which was equally perceived as an attempt

by Hindu nationalist forces to violate the

secular basis of the Indian Constitution,

granting equality and freedom of religion.

Indira Gandhi's second legislative period as

prime minister made, for example, Sayyid

Abu l-Hasan cA l i Nadwi (d. 1999) – president

of the AIMPLB and internationally renown-

ed head of the Nadwat a l -cU l a m a – under-

stand that even the Congress Party was on

its way to discharge the main values that

have made up the foundations of Indian na-

tional identity. This latent communalism

made it possible for Hindu nationalist

movements to 'work out strategies for a cul-

tural and political genocide on Muslims, in

the result of which Muslims would no longer

persist as a culturally distinct community

within this society.'4 One of these strategies,

as Muslim leaders were quite aware of, was

the conversion of historic mosques – sym-

bols of Muslim cultural identity – into tem-

ples, which was tolerated, if not even en-

couraged, by the central and local govern-

ments. Exemplary for this was Prime Minis-

ter Rajiv Gandhi's assurance to Muslim lead-

ers during talks in February 1986 that he

would strongly vote for the Muslims in the

Babri Masjid dispute, which almost coincid-

ed with the re-opening of the mosque for

Hindus only.5

To face this particular threat, at least two

bodies were set up in 1986: the Babri Masjid

Movement Coordination Committee (B M M C C)

was founded under the auspices of the

AIMMM on the initiative of the then mem-

ber of parliament Sayyid Shahab al-Din; and

the advocate Zafar Yab Jilani from Lucknow

called in a Babri Masjid Action Committee

(BMAC) which in the meantime has become

a national platform too. Nevertheless, they

were not able to prevent political instability,

following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi

in 1990, from opening the floor to the tri-

umph of communalist politics. The BJP in-

creasingly used communalist symbols in its

electoral propaganda. From 1989 onwards

the Babri Masjid issue became crucial here-

in, and was thus transferred from a regional

controversy to a national issue; BJP rule in

Uttar Pradesh during 1991–1992 finally pro-

vided the political framework for the demo-

lition of the mosque.

Contin uing d ispute The controversy over the site, officially

named 'disputed site', nevertheless contin-

ues; it has now become a court case again

which, as Zafar Yab Gilani is convinced, will

be decided this year. But although efforts of

bodies like the AIMPLB, BMMCC and BMAC

succeeded in launching effective public

campaigns, and became a major factor for

at least maintaining a legal status quo, it

cannot be denied that the Muslim commu-

nity lacks a charismatic leader who could be

accepted by all different factions, and who

could keep together a strong alliance in

order to build a front against the Hindu na-

tionalist threat. Another aspect is reflected

by the fact that the current carnage in Gu-

jarat, following the Godhra assault, did not

cause extraordinary alert among the Muslim

élites. Recently conducted interviews with

different leading Muslim personalities re-

vealed that they are quite aware of the cycli-

cal character of communalist tension con-

cerning the Ayodhya issue, and that the

sparking off of violence in Gujarat is per-

ceived as just another peak of activism. This,

together with the lack of charismatic leader-

ship, is the reason for the undermining of all

attempts of the mentioned bodies by op-

posing groups within the Muslim communi-

ty, and even today when joint action is at

highest demand, there are enough indica-

tions for the fact that the Ayodhya issue is

used by different Muslim factions only to

serve their own interests, and to consolidate

their own position within the Muslim com-

munity, as the example of the recent hear-

ing of Maulana Kalb-i Jawwad, noted S h ica

cleric from Lucknow, proves: he claimed the

land where the mosque once stood to be sa-

cred; this rather exceptional concept is very

much reminiscent of the VHP rhetoric. Not

the least because of such internal discord, a

solution for the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmab-

humi dispute seems still to be far away.

N o t e s

1 . Cf. Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave.

Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India

(New Delhi, 1999), 148–50.

2 . For an overview cf.: Ali Asghar Engineer (ed.),

T h e Shah Bano Controversy (Hyderabad, 1987).

3 . For an overview, see: Sarvepalli Gopal (ed.),

Anatomy of a Confrontation. The Babri Masjid –

Ramjanmabhumi Issue (New Delhi, 1991).

4 . Abu l-Hasan cA l i Nadwi, Karwan-i zindagi, vol. 3

(Lakhna'u, 1997), 81.

5 . Cf. Ibid., 138f.

Jan-Peter Hartung is a Ph.D. candidate at the Max

Weber Centre of Erfurt University, Germany.

H i s research is on contemporary Muslim scholarship

in India.

E-mail: [email protected]

C r a f t s m a n

working for a new

Hindu temple,

A y o d h y a .

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