Five years may not be long enough to get a full perspective on an event that will surely go down as a watershed in the history of contemporary India. Yet it is already apparent, five years to the day since the demolition of the Babri Masjid, that the idea of India has survived December 6, 1992, and survived it quite well. To judge by the reactions on the day of the demolition, this was by no means a foregone conclusion. But it has become clear with hindsight that in the very success of the Ayodhya movement - and of the party that spearheaded it - lay the seeds of future restraint. The Ayodhya demolition was the high-point of a unique movement, of passions stirred that cannot be stirred repeatedly on call. It has happily proved impossible to replicate elsewhere, urging its author to graduate to a more acceptable variety of politics, and the Indian people on to much introspection since the demolition. Unlike the political coalitions of the day, India since 1947 has clicked in spite of its mind-boggling variety and divisions. For that to have happened the essential prerequisite of a willingness to coexist in a spirit of tolerance had to have been present. The Ayodhya movement and its culmination suggested alarming things about tolerance in Indian society. Its aftermath has given reason for hope, both in the way India reacted to it, and the change it forced in the BJP - the party which led the movement with such spectacular results for itself. Greater moderation has been the face of the defensiveness forced on the BJP after December 6, though it gamely kept up its bluster for a bit. The reaction to Ayodhya was reflected in the party's performance in UP after the demolition. It is reflected in the way the BJP has had to tacitly concede that moderation and inclusiveness, not fanaticism and rabble-rousing, constitute acceptability. At this distance, it seems obvious that the BJP's ability to keep the communal cauldron simmering and bringing it to a boil at a time of its choosing ended on December 6, 1992. The party's failure to associate with the Kashi-Mathura balloon periodically floated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is testimony.The BJP's universe has changed. Radicalism has a way of waning when the challenger begins to find incumbency within its grasp. Lal Krishna Advani's speech offering to mediate between the VHP and Muslim organisations on Kashi-Mathura provided Muslims give up all claim to Ayodhya is no reversion to old form. No one knows better than the BJP that extremism of the pre-demolition variety is simply not an option. This is a party that desperately aspires to respectability. It is merely resorting to its time-worn tactic of speaking in many voices to broaden its appeal. It is no accident that Atal Behari Vajpayee was talking of playing down Hindutva on the same day as Advani was making his offer. Advani's is a vague message to the Hindutva enthusiasts that the Ram Mandir remains on the agenda, without committing the party to anything. At the same time, it is an olive branch to Muslims with the party president's offer to ``mediate''. If there was one good to come out of Ayodhya, it is to teach everyone that future adventurism will carry a steep cost. Let the reckless beware.
