The Long Road to Ayodhya

Narasimha Rao8217;s book is valuable in understanding the psyche of the Congress party in the months leading up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. But it offers no reason why his defence could not have been published before his death

WHEN A PRIME MINISTER AS supremely intelligent and crafty as Narasimha Rao prepares a manu-script on the most contentiously defining mo-ment in modern Indian politics, the destruc-tion of Babri Masjid, the expectations are high. But like many posthumous books, the content makes you wonder why this material could not have been published earlier. The book is an elaborate defence of Rao8217;s actions during the Ayodhya crisis. It is an exercise in refuting crit-ics who have held Rao complicit in both the de-struction of the mosque and the Congress party8217;s image. There are no new startling reve-lations, only a calm and collected narrative, whose purpose is to make Rao the epitome of constitutional morality.

But the book is nevertheless considerably significant for what it reveals about the Con-gress party8217;s approach to the Ayodhya crisis. It makes you wonder whether the secular, non-secular distinction on which Rao lays so much stress really had any real purchase in the years leading up to the Ayodhya crisis. The book startles us, not by new revelations, but uncanny juxtapositions that reveal just how widespread the complicity in creating the Ayodhya crisis was.

The core of Rao8217;s defence of his conduct is this. In not dismissing the state government before the destruction of the mosque, he was upholding the highest constitutional princi-ples. Rao8217;s alibi is federalism.

How could the Central government have taken any action in Uttar Pradesh merely on the supposition that the mosque might be destroyed? Yes, there was good evidence that the state government was weakening the protec-tions for the mosque and the possibility of de-struction was real. But when a state govern-ment swears that it will abide by court orders, when the governor8217;s report assures the Centre that the government will do so, when despite misgivings the Supreme Court also believed the then chief minister, Kalyan Singh8217;s assur-ances, could Rao really have peremptorily in-tervened to prevent the demolition of the mosque? To have done so would have been, argues the former prime minister, to put many other constitutional values at risk, es-pecially federalism.

Sometimes constitutional morality is well served when you assume you can trust consti-tutional officials, indeed there is no choice but to trust them or you might as well jettison the whole Constitution. So if the governor and the chief minister, and occasionally some judges do not discharge their duty or lie, what can the prime minister do?

Narasimha Rao exonerates himself in con-stitutional terms. However, there is also a sec-ond line of argument. Any confrontationist ap-proach on Ayodhya would have been counter productive; calls for a crackdown underesti-mate the extent to which Hindutva would have benefited from a backlash.

This is Rao8217;s own approach to the problem, but in the course of elaborating this he shows just how much the Congress had come to share with the Bharatiya Janata Party on this issue. Both agreed that strong religious sentiments of Hindus were at stake in the dispute and could not be ignored; both agreed that some kind of temple would have to be built at Ayodhya; though Rao himself would have preferred it to be adjoining the mosque.

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Strangely enough, Rao, by this posthu-mously published account, himself seems to think that it was legitimate to use most of the land at the disputed site for various activities so long as the mosque itself was not threat-ened. But it is precisely these activities that cre-ated the momentum for the eventual demoli-tion, on December 6, 1992.

The most interesting part of the book re-lates less to the demolition itself, but more to the politics of the shilanyas in 1989. Oddly enough, Rao8217;s narrative of the shilanyas is eva-sive and disingenuous. He does not fully ex-plain the logic of the Congress party8217;s support for the shilanyas, except hinting enigmatically that Buta Singh played an important role in the event. Time indeed for Buta Singh to begin writing his memoirs! But he exonerates the Congress party of wrongdoing by insisting that the Congress thought the shilanyas would be merely symbolic. This seems again an odd po-sition for a book, whose main argument is that symbolism is the stuff that has ruled modern Indian politics.

But the book is a must read. It shows very graphically how all political parties wanted to capitalise on the Ayodhya issue, and in doing so they created a tiger that none of them could dismount. All parties wanted the dispute to be prolonged. Rao is very clear that the BJP8217;s worst nightmare was that the issue might actu-ally get settled.

In his own quiet and subversive way, P.V. Narasimha Rao has brought out the funda-mental tension within the Congress party on Ayodhya. On the one hand, Congress wanted to position itself as the facilitator of a compro-mise and to that extent could never take a clear ideological stance. On the other hand, Con-gress wanted to position itself as a defender of secularism. In the process the party lost both the trust of Muslims and Hindus. Fundamen-tally we all became confused about the nation we want to be.