As I watched the Pran Pratistha of Ram Lalla in the grand Ram Mandir at Ayodhya on TV today, I became nostalgic. I remembered standing on the roof of Kanak Bhavan overlooking the 450-year-old Babri Masjid as it was being pulled down on December 6, 1992, and being asked by a fellow journalist how I felt witnessing this monumental tragedy. He was obviously asking me this question as I was one of a handful of Muslims present on that fateful day. I replied that I felt hurt, rejected and unwanted. I was being told that India was no longer a country that Muslims could call their own.
The sadness then was not for the demolition of a mosque made out of bricks and mortar — there are thousands of masjids all over the country — but the destruction of the idea of Muslims being equal citizens of India. The Babri Masjid, which was under the protection of the Supreme Court, had begun to represent the rights of Muslims given to them by the Constitution of India. The frenzy, aggression and sheer scale of violence that was unleashed on the three-domed Babri Masjid was symbolic of the hatred that the kar sevaks bore towards Muslims.
From that watershed moment 31 years ago till today, much water has flown down the Saryu. The political party that brought down the Babri Masjid has reaped its electoral dividends and has established a New India which has no place for secularism or Muslims. The 200 million Indian Muslims have been relegated to the margins of society, alienated and dejected. They have become invisible only to be trotted out as terrorists or criminals; as cattle smugglers or love jihadists. They are now “Babur ki aulad”, sent off to Pakistan if they dare to open their mouths or worse still, publicly lynched. They are used as punching bags during elections in order to frighten and remind the majority community of their ‘victimhood’ and collect their votes.
A few days ago, I was asked by another journalist how I felt as a Muslim about the frenzied celebration of the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and my reply was “emotionless”. Muslims do not hate Lord Ram, in fact he is revered as Imam-e-Hind, but it is the forced swearing of allegiance that they object to. Chant “Jai Shri Ram” or pay with your life!
I was asked if the ruling class was being insensitive to the feelings of Muslims, my reply was if you don’t exist, how can your feelings matter? During the Ramjanmabhoomi movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, VHP leaders chanted the slogans with the Islamophobic slur “Jab katua kata jayega, toh Ram Ram chillayega”. It was considered disgusting then. But now it has become so acceptable that a BJP MP can call a Muslim MP in Parliament by that same slur and he is not even reprimanded, let alone punished.
With the Ram Mandir now built on the debris of the Babri Masjid, this is not the end of the nightmare for Muslims. “Yeh toh siraf jhanki hai, Abhi toh Mathura, Kashi baki hain” was another popular slogan in 1992, and it laid out the portents of the future. Ominously, the same slogan was heard in Ayodhya today after the consecration.