India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 15 :: No. 25 :: Dec. 05 - 18 , 1998

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THE STATES

An uneasy anniversary at Ayodhya

Tension mounts in Ayodhya ahead of the sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid as a move to close down burial grounds in the town leads to communal polarisation.

VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
in Ayodhya

IN the run-up to the sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, the Hindutva agenda is once again aggressively playing itself out in the town.

On October 23, about a month before the Assembly elections and 45 days before the sixth anniversary of the demolition, the Ayodhya Nagarpalika Parishad (Municipal Council), in which the Bharatiya Janata Party has a majority, passed a resolution banning burials within the town's limits. The clear target of the move was the Muslim community, although some Hindu sects such as Udhaseen sampradayis and non-Hindu, non-Muslim religious orders such as Kabir panthis also bury their dead. The majority of the burial grounds in the town - about 50, including private graveyards and those owned by the Waqf Board - were Muslim ones.

Local leaders of the BJP and other constituents of the Sangh Parivar claimed that the move was intended to advance the Hindutva agenda, although the reason cited officially was that the graveyards contributed to "environmental pollution". The Council invoked Section 285 of the Uttar Pradesh Municipalities Act of 1916, which empowers municipal boards to close burial or cremation grounds. However, Section 285 applies only to burial or cremation grounds that are certified (by a civil surgeon or a health officer) to be "dangerous to public health". None of the graveyards in Ayodhya has been found to be so by any Health Department official.

Agitated Muslims of Ayodhya appealed to the President, the Prime Minister and the Faizabad district administration to stop the move. Resolutions passed by the municipal councils in the Faizabad administrative division have to be ratified by the Divisional Commissioner. Thirteen organisations, including the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), the Shia Central Waqf Board and the Halal Committee, petitioned the Commissioner and requested him not to ratify the resolution. The District Magistrate told Frontline that he had recommended to the Commissioner that the proposal be rejected as the Council had no authority to pass such a resolution in the absence of a certificate as required from health authorities.

SUBIR ROY
The makeshift Ram temple at the site where the Babri Masjid stood. Access to the area is severely curtailed, and this photograph was taken from a spot in the rear of the site.

ALTHOUGH it might appear that the BJP has suffered a setback in the matter insofar as the council's resolution will be shot down, the perception within the Sangh Parivar and among its opponents, in Ayodhya and Faizabad, is that the BJP and its associates have in fact gained political ground here. Sangh Parivar leaders say - and activists of the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and the S.P. concede - that the communal polarisation among Hindus and Muslims triggered by the issue, not just in Ayodhya but in Faizabad, Gonda, Basti and Lucknow, suits the larger political goals of the Hindutva combine perfectly.

According to the member of Parliament from Faizabad, Mitra Sen Yadav of the S.P., the resolution was timed to mobilise a communal campaign ahead of the Assembly elections. Together with the controversy over the directive making the recitation of Vande Mataram and Saraswati Vandana mandatory in all schools in Uttar Pradesh (see separate story), the "graveyard resolution" had helped the BJP unleash a communal election campaign, particularly in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.

Congress(I) leader Nirmal Khatri, a former MP from Faizabad, said that the controversy over the graveyards may have been whipped up as part of an effort to placate the sants and mahants of the temple town, who had in recent times been distancing themselves from the Hindutva combine. Khatri said that the sants and mahants had sensed that the Sangh Parivar was not making any progress in the campaign to construct a Ram temple at the site where the Babri Masjid stood; some of them, he said, had voiced their frustration. In his view, the mahants were displeased by the decline in the number of pilgrims to Ayodhya, partly owing to the security restrictions that have been in place since the masjid was demolished. The Hinduvta forces perhaps felt that whipping up communal passions in the region was the best way to keep the sants and mahants with them, said Khatri.

TALKING to sants and mahants of various temples in Ayodhya, such as Hanuman Garhi, Kurmi Mandir and Kausalya Bhawan, this correspondent could see that Khatri's observation was indeed relevant. A majority of the mahants criticised the Sangh Parivar for the deterioration of the temple town. The large number of small traders who sell religious icons and other articles for Hindu rituals in temples also expressed dismay that their business had suffered in recent years. Ram Naresh, who owns a shop on the main Ayodhya road, told Frontline that since 1993 the inflow of pilgrims had declined; this year even during Ramayana Mela, which started in the third week of November, the number of pilgrims was abysmally low. Raj Kishore, another shopkeeper, said: "Ever since the disputed structure was demolished, most of the town has become a paramilitary camp. How many pilgrims will come to such a place?"

According to a few traders, Sangh Parivar leaders had been promising them every year that the construction of the Ram temple would begin soon and that this would bring the pilgrims back. "But," said Ram Naresh, "despite the BJP coming to power at the Centre and reports about the fabrication of parts of the temple at Karsevak Puram, there has been little progress on this front. How long can we go on like this? Ram jaane (Only God knows)."

Evidently, the grandiose rhetoric of the local leadership of the Sangh Parivar about "restoring Ayodhya's glory as a pilgrimage centre" has not cut much ice with the people of the town.

According to Nagendra Upadhaya, who supervises work at Karsevak Puram, only four pillars have been built since August, when the controversy over the fabrication broke. Of the more than 200 pillars required for the temple, only 56 have been fabircated. Acharya Ramachandra Paramahans, chairman of the Sri Ramajanmabhoomi Nyas, the trust that oversees the construction of the temple, told Frontline that it would take at least three years for in-situ construction work to begin. Clearly, the Sangh Parivar does not have an agenda to keep the local people as also the sants and mahants within its flock. And this, more than anything else, explains the political motive behind the move to close down burial grounds.

SUBIR ROY
The Bijli Shahid graveyard in Ayodhya. The Ayodhya municipal council's move to close down burial grounds is evidently part of a Hindutva campaign aimed at communal polarisation.

ACCORDING to BMAC convener Zafrayab Jilani, the Sangh Parivar's move to close down burial grounds was politically-motivated. "The most important factor," said Jilani, "is that, along with the Babri Masjid dispute, this issue has caused great concern among the Muslim community since the 1950s. There was a move to close down some of the burial grounds during the 1950s and Muslims had objected to it. The Sangh Parivar knows that Muslims would object to any move to close down their burial grounds and that this would meet their political objective."

Khaliq Ahmad Khan, convener of the Helal Committee of Faizabad, added that Harijan, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, had in its August 19, 1950 issue criticised the move of the then administration to deny burial rights to Muslims. A Muslim woman had died and her family could not bury her body for 22 hours because of impediments placed on burial by the local administration. The family's plight was highlighted by the publication. The administration subsequently backtracked and allowed the minority community to use all its burial grounds. But now, he said, the BJP was once again raking up the issue.

Khaliq Ahmad Khan further said that the council's move may also have been aimed at grabbing Waqf property. "Once the burial grounds are shut down, the land mafia will move in and in all probability the council will facilitate their operations," he said. Such operations, he said, had been tried out in other BJP-ruled States such as Himachal Pradesh and a situation had arisen in which Muslims had no burial grounds at all. He pointed to recent media reports of the problem in Himachal Pradesh. "We will not allow such a thing to happen here," Khaliq Ahmad Khan told Frontline.

AHEAD of the sixth anniversary of the demolition, the atmosphere in Ayodhya is palpably tense. Sangh Parivar leaders such as Vinay Katiyar, the former BJP MP from Faizabad, are keeping up the communal rhetoric. They say that even if the council's resolution on the closure of burial grounds is rejected, the move will not be given up. According to Katiyar, the council had acted in the best interests of the people of the town and it would be improper for the district administration to reject the move on any technical grounds. There are indications that the municipal council may reframe the resolution so as to allow Muslims to use six graveyards and close down the rest. But even such a move would vitiate the atmosphere.

Meanwhile a confrontation is brewing, with the Sangh Parivar preparing to observe December as Shaurya Divas (Day of Valour), and the BMAC giving notice of its intention to observe it as Kalank Divas (Day of Shame). The portents are ominous. As individuals among a group of college students, comprising both Muslims and Hindus, told Frontline, the average citizen of Ayodhya and Faizabad has only one prayer: that the turbulent days of 1992-93 should not be repeated.