Political fallout of verdict

Political fallout of verdict

Neerja ChowdhuryFirst Published :
05 Oct 2010 11:51:00
PM ISTLast Updated : 06 Oct 2010 12:39:12 AM IST

A journalist (Muslim) friend took some colleagues — as it turned out they were Hindus — to meet Muslim leaders to ascertain their reactions to the Ayodhya judgment last week. The Muslim leaders made all the right noises in a non-committal sort of way. Afterwards they told the Muslim journalist not to bring people of the other community to them for their reactions, for they did not want to speak openly in front of them.


While there is disappointment in the Muslim community over the Allahabad Court’s three-way division of the disputed site at Ayodhya, unlike in the past, the Muslim reaction this time remains more underground than overground. They are not expressing themselves as forthrightly as they have done in the past. Partly there is confusion in their ranks about the implications of the verdict. Many also feel that if they protest openly, it might lead to riots and this will only provoke a counter-reaction and make them more suspect in the eyes of the Hindus.

There are those who want to let bygones be bygones and for the community to get on with their lives. There are others who feel the community has again been denied justice under the law — as it was in December 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished. They feel let down by the judiciary, seen by many as the last resort.

Many fear that the verdict could have implications for not just the mosques in Kashi and Mathura, but thousands of other shrines. It is easy enough to place idols, build a local movement around it, and then argue that it is ‘a matter of faith’.

They are also apprehensive that, with the court having legitimised it as the birthplace of Ram, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad would now mount pressure on them to surrender their one-third piece of land for building a ‘grand’ temple there, and this started with both the Sangh chief and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad making such a plea within minutes of the judgment. While the Hindu leaders urged the Muslims to help them build a grand temple there by ‘consensus’, there were no offers by Hindus to help the Muslims build a mosque on the land given to them.

Their anger is directed at the Congress — its leaders ‘welcomed’ the judgment as opposed to ‘accepting’ it — and this is the subtext of the signal that has gone to the community.

They argue that when the idols were placed in the mosque for the first time on the night of December 22 1949, it was under a Congress government in power. When the locks were opened at the disputed structure, at the instance of a Faizabad district judge on February 1 1986, then too the Congress was in power, and the move was seen as a balancing attempt to curry favour with the Hindus who had been annoyed by the Shah Bano judgment and the Muslim Women’s Bill. The shilanyas for the temple took place in November 1989, on the eve of the general elections, and it gave the movement for a temple an impetus, when Rajiv Gandhi was in power. When the demolition took place on December 1992, the government of P V Narasimha Rao was in the saddle and he did nothing to stop the destruction of the structure.

And now, on September 30 came the judgment which dismissed the title claimed by the Sunni Waqf Board on the basis of the widely held belief that the place constituted the birthplace of Ram, even though the whole world had seen the mosque being demolished.

Not unaware of this sentiment, the Congress has swung into damage control mode. The ‘steering committee’ of the yet to be reconstituted Congress Working Committee has decided to examine the possible ‘fallout’. Efforts have been stepped up to try and find a negotiated settlement, the idea being to defuse the situation. The Union home minister’s words that the Babri Masjid demolition remained a criminal act — and the cases to pin responsibility are going on — was also an attempt to delink it from the title suits and thereby assuage the Muslim anger.

It is early days to assess the political fallout of the judgment. Is this a time bomb ticking away for the Congress? Admittedly, the Congress is neither a litigant in the case nor an adjudicator. But the trouble is that politics is often more about perceptions than about reality.

The forthcoming elections in Bihar will be the first straw to indicate which way the wind is blowing, for Muslims have a decisive presence in about 30 seats in the state. If they turn to the RJD in large numbers, it would polarise the situation further between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, who was otherwise seen as the frontrunner. Ram Vilas Paswan has openly criticised the verdict. So has Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Depending on the way the situation pans out in the coming days, it could also have a bearing on the Left’s fortunes in West Bengal which has a sizeable Muslim population. Muslim dissatisfaction with the Congress could pose a headache for Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and alter political parameters in the state where the Left parties are fighting with their backs to the wall for the state polls next year. Muslim anger could also have its fallout in Assam, where state elections are due in 2011.

On the face of it, Congress leaders are not unduly worried. They argue, privately, that the judgment, which went beyond a ‘dry’ legal verdict, was the best in the given circumstances, the argument being that, hypothetically speaking, had it favoured the other side and Ram Lalla had to be removed from the spot, the BJP would have gone on the rampage and it would have rendered the Muslims more vulnerable. It would have given an opportunity to groups like the Samajwadi Party to polarise the situation on Hindu-Muslim lines, as they did in the past, setting the clock back by 20 years. The Congress managers hope that after the initial anger, this acceptance will sink into the community.

The Muslims giving vent to their displeasure through the ballot is one thing. More serious is the possibility of young Muslims taking to violence to express their anger. This is a matter of concern also to the senior Congress leadership, no matter what their public rhetoric. It was after the 1992 demolition — and the 2002 Gujarat riots — that the SIMI-type of activities increased and local sleeper cells came to the fore leading to terror attacks all over the country when earlier these had been confined to the country’s peripheries.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Congress will have to take remedial steps to win back the confidence of the Muslims who had been gravitating back to the party after a gap of three decades. But this cannot happen by glossing over the issues that have been thrown up by the verdict and are agitating the community, nor by putting a lid on them. It is a free play of contending ideas which acts as safety valve in a democracy and exercised the checks and balances that are needed in difficult situations.

neerja_chowdhury@yahoo.com


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