NEW DELHI: Madhav Godbole is the best authority to tell us why the 492-year-old Babri Masjid was demolished despite his prior contingency planning as Union Home Secretary. His abiding faith in the rule of law, constitutional morality and secularism is unparalleled. He had already narrated the events in his Unfinished Innings (1996) after he chose to prematurely retire from service under a government which “could have prevented it but Prime Minister Rao did not want to”. He has now revised and updated the details in Chapter 3—The Babri Masjid could have been saved—to expose attempts to disentangle the late Prime Minister from its primary responsibility.
The Masjid demolition on 6 December 1992 was as wrenching to our body politic as our 1947 partition. Rao’s failure resulted in countrywide communal violence, killing 2,026. It also “widened the communal divide, and left visible scars of communal bitterness and hatred”. I would like to add another 489 deaths through a series of Indian Mujahideen bomb blasts citing the demolition as the reason. Even now the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK) shows videos threatening India that they would “return with a sword in hand, to slice your throats to avenge the Babri Masjid”. The damage to the nation by way of mutual suspicion between two communities has been far greater. A divided nation is the easiest prey to foreign subversion.
While strongly accusing the BJP and Hindu fundamentalist groups for overt activities resulting in demolition, the author also blames the Congress and Rajiv Gandhi government for cosseting with Hindu communalism on electoral considerations. He quotes Pamela Philipose who had called Rajiv Gandhi as “the first Karsevak” in 1997 for permitting the “Shilanyas” ceremony of a new Ram temple. Yet he reminds us that Rajiv Gandhi was only “the second Karsevak” as K.K. Nayar, the then District Magistrate, Faizabad had emerged in 1949 as “the first Karsevak” for illegally permitting installation of an idol of Ram Lalla in the Masjid.
The author gives detailed account of “Negotiations” since 1988 after a massive rally was held by the Babri Masjid Movement Coordination Committee on 30 March 1987. He laments that neither Rajiv Gandhi nor P.V. Narasimha Rao “had the courage of conviction, shown by Nehru, who stood by the principles of secularism”. The undercurrent of pandering to Hindu interests was evident throughout the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Meanwhile a BJP government assumed power in Uttar Pradesh in June 1991 with an avowed plan of building the Ram temple.
In 1992 the media was highlighting the crescendo of mass public movement towards Ayodhya. Anticipating this, the author had officially submitted a contingency plan to the Prime Minister and other competent functionaries on 4 November 1992. He had also discussed this with the PM “in series of one-on-one meetings”. This plan was based on the 1990 experience when the Mulayam Singh government in UP had firmly frustrated the flow of 40,000 Kar Sevaks towards the Masjid, although in that process 16 people had lost their lives.
The contingency plan was to prevent bloodshed by taking over the disputed structure by the Union government before the event. The Central forces were already moved to the State on 24 November 1992. This would have been the first action under Article 355 of our constitution which imposed the duty to the Centre to protect the states against external aggression and internal disturbance. The next step envisaged by him was to impose president’s rule in the state under article 356 in case Chief Minister Kalyan Singh resisted.
Unfortunately the PM did not convene any high level meeting to discuss the contingency plan. “The first full cabinet meeting on the subject was held only on 6 December 1992 evening after the demolition of the Babri Masjid”. Earlier meetings were informal with “No record of decisions maintained by the Cabinet Secretariat”. The Prime Minister, who should have played the key role “was a non-playing captain”.
After the demolition, Narasimha Rao feigned amnesia about the “contingency plan” by alleging that Godbole “had kept his plan so secret that even the prime Minister was not informed about its existence till the last minute”. This was untrue as the author had officially submitted it on 4 November 1992 to him and to other competent authorities besides orally discussing with him and with other ministers.
The PM’s second excuse was that “there was no consensus” on applying article 356. He also doubted whether it could at all be applied. He was steadfast in maintaining that law and order was a state subject and that it was the State government which had failed.
The third excuse was his disapproval of the author’s suggestion to call a cabinet meeting without circulating an advance note. Godbole counters it that the sensitivity of the matter needed extreme secrecy to “save any damage to the Masjid and also to avoid unnecessary loss of life”. Indeed, he had prepared a comprehensive note, which was vetted by the Law Ministry. This would have been circulated at the time of the cabinet meeting to prevent leakage.
Finally he asks the readers to ponder over the consequences of such opportunistic breaches of constitutional norms as in 1992: “If there is another Ayodhya-like situation in the future, by way of rewriting history in Varanasi or Mathura, will India be ready to face it? Regretfully, the answer is an emphatic NO”.
I feel that a couple of infirmities in our list of powers between the Centre and States need to be corrected to prevent such recurrence. Our Schedule 7 is a copy of Schedule 7 of the 1935 Government of India Act placing “police” and “public order” with the states. Oxford scholar David Steinberg detects a nefarious plot behind the 1935 scheme: “By giving Indian politicians a great deal of power at the provincial level, while denying them responsibility at the Centre it was hoped that the Congress Party, the only national party would disintegrate into a series of provincial fiefdoms.”
We have also failed to tweak our internal security mechanism following Supreme Court (Chief Justice Hidayatullah) judgement in R.M. Lohia versus State of Bihar (1966 SCR(1) 709) highlighting the differences between law and order, public order and security of state. Maintenance of public order is more serious than law and order which is only of local significance. It is only in India that the state police are charged with handling all the three security situations.
The net result is that although Article 355 demands the Union to protect the states from external aggression and internal disturbances, the instruments for implementing this (police and public order management) are placed with the states in normal times.
The reviewer was former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and member of the two-man High Level committee appointed by the Govt. of Maharashtra to enquire into the police response to the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks.