A more dangerous moment now than in 1992

Exactly 30 years after the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya, the Gyanvapi Masjid controversy has little to offer deja vu And the more striking contrast in the two scenarios. Just as architecture clearly distinguishes between rubble and ruins, we must clearly see the differences between the Ayodhya case at that time and now the controversy over Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque in 2022. The differences are dire.

is now an act

The first disparity is the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 which did not exist when the political movement for Ayodhya gained momentum. At the same time Ayodhya was out of its purview. The Supreme Court ruling in 2019 outlined in 10 pages (pages 116-125) the importance of the 1991 Act and how it “protects and protects the fundamental values ​​of the Constitution”. Agreeing with the propriety of the law, the five-judge bench said; “The Places of Worship Act imposes a non-violent obligation under the Indian Constitution to enforce our commitment to secularism.”

Just three years ago, the law and its interpreters are bringing about a significant and worrying change in India, by not trying to craft the case in the spirit of its own order and instead, trying to ‘balance’ it. This is not Babri’s moment, as Babri was to be an exception to the law applicable to all other such cases. If it keeps going, it will open Pandora’s box. Similarly and in many cases mushroom formation starts; The petition for removal of the royal Idgah of Mathura and excavation around Qutub Minar has reached the courts. As Sarvepalli Gopal writes in the introduction anatomy of a collision, such conflicts “become increasingly in focus since 1947, a disease that free India has not been able to shake”. If the idea of ​​the 1991 Act was to save the republic from the effects of Babri, then triggering the Varanasi issue suggests further escalation of the “disease”. The intention was to draw a line under 1947 and bring peace after the Ayodhya dispute. Thirty years later, despite the break-up of Babri, if Gyanvapi is allowed to proceed, it would indicate that India was reopening issues that the Constitution had resolved. It can only indicate more upheaval.

an institutional collapse

What separates the present moment from Ayodhya is the state of India’s institutions. What differentiates democracy from mobocracy is the presence of modern institutions. It is through their independent functioning that the promises of the Constitution are respected. The job of independent institutions in a democracy is to keep questioning the executive and ensuring that it acts according to the constitution it has sworn in. But India has seen a dramatic decline in institutional freedom. This decline is the basis of India’s acute democratic backwardness. India is classified as an ‘Electoral Autocracy’ (V-Dem Institute), ‘Partly Liberated’ (Swatantrata Sadan), ‘at the 1975 level’ scores when a formal emergency was in force (International IDEA) and Now it is one of the 30 worst countries out of 180, as far as Freedom of the Press (RSF) goes. The World Values ​​Survey and the Pew Research Center tell us that it is in India that support for democracy and even civil rights as a feature of democracy has declined the most since 2015. At such a time, if Gyanvapi had to start something, there would not have been retaliatory pressure from institutions like 30 years ago. Justice JS Verma’s report on the 2002 violence (when he was the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission) is unimaginable today.

Another difference from 1992 is that economic liberalization had not played itself out until then. It was ‘Old India’ if the supporters of liberalization were to be believed. There was a view that the changed economics would help destroy India’s regressive social rites. It was seen as a major change – after the Berlin Wall and after the Soviet Union – that general economic regeneration would deal the death blow to old identity issues and liberate its people. But even after 30 years, the promise of quick economic progress has not been able to bring down the politics of identity. Much academic research will lead us in the opposite direction. A rigid and narrow understanding of identity politics has gripped the world. Today, after greater economic inequality and concentration of wealth and record levels of cronyism as a result of liberalisation, India is asking itself brutally fraught questions. The economic crisis that India is facing today, apart from huge and wide inequalities, also has grim unemployment figures. None of the hopes that India had in the 1990s are in the air – be they imaginary or real. Gyanvapi is now being fueled, in a world where hopes of economic liberalization as a panacea are behind it and not the sudden global conditions of the early 1990s.

ideological, not just political

There was a strong political impetus behind the mass movement and the Rath Yatra that centered the Ayodhya issue in the late 1980s. This gave lasting benefits to the political party that led it. At present, to see it as mere instrumentalism would lack the significance of 2022. With two consecutive electoral majority, it is not about the noise of distracting the voter from the state of the economy or garnering support for the elections. It is part of a core ideological belief of the ruling system. Ideally, it would like the courts to hand it over to the majoritarian crowd, barring mass agitation or mobilization. For the ruling regime, this path is not seen as a crisis but as part of a desired end. It is therefore unlikely that the government in office will feel compelled to rush and tell people who raise issues that have long been settled.

The inauguration of Gyanvapi is not about history. Indian history is so complex that it cannot be reduced to a two-dimensional Hindu versus Muslim framing. For thousands of years, India has witnessed a spectrum of stories of both coexistence and conflict; Shaivas, Brahmins facing Vaishnavas made a case against Shramanas, Buddhists and Jains and disputed in many more lines. The events here were not much different from the performances of medieval Christianity and Islam. The Gyanvapi controversy is about reform and is central to the larger supremacist project. It cannot be separated from frenzied name-changes, anti-conversion and cattle laws, lynchings, changes in official history, mass media to spread hatred and other attempts to eliminate Muslims and distort India’s rich past.

Before Islam reached Kodungallur (Kerala) or Hindukush, India was a place with complex inter-community relations between different sects and the people who called it home. It is an established historical fact that many migrations made India. As Firaq Gorakhpuri (also known as Prof. Raghupati Sahai) said: ” Sir Zameen-e-Hind to Aquam-e-Alam, Firaaq, Kafeel kept on coming and Hindustan became (Many caravans came to these parts and formed India)”. The year 1950, at the heart of Indian overall nationalism, was a visionary attempt to draw a line under a million revolts, especially after 1947.

The Constitution of India gave freedom to all. The ideological predecessors of the current regime made no bones about not sharing those values ​​and believed in India as the only nation-Hindus, which Muslim separatists managed to secure with Pakistan. Eight years after 2014, it has become increasingly difficult for the government to claim to be ‘extraordinary’ on a global scale, as it is difficult to hide the bad news of events on the ground. As ‘extraordinaryism’ sucks and India becomes known as another South Asian ethnic supremacist enterprise, this may only shorten India’s story, and certainly not help it achieve ‘greatness’ Is.

a street vs a street

It is possible that because we have now had the benefit of retrospect since 1992, we choose differently. But this would mean rejecting Golwalkar’s purpose for the ruling party and followers for non-Hindus; “To claim nothing, not deserving of any privilege, less than any preferential treatment, not even the rights of citizens” (Golwalkar, we, or our nationality defined, 1939: p. 62). The hatred and violence of Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, must again be strongly condemned by those who have political power. The Taliban’s path into Afghanistan, Sunni Muslim nationalism in Pakistan, Sinhalese supremacism or a trip to Myanmar should serve as a warning to India, not a manual. Gyanvapi, which means ‘source of knowledge’ or wisdom, now offers an alternative. We could pull back and take a long sip. Thirty years after Babri Masjid, we know that dark alley which is the second option. It could be a very narrow road for India to retreat quickly.

Seema Chisti is a journalist based in Delhi