Ayodhya: The Dark Night - the Secret History of Rama's Appearance in Babri Masjid by Dhirendra K Jha & Krishna Jha

Author:Dhirendra K Jha & Krishna Jha [Jha, Dhirendra K & Jha, Krishna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, NON-FICTION/POLITICS
ISBN: 9789350291467
Google: nIBcvgAACAAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2016-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

5

CHAPTER

The Conspiracy Deepens

T

HE CALCUTTA SESSION OF the All India Hindu Mahasabha that began on 24 December 1949 was agog with news of the developments in Ayodhya, where, even then, the party’s wing, the All India Ramayan Mahasabha was busy mobilizing Hindus to reinforce their occupancy of the mosque. Indeed, the moblilization was quite massive, for it provided K.K.K. Nair – the district magistrate of Faizabad who was now overtly a part of their camp – the necessary argument that any move to remove the idol from the Babri Masjid would lead to a massive loss of life and property in and around Ayodhya.

The Ayodhya development was significant not just because of the capture of the mosque, but also due to the Mahasabha’s successful deployment of a large number of Hindus, for several days, on as communal an issue as converting a mosque into a temple. The event showed the delegates and leaders attending the conference that they were back in the reckoning, since it was the first mobilization on such a grand scale by the Mahasabha after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

As in Ayodhya, so too in Delhi, three days before the murder of Gandhi, the mobilization had been done clandestinely. The then deputy superintendent of Delhi Police, Jaswant Singh, had told the Kapur Commission inquiring into the conspiracy to murder the Mahatma that

the Inspector in-charge of Parliament Street Police Station had told him that there was no information about the meeting and he heard about it at 4.30 p.m. and reached the place with a guard and on inquiry the Hindu Mahasabha people said that they had obtained permission of the District Magistrate which was later found to be incorrect. As the meeting was in progress and [a] large […] audience was present, it was considered inadvisable to disperse the meeting; hence no action was taken.1

In Ayodhya, the massive mobilization of Hindus – first to ‘persuade’ Rama to perform the ‘miracle’ and then to witness the ‘miracle’ – was, therefore, a significant milestone in the revival of the Mahasabha. Yet, for the leaders of the Hindu communal outfit, the work still remained unfinished. It was just the beginning. Ayodhya represented a local climax, but that had to be magnified enormously. Only then could it pave the way for a grand revival of the party, in the UP and, if possible, in many more provinces of the country.

It became clear that the Hindu Mahasabha had taken a huge leap. The party that had been almost fully immobilized following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi seemed to have suddenly stood up with a firm resolve and, during its annual conference, it decided to stage a political comeback. On 25 December 1949, on the second day of the three-day conference, the newly elected president of the Hindu Mahasabha, N.B. Khare, announced that the party was ‘now re-entering the field of politics with the ideology of a cultural state of Hindu Rashtra after a temporary suspension of its political activities’. He further said:

The pro-Muslim Congress has always ridiculed the Mahasabha as a communal organization.

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