By Abdul Hameed and Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
It was an unfortunate day for India when Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished by the Hindu criminal elements. The mosque that had existed for hundreds of years could not be seen in the evening of December 6, 1992. It was destroyed by 150,000 Hindutva extremists despite a commitment to the Indian Supreme Court that the mosque would not be harmed.
The demolition was followed by communal riots that erupted around the country with Mumbai being most affected by them. Many Muslims were slain and their families were destroyed.
Abdul Karim, a timber merchant in Govandi recollects, ‘The situation in Govandi was so bad that we did not dare go out of the house lest we should fall prey either to the Hindus or the police supporting them.’
Maulana Jalaluddin, general secretary of Madrasa Rahmania in Govandi told TwoCircles.net, ‘In Govandi on December 6, 2008 Muslims were safe but when the riots re-erupted in January they suffered a lot. Of course the Hindus living among them attacked the Muslims and damaged their properties. But what police did with the Muslims in the area was more dreadful. Hindus stabbed a few Muslims with knife but the police showed its one-sided attitude against the Muslims and it fired on them without any valid reason. It arrested some Muslims after imposing curfew.’
During the riots Muslims were doing their own efforts to make the atmosphere calm but they failed. Ateequr Rahman Siddiqi who runs a general store in Mumbara recollects, ‘During the riots a delegation of Mumbai Ulema went to meet the then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao in Delhi and surrounded him demanding him to visit Mumbai. They said that PM visit might calm down the situation. My father also was a member of the delegation. But the PM did not pay any heed to them and the whole delegation was taken into custody. Later they were released and taken to Lucky Hotel in Bandra during the days of rioting. Here the police said to them, ‘Now it is not our responsibility to protect you. Go on your own to your respective residence.’
Muhammad Akbar, who does business of pipes in Reay Road and lives in Kausa Mumbara, Thane, details the tale how Mumbara was populated. He recalls that after the demolition of Babri Masjid there spread a type of communal tension in Mumbai that affected almost every person living in the city. He adds that the atmosphere had gone so bad that even the security forces and the deployed army officers did nothing but to see and remain unmovable while the rioters would loot and burn the shops of Muslims, and hurt their sentiments. He said that the riot was a governmental one; otherwise the government would have checked it.
Qazi Muhammad Zakariya Qamar, chief Qazi Mumbai, related what really is startling. ‘Once the Muslims were not ready to come out of their houses the Hindus recorded by themselves the voices asking for help and screams of women and children, then they went to the Muslim dominated areas and played the recordings loudly. The Muslims understood that there was an attack on their children and other family members by the rioters and they came out of their houses to rescue them. But when they came out, the Hindus and even the police attacked on them.’ He continues, ‘The police entered wearing shoes in the mosque Imdadia, Bhendi Bazar and there it fired on the teachers and the students. Consequently many students got injured and a teacher Maulana Qasim was killed.’
In another accident that took place in Juhu Street in Andheri West the police killed 12 innocent people. Among them was a person who had come out of his house so that he could submit the bill of a factory. On the way the police fired on him and when doubling with pain he asked for water some Muslim women hurried to him to give him water but the police warned the women not to give him water , they threatened women, otherwise, they would shoot them dead,. The accident happened at between 12 am and1 pm on December 7, 1992
He says, ‘I, Mufti Azizur Rahman Fatahpuri and Mufti Abdur Rahman Milli, from the office of Milli Council, were regularly contacting Qazi Mujahidul Islam and Sulaiman Seith in Delhi and informed them about the situation in Mumbai. They would call the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and tell him that there was an urgent need of army in the city but he did not pay any attention to it and he did nothing but to console.
Imtiyaz Hassan, (45) Lecturer, College of Commerce, Patna recalls the day: The demolition of the Babri Masjid was the one of the prominent incident which shook the trust of Muslims in the very idea of secular India. Babri Masjid was not only an ordinary structure but it was an icon of the Indian secular ethos.
On the effect of the tragedy on the Indian Muslims, he says: “The demolition was not the only incident of its type. Many tragic incidents had taken place even before that. But the fact was that this tragedy was orchestrated on the national scale involving the majoritarian consciousness itself.”
The way the demolition was orchestrated had a long term impact on the minority psyche. There had been a well chalked out communal and anti-minority campaign by the saffron groups through which the majoritarian sentiments were evoked and politicized in order to channelise it against a particular community, he says.
Hassan sums up: Since the demolition was orchestrated it had been glorified and valorized. The BJP came into power by encashing the Babri Masjid issue. Indian Muslims felt that in a secular country when the place of worship is not safe then it means they are no longer safe. And this is how their marginalization started. They felt alienated in the mainstream discourse of Secular India because they had seen that all the idea of secularism is mere talk without any action. They got to know the way harm has been done to them will become a pattern, and indeed they were true. It is quite exemplified in the subsequent riots across India particularly the state sponsored genocide of Muslims in the BJP ruled Gujarat.
The term Hindutva laboratory was coined and it was successfully experimented in Gujarat and it is feared it will be replicated in the other states of India as well.
All these gory occurrences were the result of the demolition of Babri Masjid; a mosque constructed by order of the first Mughal emperor of India, Babur, in Ayodhya in the 16th century in the year 1528. The Hindus allege that the Mughal emperor demolished a temple called Ram Mandir and replaced it by the mosque that is called Babri Masjid.
After the demolition of Babri Masjid the Muslim community naturally demanded from the government and the court to let them have the mosque rebuilt. Immediately after the demolition the then prime minister of Congress Narsimharao had promised the Muslims that they will soon have the mosque built on the land. Yet it has been more than one and a half decades and still the matter does not seem to be settled. The land continues to remain a controversial one.