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Swapan Dasgupta

DAY DREAMS

The Prevailing Gospel

I happened to be one of the few journalists who managed to view the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 from a vantage position—in the company of L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and K.S. Sudarshan. How I got to be where I was on that fateful day is an involved and not very interesting story that I will reserve for my memoirs. All that need be said is that Deepak Chopra, Advani's private secretary (he remains so to this day), saw a few of us looking a bit lost at 10.30 a.m. and invited us to the small building whose terrace served as a makeshift podium on that day. From a journalistic point of view, it was a happy coincidence because I got a view of the demolition as seen by the entire top leadership of the BJP, RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

For reasons that are very personal, I never wrote any descriptive account of that day's events. Many a times I have tried to put pen to paper and get the images that are still vivid out of my system. It never happened. Forget it, my wife kept on telling me, why rake up an old controversy? Now, a controversy is something journalists cherish. It gives you your 15 minutes of fame. So why should Ayodhya be any different?

The point is that Ayodhya is different. Not because what happened on that day was truly significant—whether you agree with it or not. The reason why Ayodhya is different is because this is one issue where everyone has a closed mind. This is an issue that is dealt with in black and white—mainly black—terms. If you are part of the English-speaking minusculity, you are supposed to have only one view of Ayodhya. If that is the consensus, so be it. But why should an eyewitness account of December 6 have to be opinionated? Why isn't it possible to write a faithful account of what I saw from the platform that day? After all, people have written reams depending on where they happened to be on that day in Ayodhya?

The answer, again, is because the whole issue is pre-determined. What you saw is meant to bolster the view that the demolition was meticulously planned and executed, and that the entire leadership of the temple movement was part of the conspiracy. It matters little that this is not what I saw, unless, of course, all the people on the platform were great actors. It matters little that some of the people who claimed they were assaulted by fanatical kar sevaks were letting hope prevail over experience. It matters little that the person who instructed kar sevaks to block the highway to prevent the arrival of para-military forces wasn't Advani but a flamboyant sadhu. It matters little that there were at least a couple of people who seemed to have a shrewd idea that the structure would end up being demolished, even as the rest of the leadership was disoriented by what was happening around them. It matters little that Joshi wasn't ecstatic after the demolition and that the picture of him enjoying a joke with Uma Bharati was probably taken before the symbolic kar seva went awry. It matters little that the person who kept up the chant, "Ek dhakka aur deo", during the final minutes of Mir Baqi's Babri Masjid wasn't Uma. It matters little that the man who talks about a mysterious bomb going off wasn't aware of it on that day. It matters little that the CBI man (or was it IB?) who met me a month or so after the event wasn't really interested in my evidence because it didn't correspond to the prevailing gospel. It matters little in the present fuss over Ayodhya that the foremost casualty is the truth, as I saw it during the day of December 6, 1992.

(Swapan Dasgupta is Deputy Editor, INDIA TODAY. He has edited Nirad Chaudhuri, The First Hundred Years. Write to Swapan Dasgupta)

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