The BJP has relented neither to pressure nor temptation and has refused to make a commitment to build a temple at the site of the now-demolished Babri Masjid. This has brought both its leaders, Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, great credit. Such restraint, at a time when all opinion polls are showing a sharp decline in the BJP's popularity in UP, shows the party in a positive light. More importantly, it does a world of good to India's political pluralism. But has the time not come for all the protagonists in this 16-year-long political struggle to stop flogging the horse of religion and let the larger purpose of nation-building guide their future actions? Such a reappraisal is long overdue because the fears and grievances of Muslims and Hindus, that had permitted the politicisation of what was previously a local issue, have proved groundless.
The first essential step in this direction is to demystify the dispute itself. As historian Sushil Srivastava has shown, there's abundant archaeological evidence to confirm that no temple built by Vikramaditya in the 5th century AD was pulled down to build the Babri Masjid. All the evidence suggests that for at least two centuries around the end of the first millennium, Ayodhya had been virtually abandoned. The carved pillars, which were later incorporated into the mosque and which have been taken as proof of the pulling down of a temple, are from the 9th century. What remains of the VHP's case, however, is the now universal belief among Hindus that Ayodhya was Rama's birthplace. This belief too has no archaeological foundation, but that's of no consequence. Religion isn't governed by history.
By the same token, the Babri Masjid was not built by Babar's general. The mosque's architecture leaves no room for doubt that it was built in the 13th century. In all probability it was only improved upon in his name. What stood at the site of the supposed birthplace of Sri Rama was, therefore, a somewhat nondescript mosque; at a spot that has no special significance for Islam. It was, moreover, a mosque that hadn't been in use since at least 1949, and if the official gazette is to be believed, since 1936.
Muslim leaders dispute the latter and claim that the last namaz was read in the mosque on December 22, 1949, hours before Hindu miscreants entered it surreptitiously in the dead of night and planted a small statuette of the infant Rama in the ground before the pulpit. Their adamant refusal to allow Hindu zealots to hijack the mosque, when the dispute again blew up in the 1980s, was based only partly on a sense of outrage. Behind it lay the very real fear that if they allowed this, it would open a Pandora's box of similar claims and coercive actions. That their fears were not groundless was demonstrated by the VHP when it published a list of several other such 'disputed' sites which they wanted to reclaim. They, therefore, insisted that the courts must decide the ownership of the disputed site. But the issues the Allahabad High Court was asked to arbitrate upon, such as whether indeed a temple had existed on the site, were so far outside the realm of law that the judges have preferred to pass the buck on to their successors.
The starting point for resolving the dispute is to accept not only that the courts are qualified only to give a judgement on the legal title to the land on which the mosque stood, but also that such a determination will solve absolutely nothing, because the problem is rooted in Faith, not Fact or Law.
Hindu leaders need to ask themselves whether the presence or absence of a temple at that precise site is crucial to the survival and growth of their religion and culture. The answer is obvious: if 800 years of non-Hindu rule in north India didn't make the slightest dent in their faith's power, then a temple more or less will make no difference.
Muslim leaders also need to accept not only that the Babri Masjid had no special religious significance, but also that in Islam bricks and mortar have little intrinsic importance, except to identify places where the faithful converge to pray. They may win their case in court and that may provide the leaders of all political parties, including the BJP, the pretext they need to rein in the Hindu zealots. But given the religious significance of Ayodhya, demonstrated by communal clashes for a 100 years before Independence, they need to ask themselves whether they want their community to live forever with this sword of Damocles hanging over its head.
Since all of us have a common interest in leaving a safer and more prosperous country for our children, the best, indeed, the only way ahead is for Hindu leaders to explicitly and publicly forswear any resort to coercive tactics and for Muslim leaders to agree to allow a temple to be built at the present site and a mosque to be built at a site chosen by them. Indeed, if they could come to such an agreement, the two structures could be built with kar seva (voluntary labour) by both communities. This would reverse more than a century of growing estrangement between the two communities and make India's future impregnable.
It might be too much to expect political activists who have made their careers over the past 15 years by taking extreme stands on the Babri Masjid issue to turn around and start moving towards each other. But in that case, it's the government's duty to rally moderate opinion and impose such a solution on the extremists once it's sure that this is what the people want. The BJP shouldn't shrink from doing this for fear of being branded communal. The fact is that Islam here is not an Arab but a truly Indian religion. If a previous Congress government didn't shrink from building the Somnath temple as a symbol of national Hindu regeneration, there is no reason why a BJP government should not initiate the building of a grand mosque at a site of religious and historic significance to Indian Muslims.