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Former Union minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram said that India will forever be haunted by the conclusion drawn after the Supreme Court’s judgment on the Ayodhya title dispute that “no one demolished Babri Masjid”, much like “no one killed Jessica”.
He was speaking at the launch of Salman Khurshid’s book Sunrise over Ayodhya – Nationhood in Our Times on November 10. The book provides an account of nearly three decades vis-a-vis politics, religion and the Indian state from the day Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992 until the Supreme Court judgment on the matter in November 2019. Some Hindutva supporters, including BJP leaders, have criticised the book, and criticised Khurshid of comparing Hindutva outfits to radical jihadist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.
The Wire has prepared a transcript of the speech delivered by Chidambaram, where he touches upon several key issues pertaining to religion, Hindutva politics, secularism and others. The transcript has been slightly edited for style and clarity.
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Good evening to all of you. It’s good to address an audience in flesh and blood, rather than look at a blank screen. My good friend Salman Khurshid, my good friend Digvijay Singh, Ragini and friends, [hello].
Like everyone else, I was born into a family that practiced a religion; it happened to be the Hindu religion. We worshipped a variety of gods from village deities to Lord Ganesh, Lord Shiva, Lord Subramanian, Lord Krishna. My mother performed the usual rituals, observed the usual festivals, and all that was described as the way of life of Hindus.
That way of life did not stop my mother to admit me to a Catholic convent or to a Christian missionary school or to a Catholic college or to accept for five years of high school A.K. Muza as the class leader, nor to accept Harun Mohammed as the school leader. Nor, did it interfere with our way of life if we visited the St. Lazarus Church which was the closest place of worship to my home, nor the famous St. Thomas Cathedral at its annual festival, which attracted thousands of people, mostly non-Christians. That, we were told, is a way of life. It didn’t stop me from keeping the picture of Mother Mary under the pillow, nor did it prevent me from going to the chapel in Loyola College. Those things did not interfere with our way of life.
We are now told that that is not the way of life; Hindutva is the way of life. No less than our former chief justice of India [J.S. Verma in 1995] said that seeking votes in the name of Hindutva did not amount to seeking votes in the name of religion, because Hindutva is not a religion, it is a way of life.
So looking back, I have practiced Hindutva for the last several years without knowing what I was doing. It is very difficult to reconcile what I learnt as the Hindu way of life and what is being propagated today as the Hindu or the Hindutva way of life. Be that as it may, I certainly do not know as much about religion as my good friend Digvijay [Singh].
Obviously, words have acquired a new meaning; practices have acquired a new meaning. Whatever Gandhiji thought was Ram Rajya is no longer the Ram Rajya as understood by many, many of our fellow citizens. Likewise, what Pandit [Jawaharlal Nehru] told us about secularism is certainly not the way secularism is understood by many millions of our fellow citizens.
For example, secularism has moved away from acceptance to tolerance, and from tolerance to an uneasy coexistence. Secularism has moved away from community living to living apart, to living in ghettos. Secularism has moved away from having friends among all communities and all religions… and I have tried this on young students and listeners, ‘How many of you among the Hindus have a Muslim friend?’, and those who said they had a Muslim friend couldn’t count more than one. So I think these words have acquired a very different meaning, and unless we recognise what has happened to our country in the last 15 or 20 years, we would not be true to what we believe India should be.
Today we live in a world where lynching is not condemned by anyone in authority – certainly not the prime minister, certainly not the home minister. An advertisement by an internationally well-known watchmaker and jeweller has to be pulled out because it portrays a Muslim daughter-in-law living happily in a Hindu joint family.
[Editor’s note: The Tanishq advertisement depicted a Hindu daughter-in-law of a Muslim family.]
An advertisement by another well-known brand, Fabindia, has to be scrapped because someone interpreted three Urdu words as denigrating Diwali. And none of us rises in protest when riots at Muzaffarnagar and northeast Delhi limp along to a predictable conclusion when witness after witness turn hostile and the judges have to castigate the police for shoddy investigation. Certainly, no one in high authority seems to be stirred by these contemporary, everyday occurrences.
This book is about what happened in Ayodhya, what happened to the Babri Masjid. That story started in 1992 and came to a completely unexpected end on November 9, 2019, exactly two years ago. The jurisprudential basis of that judgment is extremely narrow; it is a very thin ledge. But due to the passage of time, what the author points out is, both sides have accepted it. Because both sides have accepted it, it has become a right judgment. Not the other way around. It is not a right judgment which both sides have accepted. Because both sides have accepted it, it has become a right judgment.
My good friend Salman Khurshid does not want to rock the boat. He does not want to stir the hornet’s nest. I understand his reluctance to do so.
Digvijay spoke about truth and reconciliation. I thought he emphasised reconciliation more than truth. Nelson Mandela promised truth and reconciliation, but first, the truth must be told, and then there can be reconciliation.
The truth was that what happened on December 6, 1992 was a terrible wrong. It was an incident that debased our constitution, that defied the Supreme Court, and created, what appeared to be at that time, an unbridgeable chasm between two communities. It was wrong, terribly wrong. I will say it 100 times, it will always be a terrible wrong. Having said that, it is perfectly right to say, a wrong has been committed, but please reconcile. But I think it is patronising to tell the people of this country – over 200 million Muslims – please reconcile because that is what it is.
Forty-six concerned retired officers belonging to the various services of India issued a long statement after the judgment of the Supreme Court saying, “We also pledge that we will not allow our great constitution to be emptied of its soul.” The judgment of the Supreme Court, whether it emptied the soul of the constitution, is for each one of you to decide. But leave the judgment aside, every day there are occurrences that empty a bit of the soul of our constitution. And yet, no one in high authority is willing to stand up and speak for this grave debasement, denigration of our constitution.
This book, of course, is a splendid record of what happened in the last 28 or 29 years. One doesn’t have to go to any other source, any other record. Everything that you want to know about what happened before and after 1992, and up to this date, is there in this book. It is in that sense an extremely useful reference book for future historians.
After the Supreme Court judgment, things took a predictable course. Within a year or so everyone who was accused, something like 300 people were accused, were acquitted. So like ‘No One Killed Jessica‘, no one demolished the Babri Masjid. That conclusion will forever haunt us. That in this country of Gandhi and Nehru and Sardar Patel and Abdul Kalam Azad, 75 years after independence, we are not ashamed to say that no one demolished the Babri Masjid.