The BJP’s turn towards supporting the VHP’s Ram Temple demand began when Advani replaced Atal Bihari Vajpayee as party president in 1986, two years after its 1984 debacle when it was reduced to just two Lok Sabha seats. After taking charge of the party, Advani named Murli Manohar Joshi as national general secretary. Joshi was an RSS man and physics lecturer whose PhD guide at Allahabad University was former RSS chief Rajendra Singh or Rajju Bhaiyya.

The BJP under Advani formally supported the Ram Temple demand of the VHP at its Palampur session in June 1989, a move that made Jaswant Singh walk all the way to the railway station in disapproval. “The Palampur resolution was a turning point in the life of the BJP and marked its shift from Gandhian socialism to Hindutva,” RSS-linked weekly Organiser’s former editor Seshadri Chari told The Indian Express. Around this time, Joshi, who was close to the RSS, emerged as the party’s second-most important leader as Vajpayee had been eclipsed for not backing the Ayodhya movement.

The Mandal challenge

Prime Minister V P Singh announced on August 7, 1990, that he would implement the Mandal Commission’s recommendations to provide reservations to Other Backward Classes (OBCs), something that was a knee-jerk reaction to Devi Lal’s call for a farmers’ rally in Delhi to challenge the PM’s authority. Devi Lal was the Deputy PM but Singh sacked him on August 1.

Singh’s decision threatened the Hindu unity the Ram Janmabhoomi movement had been gradually forging. Weeks after the Mandal announcement, the RSS convened a meeting on August 26, 1990, to garner support for the VHP’s event to inaugurate the temple in Ayodhya in a couple of months. Present at the meeting, Advani sensed the potential of the movement. Within weeks, he announced a Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya to enlist support for a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya. The yatra began on September 25, 1990, with Advani symbolically praying at the Somnath temple that had been rebuilt by the Centre just after Independence and shared the “memory” of past destruction by “medieval invaders”, something that fired up the demand for a Ram temple. Narendra Modi helped organise the Gujarat leg of the yatra.

“It is a misconception that the yatra was a response to Mandal. The first meeting held by the RSS to plan how to make the Ram temple movement a mass agitation was in 1980. Morapant Pingle was the brain behind the movement. Then there were events like the Ganga Mata Yatra and the laying of bricks. Advani’s Rath Yatra was perhaps the fourth event in that string,” said Chari.

The yatra garnered a massive public response. It triggered riots in some places and also catapulted Advani to the centre of national politics. The BJP decided that if Advani were to be arrested, it would withdraw its support to the V P Singh government. The arrest happened in Samastipur, Bihar, with the government of then CM Lalu Prasad arresting Advani on the night of October 22, 1990, and flying him to a guest house in Dumka, now in Jharkhand. The BJP withdrew support to the VP Singh government, which fell. Meanwhile, on October 30, the proposed date of the Kar Seva in Ayodhya, there was police firing on Kar Sevaks (Hindutva volunteers) to prevent them from storming the mosque. Mulayam Singh Yadav was the CM of Uttar Pradesh at the time.

Joshi’s ascent as BJP chief

With Advani’s second consecutive term as BJP president coming to a close, Joshi was chosen as his replacement as party chief in February 1991. In the Lok Sabha polls held soon afterwards, the BJP’s tally jumped from 85 to 120 and its vote share rose from 11% to 20%. The party might have done better but for the sympathy wave that Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination generated for the Congress. The Congress leader was killed just after the first phase of the three-phase election. P V Narasimha Rao subsequently became PM and ran a minority government.

As BJP chief, Joshi made Kalyan Singh, who was close to him, the UP CM in June 1991. Soon afterwards, the new CM and Joshi visited Ayodhya amid slogans of “Mandir yahin banayenge (We will build the temple here)” and took an oath for the construction of a temple at the then disputed site, author Vinay Sitapati writes in his book Jugalbandi. The state government also acquired 2.77 acres of land around Babri Masjid and handed it over to the VHP.

Seshadri Chari said Joshi had a deeper involvement in the movement: “There was a subgroup comprising Bhanu Pratap Shukla, Dattopant Thengdi, Ashok Singhal, and Girilal Jain that used to plan the movement in depth. I used to be some sort of a record keeper there. We used to meet very often at Thengdi’s house. I was the editor of the Organiser. I used to take notes and prepare papers. The subgroup would process information and meet people. Joshi worked very closely with this subgroup.”

How Babri Masjid was brought down

On October 30, 1992, the VHP announced it would begin temple construction on the land next to the mosque, which went against a Supreme Court order disallowing construction around the disputed site. Narasimha Rao began regular meetings with Advani to ensure that nothing untoward happened. Both Advani and Kalyan Singh promised that nothing would happen to the mosque. On repeated assurances, the court on November 28, 1992, permitted chanting by Kar Sevaks in Ayodhya on December 6.

On December 5, BJP leaders addressed a public meeting in Lucknow. At the meeting, Joshi asked people to go to Ayodhya the following day. Advani and Joshi both left for Ayodhya and spent the night at Janaki Mahal, a dharmshala in the temple town.

The following morning, they travelled to the site of Babri Masjid, reaching the spot at 10.30 am, writes Sitapati. VHP leader Ashok Singhal, Vinay Katiyar of the Bajrang Dal, a few sadhus, and BJP leaders Vijayaraje Scindia and Uma Bharti, among others, were present. So was a very large crowd running in lakhs, which seemed difficult to control.

It was afternoon when some people suddenly began to climb the domes of the mosque. Advani used the microphone to dissuade them and so did Vijayaraje Scindia. However, the crowd on the domes kept swelling. From about 1.55 pm, the domes were brought down one by one.

“There is a false perception created by a picture from that day showing Joshi, with Uma Bharti hanging over his shoulder from behind, rejoicing in the demolition. That picture was taken in the morning when everything was quiet and not when the demolition was on,” Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, who was present in Ayodhya that day, told The Indian Express.

Once the demolition of the mosque was reported, sparking riots across India, Kalyan Singh resigned as UP CM. Within hours, President’s rule was imposed in the state and the state Assembly was dissolved. Advani too resigned as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha in the wake of the demolition. The RSS and VHP were banned and subsequently the BJP governments in three states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh — were dismissed. “I wanted the dilapidated structure to go but not in this manner,” Seshadri Chari recalled Advani telling him later in an interview.

The Advani era in the BJP proved shortlived and the party had to once again count on its moderate face Vajpayee to steer the ship into the turbulent seas of coalition-building. Advani gave the party a head start but the future of the BJP would depend on Vajpayee’s skill of stringing together coalitions as the one he led from 1998 to 2004.

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This article was first published in Indian Express on Dec 20, 2023.

(Opinion expressed is personal/The role of 56″ Poster boy in the Ram Janmabhoomi temple movement is almost zero).

Courtesy: Indian Express.