Mosque to Mandate

On yet another 6 December, one feels obliged to write about the most seminal movement in modern India and one that transformed our politics forever.

- Aakar Patel

Forty years ago, the BJP had plateaued winning 7% of the vote in 1984 and only two Lok Sabha seats. When LK Advani took charge in 1986, he had never been a participant in electoral politics. His entry into politics came after time spent as a journalist in the RSS magazine, where he wrote film reviews.

As a politician, Advani had always been a nominated member, whether in the Delhi Council or in the Rajya Sabha. He had no experience of political mass mobilisation and, going by his autobiography (My Country, My Life, published in 2008) does not appear to know how it worked. The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the nonpolitical groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November. Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, it was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June 1989, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’.