NEW DELHI: On the night of December 22-23, 1949, an idol of Ram Lalla "mysteriously" appeared inside Ayodhya's Babri Masjid, setting in motion a chain of events that was to change the course of Indian politics in later decades. Little is known about what happened on that fateful night. But a new book now reveals how the events unfolded and claims those who pulled the strings of the Ayodhya strategy were also those accused in the Mahatma Gandhi murder case.
Authors Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K Jha interviewed a number of surviving eyewitnesses and accessed archival material to uncover the buried story of how the mosque turned into a temple overnight — a tale that describes the motivations of local players, the administrative collusion and the grand plan of a nationwide rightwing political mobilization intended to pitchfork Hindu Mahasabha as a major political player in post-independent India.
Central to the cast of local characters was Baba Abhiram Das, a well-built, 6-foot-tall local sadhu of the Nirvani akhara, who led three others into the mosque with the idol. Abhiram, later known as 'Ramjanmabhoomi Uddharak' (liberator) or simply as Uddharak Baba, died in 1981.
The researchers pieced together events of that night through extensive interviews with Abhiram's brother and cousins, who were all in Ayodhya in 1949. Two of his cousins —Indushekhar Jha and Yugal Kishore Jha — claim to have followed Abhiram into the mosque.
But that was not the original plan. According to the researchers, Abhiram was to have been accompanied by Baba Ramchandra Das Paramhans, who later became a central figure in the Ayodhya movement. Another sadhu, Vrindavan Das, was to join the two with an idol of Lord Ram. The trio was supposed to go inside the 16th-century mosque around 11pm — with a sympathetic guard looking the other way — plant the idol below its central dome and keep the deserted place of worship under their control till the next morning, when a large band of sadhus would pour in for support.
But that night, Paramhans "went missing", surfacing again in Ayodhya a few days later, the researchers claim. Forty-two years later, Paramhans had his own version of the event, telling The New York Times he was "the very man who put the idol inside the masjid".
According to the book, Ayodhya: The Dark Night (HarperCollins), to be released later this month, Abhiram went ahead with the plan regardless. The lone occupant of the mosque, muezzin Muhammad Ismael, was beaten up and made to flee. As the intruders sat inside the mosque waiting for dawn, Gopal Singh Visharad, Faizabad unit president of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, was at a printing press, readying posters and pamphlets announcing the 'miracle' of Rama Lalla 'reclaiming' the Babri Masjid.
That morning, Ayodhya woke up to cries of 'Ram Lalla' from inside the mosque. Significantly, say the authors, one of the first persons to reach the spot was Faizabad DM, K K K Nair, a Malayalee known for his rightwing Hindu leanings. Though he was at the spot at 4am, the DM did not inform his superiors in Lucknow about the takeover till 9am, allowing time for Ram bhakts to gain complete control of the mosque. According to the book, on December 21, a day before the surreptitious planting of the idols, Nair had met a group of sadhus at a low-profile Ayodhya temple, Jambwant Quila, where the plan was given final shape.
Many of local Mahasabha leaders involved in the plan were the acolytes of Mahant Digvijai Nath, head of the Gorakshapeeth in Gorakhpur and president of the UP unit of Mahasabha. A day after the Ayodhya event, he became all-India general secretary of the party.
The book claims Digvijai Nath — a main accused in the Gandhi murder case but later let off — was the master strategist of the Ayodhya takeover. His old association with DM Nair helped the plan immensely. The larger design, the authors argue, was to make Ayodhya the fulcrum of a right-wing mobilization. The effort failed then, but later became the basis of major political movement culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
A midnight raid that changed course of history
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A midnight raid that changed course of history
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A midnight raid that changed course of history
