In the best medieval traditions, the mosque was built on the foundations of a razed Hindu temple, which is believed to mark the spot of the birth of Rama, hero of the Ramayana, one of -- and the less philosophical of -- the two Hindu epics. (The other is the Mahabharata, recently reinterpreted rather successfully for international audiences by Peter Brook. In the popular imagination of the Hindu community, Rama has been the ideal hero-king for centuries. Even Mahatma Gandhi was his devotee, and songs in his praise were sung at his public prayer meetings every day. A major Hindu figure, then, whose birthplace is (was, rather) graced by a Muslim mosque.
So there's the core of the controversy: who owns the spot where the Babri Masjid stood, the majority Hindus or the minority Muslims of India? So acrimonious is the debate that the mosque is no longer referred to as Babri. It's just the `disputed site'. Over the last decade or so, Indian politics has been dominated by this dispute, which was, strangely enough, unknown for centuries.
Religion was a close ally of politics all over the world in the Middle Ages. In Europe, the Reformation had much more to do with politics than with faith. The Pilgrim Fathers faced persecution because they constituted what we would now term an interest group. The division between Rome and Avignon was not so much a difference of convictions as a difference about who should wield secular power through the kings of Europe. In South Asia, this phenomenon manifested itself as a difference between Hindus, who believe themselves to be the native race of India, and Muslims, who settled here later. But at no point before the middle of this century did the Babri Masjid figure as an emotive icon representing these differences.
In modern times politics and religion, the powers temporal and spiritual, are supposed to belong in different spheres, public and private. Not in India, though. Not any more. Ten years ago, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) hit the up ramp to power by mixing religion with politics. It got a Congress party government to unlock the gates of the mosque and open it to worshippers, despite the fact that it was a disputed property.
There followed an enormously successful mobilisation among Hindus all over North India. Thousands of devotees marched to Ayodhya bearing bricks with the name of their god inscribed upon them. There, they laid the foundations of a new temple, and a new movement to raze the mosque.
At the beginning of this decade the BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani -- who is now Home Minister of the Union of India -- led a Rathayatra (literally, a `chariot-journey') through north India. It began in Somnath, a great temple on the west coast which was once sacked by a Muslim invader, and was to end in Ayodhya, apparently after having asserted Hindu pride and wiped out the shame of centuries of Muslim rule. Advani's `chariot' was really a small truck, gussied up with gold leaf and such. To help the myth along, the poor man had to carry a bow and arrows, like the heroes of old. It looked like play-acting to everyone except the believers.
For them, it kindled dim memories of the Ashvamedha Yagna, the ancient ceremony profitably used by kings who wanted to enlarge their territories. They would let a sanctified horse loose at the border of their lands. Everywhere the horse went was deemed to become the king's lands. And whoever stopped the horse would have to fight his armies.
It worked until the `chariot' reached the border of Bihar, which was then administered by a lower-caste chief minister who had no use for such Brahminical rubbish. Advani found himself taken into custody for disturbing the peace. The movement was over.
But only until 1991, when there was another mobilisation by a much stronger BJP. Thousands of rampaging activists tore down the Babri mosque, quite literally, with their bare hands. There was unprecedented rioting across the country, and even in neighbouring Bangladesh. And there were mass bombings in Bombay, allegedly sponsored by money from Pakistan, which left the city crippled for months.
Today, the BJP rules India, and its supporters and affiliates regularly demand that a temple has to built on the site of the razed mosque. If that happens, another round of bloodshed is inevitable. The violence surrounding the demolition, in which so many lost their lives, has not really been addressed by the courts. The people responsible for the demolition -- who had persuaded the government of the day that nothing would happen -- and the people who instigated the riots walk free. Two of them are actually ministers in the new government. L.K. Advani runs the Home Ministry, which is in charge of the police and some investigative agencies. And his government is under pressure to keep the issue alive. Right now, massive pillars for the temple are being carved in the state of Rajasthan. However stupid it may be, the Babri problem will remain a central issue of Indian politics for a long, long time.