Unite and fight for a State that would guarantee prosperity and protection for all!
Statement of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 5th December, 2015
The demolition of Babri Masjid exposed the fact that communalism and communal violence had become an unwritten policy of the Indian State. It is not the religious beliefs of anyone that is to blame. It is the ruling class and its method of rule that is responsible.
The dispute over Babri Masjid was deliberately reignited by the Indian big bourgeoisie to divide the people on communal lines. The aim was to disrupt and paralyze the struggles of the working class and people against the all sided attacks being launched on their rights, as well as to suppress dissident factions within the bourgeois class.
Communal violence and incitement of competing sectarian agitations based on religion and caste were all deployed to create a climate of mayhem and chaos, within which the unpopular policy changes could be pushed through. This is the real explanation for the rapid escalation of communal and sectarian violence in the nineties.
Unite and fight for a State that would guarantee prosperity and protection for all!
Statement of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 5th December, 2015
The 6th of December, 2015, marks the 23rd anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid. The Communist Ghadar Party joins all other political parties, organizations and individuals committed to defend the right to conscience and other human rights in the struggle against the growing menace of communal and fascist terror and in support of the demand that justice be done; the guilty be punished.
Twenty three years ago, on 6th December, 1992, the Babri Masjid, a 16th century Mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, was demolished in full view of the public and the media. Several top leaders of the BJP were present on the scene, while Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and other top Congress leaders were closely overseeing the developments from New Delhi. The BJP-led government in UP and the Congress-led central government collaborated in masterminding the criminal act of wanton destruction of a historical monument.
The demolition of Babri Masjid was followed by large-scale communal violence in Mumbai, Surat and other places, which continued into the early months of 1993. Over two thousand people were killed and tens of thousands rendered homeless. Several commissions of enquiry confirmed what most people of Mumbai, Surat and other places already knew, that the Congress, BJP and Shiv Sena were all involved in unleashing violence targeted at Muslims and some of them in the counter-violence against Hindus. The administrative machinery and police forces fully aided the killer gangs. No person or party responsible for the demolition of the monument and the accompanying communal violence has been punished to date.
The demolition of Babri Masjid exposed the fact that communalism and communal violence had become an unwritten policy of the Indian State. It is not the religious beliefs of anyone that is to blame. It is the ruling class and its method of rule that is responsible.
Communalisation of the politics of Punjab, army assault on the Golden Temple, genocide of Sikhs in November 1984 and imposition of army rule in Punjab were all part of the diabolical plan implemented by the ruling class in the eighties, to deal with the economic and political crisis at that time. The Congress Party under Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership swept to power in 1985 on an openly communal and chauvinist campaign, brandishing the slogan of “Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan”. This was followed by calls for “modernization” and “taking India to the 21st century”. The exploiting minority was promised juicy fruits from globalisation while the toiling majority was threatened with arbitrary arrests, communal violence, caste oppression, police and army terror alongside intensified exploitation of their labour and plunder of natural resources.
The destruction of Babri Masjid in December 1992 marked the “scaling up” of the diabolical tactics tested in Assam and then in Punjab to the whole country, with both ruling and principal opposition parties in Parliament colluding to set people at each other’s throats. The political aim was to divert the working class and people, confuse them about their main enemy, set them against one another, create a pretext for imposing fascist laws and unleashing widespread repression, so as to clear the path for the program of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation.
The campaign to build a temple for Bhagvan Ram at the site of Babri Masjid was and is based on the assertion that this mosque had been built by the Moghul Emperor Babur and his governor Mir Baqi by destroying a temple dedicated to Bhagwan Ram, and that this very site was the birthplace of Bhagvan Ram. Babur used to maintain a meticulous diary in the Persian language, known as Babur Nama. There is no evidence in that diary that Babur or his governor destroyed a temple in order to build the mosque at Ayodhya. There is also no contemporary account by other writers, including the poet Tulsi Das, a devout Ram Bhakt who started writing after Babur’s death in 1530.
Tulsi Das was based in Varanasi and produced many poetic works in the Avadhi language, including the famous Ram Charit Manas. In some of his works there is mention of numerous problems affecting the people, including unemployment and epidemics in Varanasi. However, there is no mention anywhere of the destruction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya by Babur or Mir Baqi.
During the Ghadar of 1857, Avadh was one of the most active centres of the insurgents. After the suppression of the Ghadar, the British colonialists started publishing distorted accounts of “local history” through their Gazetteer in Faizabad, asserting that there had been a Ram Mandir at the Janmasthan which was destroyed to build the Babri Masjid. In the following years, every British historian started quoting this Faizabad Gazetteer and repeating the same colonial concoction.
The colonial government erected a fence within the compound of Babri Masjid and ordered that Hindus are to enter from the East gate and Muslims from the North gate, into separate spaces for their respective worships. They kept the dispute alive, with the colonial courts considering and rejecting various petitions from so-called Hindu and Muslim leaders.
In the night of 22nd December, 1949, in the aftermath of the communal Partition, an idol of Ram Lalla was installed inside the mosque under the supervision of a top functionary of the Indian State. Ever since, systematic propaganda was carried out that this was an “act of God”, so as to confuse the worshippers of Lord Ram. The Interim Government of Nehru proclaimed the premises as a disputed area and locked the gates. The gates remained locked for the next 37 years.
In 1986, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got the Supreme Court to order the gates of Babri Masjid open for Hindu worship. In 1989, another Supreme Court order was obtained which allowed Shilanyas (foundation ceremony for a new temple) to be performed. Meanwhile, Vishwa Hindu Parishad was given full support for its campaign to build a temple at the site of the Masjid. Prominent leaders of the Congress as well as BJP were involved in this campaign. The BJP, headed by L.K. Advani, launched a rath yatra (chariot procession) across many states of India, to popularise the slogan “Mandir wahin banaayenge!” (we will build the temple in the same site) and calling on devout Hindus to bring one brick each for the Ram temple.
These developments must be seen in the context of the abrupt changes that were taking place on the world scale during the second half of the eighties and the first half of the nineties. It was a time when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the peoples of the world started being bombarded with the deafening imperialist propaganda that socialism has failed and that there is no alternative to a “market oriented economy” and no alternative to “multi-party representative democracy”. In our country, the program of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation was presented in 1991 as the path to accelerate economic development, while blaming the earlier Nehruvian “socialistic pattern of society” for all the ills of the economy. It was a path that meant more intense exploitation of labour, robbery of small producers and loot of natural resources. It also meant that various sections of the non-monopoly bourgeoisie would get driven out of business by the aggressive penetration of global monopolies.
The dispute over Babri Masjid was deliberately reignited by the Indian big bourgeoisie to divide the people on communal lines. The aim was to disrupt and paralyze the struggles of the working class and people against the all sided attacks being launched on their rights, as well as to suppress dissident factions within the bourgeois class.
Communal violence and incitement of competing sectarian agitations based on religion and caste were all deployed to create a climate of mayhem and chaos, within which the unpopular policy changes could be pushed through. This is the real explanation for the rapid escalation of communal and sectarian violence in the nineties.
At the present time, faced with a severe crisis of capitalism, the Indian ruling class is continuing with the diabolical strategy of dividing and ruling through the ballot and the bullet. This is also the imperialist strategy in the face of the deepening crisis of capitalism on the world scale. The mantra of “market oriented reform” is facing mass opposition in all continents; yet the reactionary capitalist class is persisting with its anti-social offensive. Intensified capitalist exploitation, imperialist plunder and wars of conquest waged in the name of fighting against “Islamic terrorism” are causing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale all over the world. In India, the ruling class is trying to manipulate the anger of the people by fostering the illusion that the “tolerance” of Congress Party is better or less evil than the “intolerance” of BJP. This is a debate that is deliberately being promoted to hijack the struggle in defence of the right to conscience and of the human rights and democratic rights of all citizens, into another round in the dogfight between the Congress and BJP.
From British colonial times, those who preached religious prejudice and hatred as well as those who preached “tolerance” have played their respective roles in implementing the divide and rule strategy. Congress leaders are trained in the cunning colonial method of inciting communal passions while preaching “tolerance” and “fair play”. They extend support to all kinds of backward sects and outdated practices in the name of tolerance.
The problem is that the existing State blatantly violates all rights as a matter of course and rules by decree. The State does not defend every person’s right to follow his or her beliefs and to freely express his or her opinion on social matters without any fear. It does not condemn and punish every violation of the right to conscience, no matter whether the victim is Hindu or Muslim or of some other religion or one who does not believe in any God.
BJP and Congress fight with each other for the seats of power like bitter enemies but they come together when the interests of the biggest capitalists require their collusion. They colluded to bring down Babri Masjid 23 years ago. They have colluded all these years to advance the anti-worker, anti-peasant and anti-national program of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. They are both parties of the capitalist class headed by the big monopolies. Colluding and contending with each other is in their very nature. The working class, peasants and other oppressed and excluded strata have nothing to gain and everything to lose by taking sides in the rivalry between BJP and Congress Party.
The way forward is to build the revolutionary unity of all those who want to end the colonial legacy of divide and rule. Life experience has repeatedly shown that changing the ruling party through the existing electoral process does not lead to any real change in the conditions of life. It has also shown that any party that seeks to capture power in its own hands through the existing electoral process becomes part of the factors for marginalising the people from power. More and more people are being attracted by the vision of an alternative system in which it is the people and not a party that would exercise power, and in which the role of a political party would be to keep the people in power.
Communist Ghadar Party works with the aim of enabling the working class, in alliance with the peasants and all the oppressed, to establish a new State and political process in which sovereignty will be vested in the people and not usurped by any party or coalition. Such a State and political process will enable the toiling majority of people to have their say and ensure that the economy is geared to fulfil their growing needs, not to fulfil the rapacious greed of big capitalists. Such a State will ensure that those guilty of organising communal massacres and other horrendous crimes against our people are severely and promptly punished, so that nobody dares to violate anyone’s rights. It is in the interests of all workers, peasants, women and youth to unite around this political aim and program for acquiring political power in our hands so as to ensure prosperity and protection for all.
Punish those guilty of demolishing Babri Masjid! Fight for the Navnirman of the Indian State!