The ancient city of Ayodhya (meaning ‘unconquerable’) nestled in the heart of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is believed to be the birthplace of  Lord Rama, revered as the seventh ‘Avatar’  of  Lord Vishnu (the preserver and protector of the universe in the Hindu ‘Trimurti’ or Trinity), and the setting of the timeless Indian epic Ramayana by the ‘Adi Kavi’ or Primeval Poet Valmiki which describes Lord Rama as the ‘most ideal’. Ayodhya has been regarded as one of the seven most important pilgrimage sites (‘Saptapuri’) for Hindus. In a lecture delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California (the first women’s club in Southern California established in 1888), on 31^st January 1900, the legendary scholar, saint and spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda accorded a summarized story of the Ramayana and observed, ‘There was an ancient Indian town called Ayodhya – and it exists even in modern times…There, in ancient times, reigned a king called Dasharatha. He had three queens, but the king had not any children by them. And like good Hindus, the king and the queens, all went on pilgrimages fasting and praying, that they might have children and, in good time, four sons were born. The eldest of them was Rama.’ In yet another lecture on 11^th February,1897 on ‘Sages of India’ at the iconic ‘Castle Kernan’ (where ice, wrapped in pine dust and imported by sea from the United States, used to be stored!) which is now known as ‘Vivekanandar Illam’ or Vivekananda House, on the famous Marina Beach in Chennai, Swami ji said, ‘Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, the ideal father and above all the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaste, none more beautiful and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the poet has depicted the life of Rama.’ 

Various historical, archaeological and religious records reveal that the birth spot of  Lord Rama in Ayodhya was marked by a temple which was demolished in 1528 by Abdul Mir Baqi (a Moghul military commander from Tashkent and the Governor of the province of Awadh) on the orders of the first Mughal emperor Babar (meaning lion) , and a mosque bearing the name ‘Babari Masjid’ was erected in its place.

On 31^st December,1984, my charismatic friend and sincere well wisher Rajiv Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India after a historic landslide victory at the hustings which gave him  a massive three-fourth mandate in Parliament. The Congress won 411 seats in a 542-strong Lok Sabha. The BJP debuted with only 2 seats.

In February,1986, Rajiv ordered the locks of the Babari Masjid in Ayodhya removed pursuant to an order of the District Court, Faizabad. Until then, a priest had been permitted to perform ‘puja’ once a year for the idols installed there on 22^nd December 1949 by the muscular priest and indefatigable Ram Bhakht Abhiram Das and a motley group of sadhus with the tacit support of top district officials, including K.K.Nayar, ICS, the erudite soft-spoken Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Magistrate, and Guru Dutt Singh, the tall, turbaned Faizabad City Magistrate with a sprucely trimmed mustache. Now, all Hindus were given access to what they considered the hallowed birthplace of Lord Rama. Rajiv’s decision was important because he unmistakably leaned in favour of the Hindus!

On 14^th August, 1989, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court bunched together the four petitions regarding the dispute over Babri Masjid and ordered that status quo be maintained. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) announced it would conduct the ‘Shilanyas’ or the foundation laying ceremony for a Ram Mandir on 10^th November, 1989. As soon as the decision was announced, the VHP’s coffers started filling up with generous donations from all corners of the globe. With this money, the VHP started organising a nationwide campaign to collect and consecrate ‘shilas’ or bricks baked in kilns in more than 2,00,000 villages. These bricks with ‘Sri Ram’ inscribed on them were wrapped in saffron cloth, worshipped and then brought to Ayodhya. Consequently, soil from Ayodhya was dug up and distributed to these villages.

The communally surcharged atmosphere during the campaigning for the 1989 General Election in India necessitated the micro-management by Rajiv who deputed the then Union Home Minister Buta Singh (an old friend of mine!) to travel to Ayodhya. Buta emerged as the interface between the Centre and the state government. At the Lucknow Secretariat, Buta used to run a parallel administration along with selected bureaucrats in close unison with the VHP. The Chief Minister’s Office was practically rendered effete on the Ayodhya issue and worked only as a post office. On 27^th September 1989, Buta, along with the then Uttar Pradesh Chief  Minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari met the VHP’s Joint Secretary Ashok Singhal. In October 1989, Rajiv launched his election campaign from Faizabad and slipped in an unscripted reference to a ‘Ram Rajya’ in his speech drafted by the much-tarnished Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. The government agreed to allow the VHP to conduct a ‘Shila Yatra’ or a procession with the consecrated bricks’ on the condition that the VHP leaders sign an accord promising to abide by the directions of the Allahabad High Court and to maintain peace. Thousands of kar sevaks or ‘voluntary religious workers’ carrying shilas poured into Ayodhya in an unprecedented steam. To ease the escalating communal tension, the government tried to prevail upon the VHP to conduct the Shilanyas on an adjacent plot of land which it understood did not fall under the disputed property as specified by the High Court. But on 2^nd November,1989,  a saffron flag was seen on the same plot that was claimed by the Sunni Waqkf Board. The government approached the Allahabad High Court and on 7^th November 1989 the court clarified that the 14^th August 1989 order to maintain the status quo was with regard to the 2.77-acre plot of land on which the foundation laying ceremony was proposed to be held. On 8^th November 1989, the Uttar Pradesh government affirmatively declared, on the advice of the State Advocate General Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, that the site of the Shilanyas was not a disputed land. The government in effect gave its own accreditation to the Ram Mandir! On 9^th November 1989, the VHP conducted the Shilanyas and laid the foundation of the proposed Ram Mandir.

Significantly, just a week before the foundation was laid, Rajiv visited the spiritual Siddha Yogi saint Deoraha Baba near Gorakhpur by Buta. Rajiv’s rendezvous with Deoraha Baba was arranged by Vikas Mani Tripathi, former Director General, Uttar Pradesh Police, who was a great disciple of the saint. The Baba was an exalted figure across the Hindi heartland for his dedication to the cause of communal harmony and was known for blessing his devotees by touching their heads with his feet, perched atop a thatched platform. Rajiv went to seek the Baba’s blessing and also his guidance on the contentious Ayodhya issue. Deoraha Baba looked at him and commented, ‘Bachcha ho jane do (child let it happen)’. The saint’s words virtually constituted a green signal to the laying of the foundation stone on 10^th November,1989. Tiwari, who accompanied Rajiv and Buta to the Baba’s ashram, was instructed to facilitate it. ‘Bachcha ne ho jane diya (the child has allowed it to happen),’ he pointed out while narrating the sequence of events.

In a seminar on ‘Why Shri Ram Temple at Ayodhya and How’ on 18^th April 2016, my good friend and versatile scholar Dr.Subramanian Swamy.M.P. (who was my senior both at school and college) hailed Rajiv Gandhi for his ‘noble efforts’ to resolve the Ayodhya dispute and said in ringing tones, ‘I have known Rajiv Gandhi very well. Had he become Prime Minister once again, he would have definitely constructed the Ram Temple at the same place (where the demolished Babri mosque stood). He had unlocked the Ram temple (Babri masjid) and allowed the shilanyas (foundation laying) ceremony for the Ram temple. He further said that Rajiv had started ‘upholding the concept of Ram Rajya’  but things changed after his untimely demise.

Significantly, Rajiv’s monumental grandfather and India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was in favour of removing the idols which had been placed in the mosque on 22^nd  December, 1949. However, the idea was not allowed to see the light of day by the six feet tall Chief Minister Bharat Ratna Pandit Govind Ballabh  Pant, the legendary lawyer, Hindi scholar and freedom fighter, who was one of the principal architects of modern India. Pant was mercilessly hit by a lathi while saving Nehru during a public protest against the The Indian Statutory Commission, commonly known as the ‘Simon Commission’, under the chairmanship of Sir John Allsebrook Simon assisted by Clement Richard Attlee (under whose Prime Ministership India eventually earned its freedom!) outside the iconic Moghul style Charbagh Railway Station in Lucknow on 30^th November, 1928. On 2^nd March,2018, the well-known newspaper The Tribune published an article entitled ‘Kumaon remembers its leader GB Pant’, highlighting the observation of the veteran journalist Puran Chand Joshi, ‘The lathi blow sustained by him to save Nehru made him suffer for life as he could never straighten his back or stand straight.’ In the specific context of  Pant’s resistance to the removal of the idol, an illuminating article entitled ‘Ayodhya, the Battle for India’s Soul: The Complete Story’ by Krishna Pokharel and Paul Beckett appeared in the Wall Steet Journal on 10^th December,2012. In that article, the authors succinctly observed :

‘Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, was greatly perturbed by an idol of Lord Ram being placed in a mosque…“I am disturbed at developments at Ayodhya,” Nehru said in a telegram on Dec. 26, 1949, to Govind Ballabh Pant, chief minister of United Provinces, which roughly included what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh. “Earnestly hope you will personally interest yourself in this matter. Dangerous example being set there which will have bad consequences.” The provincial government wanted the statue removed. K.K. Nayar, the district magistrate in Faizabad, who also oversaw Ayodhya, refused. He wrote to a provincial official that removing the idol was “fraught with the gravest danger to public peace” and would lead to a “conflagration of horror,” according to a copy of his correspondence……Nehru kept pushing. In early January, he wrote again to Mr. Pant. The chief minister called him soon after. Mr. Pant “intended taking action, but he wanted to get some well-known Hindus to explain the situation to people in Ayodhya first,” Nehru wrote in a separate letter to the governor-general of India dated Jan. 7, 1950. Weeks passed. The idol stayed. The discord in Ayodhya threatened Nehru’s desire for India to be a democracy in which all beliefs were equally respected. He also feared that it would have repercussions “on all-India affairs and more especially Kashmir,” the disputed territory between India and the newly-created Pakistan, he wrote to Mr. Pant on Feb. 5, 1950. Nehru added that he would be willing to make the 600-kilometer trip from Delhi to Ayodhya himself. But, he also noted, “I am terribly busy.” Nehru didn’t make the trip. By March, he was sounding defeated as local officials continued to balk at removing the idol. “This event occurred two or three months ago and I have been very gravely perturbed over it,” he wrote in a letter to K.G. Mashruwala, an associate of Mahatma Gandhi.’ The saviour of Nehru emerged as the saviour of the idol!

On 21^st May 1991, Rajiv was brutally assassinated in Sriperumbudur by Sri Lankan LTTE militants. And two hours before he took leave of the material world, his last letter to me was posted. And in that letter, he condoled the death of my father who had died on 24^th April 1991. The Babri Masjid was raised to the ground on 6^th December 1992. The rest is history!

Mr ANOOP BOSE is a senior advocate in the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, The views expressed are personal to the writer. 

The ancient city of Ayodhya (meaning ‘unconquerable’) nestled in the heart of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is believed to be the birthplace of  Lord Rama, revered as the seventh ‘Avatar’  of  Lord Vishnu (the preserver and protector of the universe in the Hindu ‘Trimurti’ or Trinity), and the setting of the timeless Indian epic Ramayana by the ‘Adi Kavi’ or Primeval Poet Valmiki which describes Lord Rama as the ‘most ideal’. Ayodhya has been regarded as one of the seven most important pilgrimage sites (‘Saptapuri’) for Hindus. In a lecture delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California (the first women’s club in Southern California established in 1888), on 31^st January 1900, the legendary scholar, saint and spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda accorded a summarized story of the Ramayana and observed, ‘There was an ancient Indian town called Ayodhya – and it exists even in modern times…There, in ancient times, reigned a king called Dasharatha. He had three queens, but the king had not any children by them. And like good Hindus, the king and the queens, all went on pilgrimages fasting and praying, that they might have children and, in good time, four sons were born. The eldest of them was Rama.’ In yet another lecture on 11^th February,1897 on ‘Sages of India’ at the iconic ‘Castle Kernan’ (where ice, wrapped in pine dust and imported by sea from the United States, used to be stored!) which is now known as ‘Vivekanandar Illam’ or Vivekananda House, on the famous Marina Beach in Chennai, Swami ji said, ‘Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, the ideal father and above all the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaste, none more beautiful and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the poet has depicted the life of Rama.’ 

Various historical, archaeological and religious records reveal that the birth spot of  Lord Rama in Ayodhya was marked by a temple which was demolished in 1528 by Abdul Mir Baqi (a Moghul military commander from Tashkent and the Governor of the province of Awadh) on the orders of the first Mughal emperor Babar (meaning lion) , and a mosque bearing the name ‘Babari Masjid’ was erected in its place.

On 31^st December,1984, my charismatic friend and sincere well wisher Rajiv Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India after a historic landslide victory at the hustings which gave him  a massive three-fourth mandate in Parliament. The Congress won 411 seats in a 542-strong Lok Sabha. The BJP debuted with only 2 seats.

In February,1986, Rajiv ordered the locks of the Babari Masjid in Ayodhya removed pursuant to an order of the District Court, Faizabad. Until then, a priest had been permitted to perform ‘puja’ once a year for the idols installed there on 22^nd December 1949 by the muscular priest and indefatigable Ram Bhakht Abhiram Das and a motley group of sadhus with the tacit support of top district officials, including K.K.Nayar, ICS, the erudite soft-spoken Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Magistrate, and Guru Dutt Singh, the tall, turbaned Faizabad City Magistrate with a sprucely trimmed mustache. Now, all Hindus were given access to what they considered the hallowed birthplace of Lord Rama. Rajiv’s decision was important because he unmistakably leaned in favour of the Hindus!

On 14^th August, 1989, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court bunched together the four petitions regarding the dispute over Babri Masjid and ordered that status quo be maintained. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) announced it would conduct the ‘Shilanyas’ or the foundation laying ceremony for a Ram Mandir on 10^th November, 1989. As soon as the decision was announced, the VHP’s coffers started filling up with generous donations from all corners of the globe. With this money, the VHP started organising a nationwide campaign to collect and consecrate ‘shilas’ or bricks baked in kilns in more than 2,00,000 villages. These bricks with ‘Sri Ram’ inscribed on them were wrapped in saffron cloth, worshipped and then brought to Ayodhya. Consequently, soil from Ayodhya was dug up and distributed to these villages.

The communally surcharged atmosphere during the campaigning for the 1989 General Election in India necessitated the micro-management by Rajiv who deputed the then Union Home Minister Buta Singh (an old friend of mine!) to travel to Ayodhya. Buta emerged as the interface between the Centre and the state government. At the Lucknow Secretariat, Buta used to run a parallel administration along with selected bureaucrats in close unison with the VHP. The Chief Minister’s Office was practically rendered effete on the Ayodhya issue and worked only as a post office. On 27^th September 1989, Buta, along with the then Uttar Pradesh Chief  Minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari met the VHP’s Joint Secretary Ashok Singhal. In October 1989, Rajiv launched his election campaign from Faizabad and slipped in an unscripted reference to a ‘Ram Rajya’ in his speech drafted by the much-tarnished Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. The government agreed to allow the VHP to conduct a ‘Shila Yatra’ or a procession with the consecrated bricks’ on the condition that the VHP leaders sign an accord promising to abide by the directions of the Allahabad High Court and to maintain peace. Thousands of kar sevaks or ‘voluntary religious workers’ carrying shilas poured into Ayodhya in an unprecedented steam. To ease the escalating communal tension, the government tried to prevail upon the VHP to conduct the Shilanyas on an adjacent plot of land which it understood did not fall under the disputed property as specified by the High Court. But on 2^nd November,1989,  a saffron flag was seen on the same plot that was claimed by the Sunni Waqkf Board. The government approached the Allahabad High Court and on 7^th November 1989 the court clarified that the 14^th August 1989 order to maintain the status quo was with regard to the 2.77-acre plot of land on which the foundation laying ceremony was proposed to be held. On 8^th November 1989, the Uttar Pradesh government affirmatively declared, on the advice of the State Advocate General Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, that the site of the Shilanyas was not a disputed land. The government in effect gave its own accreditation to the Ram Mandir! On 9^th November 1989, the VHP conducted the Shilanyas and laid the foundation of the proposed Ram Mandir.

Significantly, just a week before the foundation was laid, Rajiv visited the spiritual Siddha Yogi saint Deoraha Baba near Gorakhpur by Buta. Rajiv’s rendezvous with Deoraha Baba was arranged by Vikas Mani Tripathi, former Director General, Uttar Pradesh Police, who was a great disciple of the saint. The Baba was an exalted figure across the Hindi heartland for his dedication to the cause of communal harmony and was known for blessing his devotees by touching their heads with his feet, perched atop a thatched platform. Rajiv went to seek the Baba’s blessing and also his guidance on the contentious Ayodhya issue. Deoraha Baba looked at him and commented, ‘Bachcha ho jane do (child let it happen)’. The saint’s words virtually constituted a green signal to the laying of the foundation stone on 10^th November,1989. Tiwari, who accompanied Rajiv and Buta to the Baba’s ashram, was instructed to facilitate it. ‘Bachcha ne ho jane diya (the child has allowed it to happen),’ he pointed out while narrating the sequence of events.

In a seminar on ‘Why Shri Ram Temple at Ayodhya and How’ on 18^th April 2016, my good friend and versatile scholar Dr.Subramanian Swamy.M.P. (who was my senior both at school and college) hailed Rajiv Gandhi for his ‘noble efforts’ to resolve the Ayodhya dispute and said in ringing tones, ‘I have known Rajiv Gandhi very well. Had he become Prime Minister once again, he would have definitely constructed the Ram Temple at the same place (where the demolished Babri mosque stood). He had unlocked the Ram temple (Babri masjid) and allowed the shilanyas (foundation laying) ceremony for the Ram temple. He further said that Rajiv had started ‘upholding the concept of Ram Rajya’  but things changed after his untimely demise.

Significantly, Rajiv’s monumental grandfather and India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was in favour of removing the idols which had been placed in the mosque on 22^nd  December, 1949. However, the idea was not allowed to see the light of day by the six feet tall Chief Minister Bharat Ratna Pandit Govind Ballabh  Pant, the legendary lawyer, Hindi scholar and freedom fighter, who was one of the principal architects of modern India. Pant was mercilessly hit by a lathi while saving Nehru during a public protest against the The Indian Statutory Commission, commonly known as the ‘Simon Commission’, under the chairmanship of Sir John Allsebrook Simon assisted by Clement Richard Attlee (under whose Prime Ministership India eventually earned its freedom!) outside the iconic Moghul style Charbagh Railway Station in Lucknow on 30^th November, 1928. On 2^nd March,2018, the well-known newspaper The Tribune published an article entitled ‘Kumaon remembers its leader GB Pant’, highlighting the observation of the veteran journalist Puran Chand Joshi, ‘The lathi blow sustained by him to save Nehru made him suffer for life as he could never straighten his back or stand straight.’ In the specific context of  Pant’s resistance to the removal of the idol, an illuminating article entitled ‘Ayodhya, the Battle for India’s Soul: The Complete Story’ by Krishna Pokharel and Paul Beckett appeared in the Wall Steet Journal on 10^th December,2012. In that article, the authors succinctly observed :

‘Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, was greatly perturbed by an idol of Lord Ram being placed in a mosque…“I am disturbed at developments at Ayodhya,” Nehru said in a telegram on Dec. 26, 1949, to Govind Ballabh Pant, chief minister of United Provinces, which roughly included what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh. “Earnestly hope you will personally interest yourself in this matter. Dangerous example being set there which will have bad consequences.” The provincial government wanted the statue removed. K.K. Nayar, the district magistrate in Faizabad, who also oversaw Ayodhya, refused. He wrote to a provincial official that removing the idol was “fraught with the gravest danger to public peace” and would lead to a “conflagration of horror,” according to a copy of his correspondence……Nehru kept pushing. In early January, he wrote again to Mr. Pant. The chief minister called him soon after. Mr. Pant “intended taking action, but he wanted to get some well-known Hindus to explain the situation to people in Ayodhya first,” Nehru wrote in a separate letter to the governor-general of India dated Jan. 7, 1950. Weeks passed. The idol stayed. The discord in Ayodhya threatened Nehru’s desire for India to be a democracy in which all beliefs were equally respected. He also feared that it would have repercussions “on all-India affairs and more especially Kashmir,” the disputed territory between India and the newly-created Pakistan, he wrote to Mr. Pant on Feb. 5, 1950. Nehru added that he would be willing to make the 600-kilometer trip from Delhi to Ayodhya himself. But, he also noted, “I am terribly busy.” Nehru didn’t make the trip. By March, he was sounding defeated as local officials continued to balk at removing the idol. “This event occurred two or three months ago and I have been very gravely perturbed over it,” he wrote in a letter to K.G. Mashruwala, an associate of Mahatma Gandhi.’ The saviour of Nehru emerged as the saviour of the idol!

On 21^st May 1991, Rajiv was brutally assassinated in Sriperumbudur by Sri Lankan LTTE militants. And two hours before he took leave of the material world, his last letter to me was posted. And in that letter, he condoled the death of my father who had died on 24^th April 1991. The Babri Masjid was raised to the ground on 6^th December 1992. The rest is history!

Mr ANOOP BOSE is a senior advocate in the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, The views expressed are personal to the writer.