Delhi: Saba Khalid, a mother of two who recently started a small export business, recalled that her grandfather never missed the evening news on the national broadcaster Doordarshan, and no one was allowed to talk or make any noise when it came on. 

On 6 December 1992, Khalid was 10 years old when a newscaster announced the Babri Masjid had been demolished in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, just over 100 km east of their home in Lucknow. The hush that descended that day was not on account of avoiding her grandfather’s wrath but mortal fear. 

They were the only Muslim family in a Hindu neighbourhood, something they had never been conscious of before. Their grandfather said no one was to leave the house. They stayed inside for days, “quiet as mice”. 

“My daadi went into shock. I’m getting goosebumps as I’m telling you this. There was news of killings and trains being set on fire. We had never been scared for our lives before, but suddenly, we were terrified. I cannot describe this feeling to you,” said Khalid. 

“Thankfully, we were surrounded by Hindus who were not radical, but things changed that day,” she said. “For the first time, I felt us and them. We were alienated.”

As a child, Khalid did not understand the religious or political significance of the demolition of the 16th-century mosque, which the Hindu right said was built by a Muslim ruler on the spot where god Ram was born, or that it was the darkest phase for Hindu-Muslim relations since the Partition. 

Her only thought was, why were people killing each other over an old mosque? It was only as an adult that she began to understand that it was a “show of power by like-minded people of one religion to show their supremacy”.

“I realised it much later, but it took a huge hit on my psyche,” said Khalid. “It was an old monument. There was a responsibility to protect it, not demolish it. Not to use it for politics and divide people over religion. Is this justice? Is this what we should teach our children?”

More than 30 years later, a few days before she spoke with us last week, Khalid, who now lives in a mixed neighbourhood, said four men with saffron flags, blaring a song about building a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, came asking for donations (money she believes they use to buy alcohol at the local liquor shop). 

They also knocked on Khalid’s door despite a Quranic verse outside. The men went away when her husband asked them why they should donate. 

“There is this one song they keep playing over and over again, ‘Ram ko jo laye hai, hum unko layenge’. (Those who have brought Ram, we will bring them). I can’t remember the whole thing, but it had horrible lyrics,” said Khalid. “They have poisoned the minds of people, who have become like zombies who can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.”

The song says: “Jo Ram masjid ke pass daba bheta tha, oopar aa gaya hai, kaun lekar aaya?” (Ram was buried under a mosque. Who has brought him up?).

Khalid recalled she had heard the song before. It was on a train from Ajmer she took with her boys, aged 12 and 8. The young pantry boy repeatedly played it on his mobile phone. 

‘We Feel Hopeless & Cheated’

Days ahead of the inauguration, saffron flags with the image of Ram were being sold on the streets of Delhi, 700 km east of Ayodhya. Hindus in the national capital displayed saffron flags outside their homes, and flags appeared in public places within neighbourhoods and markets, including the famous Khan Market, named after Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan, a freedom fighter who, along with his younger brother, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, opposed the Partition of India on religious lines. The Hindu right seeks to rename the market to Shri Ram Market. 

Workers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mothership of the Hindu right, knocked on doors, distributed pamphlets and bumper stickers about the inauguration, urging people to organise prayer meetings at local temples, sing devotional songs, and chant the Ram mantra 108 times. The pamphlet said that people should set up private screenings of the event, which will be televised live, watch it together and light diyas or lamps in their homes in the evening. 

Amid the carnival-like mood ahead of the inauguration of the Ram Temple, where the Babri Masjid was demolished more than 30 years ago, we spoke to Indian Muslims about their memories of the demolition, how they felt about public euphoria, and their place in India 10 years after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, unleashing an unprecedented wave of Hindu majoritarianism and anti-Muslim radicalisation that, many said, had changed their country. 

The Indian Muslims we spoke with said that many among them had decided to lay low, stay indoors, and avoid travel during this time, fearing what the frenzied celebrations might unleash before and after the temple's inauguration. 

While they have learned to live with the fear and humiliation that has defined much of the past decade for them, Muslims said the indifference of their Hindu friends, the media, and the public to the fact that the temple was being built on the rubble of a mosque and the blood spilled in the ensuing violence had relegated them to sidelines of society. 

The government's intolerance towards criticism, they said, made it impossible for them to speak openly about their sadness, contributing to their dejection. 

“If you celebrate while someone else is in pain, something is broken in our society. We feel hopeless and cheated living in this country,” said Khalid. “We are not even treated like second-class citizens.”

“Journalism has gone for a toss. The judiciary is not untouched. There is no check and balance. Where should we turn? An injustice has happened, but where should we go for justice? There is no door left for us to knock on,” she said. “What can be worse? We don’t have an equal say. We don’t have freedom of expression. Where is democracy left?”

At The Altar Of Politics

Four years after the Supreme Court cleared the construction of the temple, and three years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid its foundation stone in a ceremony broadcast nationally, Modi will inaugurate the temple in a grand ceremony on 22 January, a few months before general election, even though it is only due to be completed by 2026. 

The Prime Minister, a member of Parliament from Varanasi, 200 km south of Ayodhya, where the Hindu right seeks to remove another ancient mosque, is on an 11-day fast, also widely covered by the media. 

About 2,000 were killed in the riots that followed the destruction of the mosque by Hindu fundamentalists. 

While handing the disputed land for the construction of the Ram Temple, five judges of the Supreme Court said the razing of the mosque by thousands of kar sevaks or Hindu volunteers violated its 1991 order for status quo at the disputed site and that its “obliteration” was a “calculated act” and “an egregious violation of the rule of law”. Neither the state government, under the BJP and then chief minister Kalyan Singh, nor the central government, under the Congress Party and Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, stopped the kar sevaks. 

A year after the Supreme Court verdict in September 2019 and 28 years after the demolition, a special court of the Central Bureau of Investigation acquitted four senior BJP leaders in the Babri demolition case. 

One of those acquitted was then BJP president L K Advani,  who embarked on a Ram rath yatra, a journey from Gujarat to UP in 1990, and who allegedly instigated the mob to raze the mosque in 1992. Now 96 years old and sidelined by Modi within the BJP, Advani will attend the inauguration.  

In 1991, the BJP came to power in UP with 221 seats, after winning only 13 seats in 1989, 16 in 1985, and 11 in 1980. In 1993, the BJP won the most seats (177), even though the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party formed a short-lived coalition government. 

In August 2022, the Supreme Court closed the contempt petition filed by Mohammad Alam Bhure against BJP leader Kalyan Singh, the chief minister of UP in 1992, after the Supreme Court’s order for status quo was violated. 

With Modi eclipsing the inauguration, UP chief minister and Hindutva headliner Yogi Adityanath is another leader to be sidelined. The Prime Minister, the head of government, a post that does not include performing religious rituals, will perform the consecration ceremony, erasing the lines of religion and State. 

Two of the four heads of the main Hindu mutts or temporal seats have objected to Modi performing the duties of a Hindu priest, saying it was a political show that violated Hindu scripture and practice, and that they would not attend. This has not diminished public euphoria. 

Weeks before the temple inauguration, Modi inaugurated a new international airport in Ayodhya. The crew of the Indigo airline dressed as Hindu deities on its first flight to Ayodhya from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Modi’s home state, where he served as chief minister for many years. 

The pilot on the flight from Delhi to Ayodhya signed off by saying, “Jai Shri Ram,” with passengers echoing the chant. 

‘We Must Accept That We Are Second-Class Citizens’

Ashma Izzat, a lawyer, was nine years old, living in Ghazipur, a city of 150,000 people, 250 km south of Ayodhya, was with her sister and mother when the mosque was demolished and news of the rioting reached them. 

They lived on the ground floor of a building enclosed by a small boundary wall. With their father living and working in Saudi Arabia, they quickly moved in with her uncle, who had a house on the first floor. 

“I remember my mother was very scared and trying to manage provisions. Women were talking about baiziti, the word they used for rape. I did not know what it meant then, but I understood that it was something that happened only to women,” said Izzat. “Women told us to leave because we had no man in the house.” 

“Those are all the memories I have,” she said. “And I remember people speaking of a kattar (hardline) politician.” That, she added, was Advani.

Like Khalid, it took a long time for Izzat to understand what had occurred on 6 December 1992. Now, it was not just the construction of the temple but the extensive celebrations around it, with the State’s full participation, which bothered her. 

Izzat’s family and other Muslim families she knew were afraid, and even though she was a lawyer who had fought human rights cases in the courts of UP, there was little she could say or do, which added to her frustration.

“People are telling us they will do puja at the temple. If there is no sensitivity left, what does it say about us as a society,” said Izzat. “At my home, people say don’t go out or on the public highways. Don’t look anyone in the eye or say anything. If they say Jai Shri Ram, turn around and say namaste. It is too painful and beyond tolerance, but we must accept that we are second-class citizens.”

“We can only vent at home to your family members and a few close friends of your community while keeping your electronic devices away,” said Izzat. “If you speak publicly, you risk going to jail or getting beaten up by people who will say you are speaking against Ram.”

Over the last few days, Izzat said that she had seen even so-called “neutral” journalists visit the temple and update their status on social media. 

Izzat said she was looking for an opportunity to leave the country, advising her younger brother to practice corporate law instead of criminal law, so they had more opportunities abroad. 

A recent study said 1.6 million Indians have renounced their Indian citizenship since 2011, including 225,620 in 2022 alone, averaging around 618 per day. The causes or the backgrounds of the people who gave up citizenship was not known. The Indian government said it was for personal reasons. 

“Every day, we talk about if we could get a job abroad, we would leave India. It is painful for me to say, but it is true,” she said. “Here, people celebrate that we have shown them (Muslims) their aukat (place), and they can do nothing.”

From Afar 

A*, an academic who lives and works abroad, decided against bringing his daughter to see his parents in India in January because of the frenzy around the inauguration. He decided to postpone his trip to February. 

“They felt there could be some kind of violence," A said requesting anonymity and mention of his home city in UP.. "Her grandparents don’t get to see her. But this kind of thinking and decisions are normal now. It has become a habit. And then you reflect on the situation, and it is kind of insane." 

An avid reader and news buff at age nine, A knew what happened when the Babri Masjid was demolished. When his family left home and hunkered down in a safe place as a curfew was imposed in his city, A spent his days reading books. 

He recalled that he did not feel bad about the mosque, but there was a sense of “destruction, impunity and the inequality of the experience”. 

“It was not just that there would be a riot, but the State machinery would be against us," said A. "There would be violence but unequal violence."

In school, A was asked why Muslims could not give up the mosque. He recalled classmates that Muslims were violent. In college, a student asked him whether it was true that Muslims did not brush their teeth. 

While they were listening to news about the religious violence in Gujarat violence in 2002, A recalled one student saying, “Maaron salon ko” (kill them). When someone nudged him and pointed to A, the student apologised. 

“He apologised and said he did not realise I was sitting there, which was absurd,” said A. “It was horrible to hear, but I never experienced anything from the faculty. I don’t know if that is still the case.” 

And then, in 2014, A said, “We were told to forget about what happened in Gujarat.” 

When we asked him what was the difference in the way Muslims were treated then and now, A said class played a role. Some among the police and the lower judiciary had always treated Muslims, especially poor Muslims, unequally. But if someone from the Hindu middle or upper middle class, such as an officer of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS), moved to the higher judiciary, there was no anticipation of unequal treatment, according to A. Now, he said, there was. 

On the “macabre celebrations” underway in the country, A said, “It is a celebration of historical victimhood, the obsession with majority victimhood because there was nothing else. There is no vision. Forget the 14% (the percentage of Indians who are Muslim), what is the vision for the 86%?”

As someone who has lived overseas for a long time, A said distance lent itself to constant anxiety and “survivors' guilt”, as loved ones went through traumatic experiences and were exposed to danger. As his daughter grew up, A said, he also worried about what to tell her about being an Indian Muslim. 

“It is important for me to share with her because it will help her understand who I am. I don't know what a good age is,” said A. “Hopefully, things will change for the better when she is older.” 

‘Unconstitutional & Cruel’

When we asked Parveen Talha how she felt about Doordarshan’s live coverage of the day that Modi laid the foundation stone of the temple in August 2020, the Padma Shri awardee said it wasn't very different from the exuberance the national broadcaster displayed when Congress leader and then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, opened the locks to the Babri Masjid in February 1986. 

Talha, the first Muslim woman to join the IAS in 1969, retiring as a member of the Union Public Service Commission, recalled the words of the telecast: “Aaj mandir ke darwaze khol diye gayen hain aur log bahut harsh aur ulaas ke saath puja kar rahen hain.” (The gates of the Babri Masjid have been opened, and people are praying with a lot of joy.)

On the day the kar sevaks reached Ayodhya in October 1990, even after former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav stopped Advani’s rath yatra in that neighbouring state, Talha came home to find four ladoos  or sweets sent by a neighbour. She never found out who sent them.

On the day of the demolition, Talha said she was at a "lavish lunch" hosted by a Muslim maharaja, when it was crashed by two Hindu maharajas who announced: “Poori tarah gira diya (It has been destroyed)"

“Still, the enormity did not hit me. I was not so politically conscious or religiously aware at the time,” said Talha. “But after the killings in Bombay, that was when the sadness entered, and I could start seeing that the road ahead for us was not a very happy one.”  

“There was a celebration back then, but it was still muted, but now it is all out in the open. People will come and tell you, ‘It is so close to Lucknow, come and look. It is so glorious,’” said Talha. “Nothing can be more anti-constitutional than this. Nothing can be more cruel than this.” 

Talha said that she had “coolly crossed” the age where she could have suffered because of her religious identity and did not, but she had never witnessed anything like the change over the past decade. 

“I have to speak after thinking twice in front of my best friend from childhood,” said Talha. “Everyone has changed. My friends, my batchmates. You should see what goes on in the WhatsApp groups. Nothing ever favourable.” 

“You can't speak out. If you speak out, you are anti-national. If you don't like it, go to Pakistan,” said Talha. “If you want to live here, you must live like Hindus.”

And Now

Khalid, too, fell out with a close friend. She went off social media after being spammed with porn and abuse for writing critically about the government and pushing back against majoritarian sentiment. 

“How can you be friends with people who won’t speak out against the injustice that is happening to you, who won’t support you when you share your pain,” said Khalid. “I’ve given up posting anything because I don’t want to destroy my mental health. I have to take care of my family.”

Like Izzat, Khalid said she wanted to leave the country to protect her two boys. Like A, she wondered how to explain the hate and prejudice Indian Muslims faced. 

Khalid had not told them about the Babri Masjid because they were young, and she wanted them not to have any fear or anger in their hearts. But, the outside world seeped in. 

Almost every function in their school was religious now, usually a celebration of Hindu gods, such as Radha, Krishna and Ram. 

“All the time, it is religion, religion, religion. This is mentally sick. There has to be some kind of cut-off. Give us a break,” said Khalid. “There are other things: Scottish dance, environment, saving water, plastics.” 

Two years ago, Khalid’s 12-year-old son’s classmate told him that his parents had asked him to make friends only with Hindus. Her eight-year-old son’s classmate said to him that she was a Hindu and he was a Muslim, and they were enemies. 

Khalid said she called his teacher, who was initially defensive. Eventually, the matter was raised with the girl, who apologised even as her mother said she did not know where her daughter had learned such a thing. 

“I don’t want my children to face hate in this country. I want them to know the victory of good over evil. I want them to witness that. I want them to enjoy their childhood like we did,” said Khalid. “I have hope, but it won’t last forever.”

(Betwa Sharma is the managing editor of Article 14.) 

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