HVK Archives: From the party president
From the party president - BJP Today
L.K. Advani
()
16-30 September 1997
Title: From the party president
Author: L.K. Advani
Publication: BJP Today
Date: September 16-30, 1997
Dear friend.
A major development last week is the decision of the Special CBI Court of
Lucknow to have charges framed against a host of BJP, VHP and Shiv Sena
leaders in respect of the Ayodhya happenings on December 61 1992.
So far as the legal aspects of the Court orders are concerned, it would be
the legal counsel of the accused who would be dealing with it. The people
in general would be concerned principally with the political fall-out of
the development.
The Ayodhya issue which gradually was slipping into the background of
public debate has been catapulted to the foreground once again-thanks to
the CBI. This cannot but help our cause. No wonder, our adversaries are
chary of tomtomming the verdict. Congressmen have been advised by their
leaders to maintain a low-profile on the issue.
The C.B.I's case in the Ayodhya matter appears to be that whosoever has
publicly favoured that the disputed structure at Ayodhya should be replaced
by a Rama Temple is prima facie, a party to the conspiracy to pull down the
structure raised by Babar!
It is worth recalling that when eminent historian Arnold Toynbee visited
India in the fifties, he expressed surprise that the Government of India
had allowed several "intentionally offensive" monuments raised by Moghul
and British rulers to remain even after independence! While delivering the
Azad Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, Toynbee observed:
"In the course of the first Russian occupation of Warsaw (1614-1915) the
Russians had built an Eastern Orthodox Christian Cathedral on this central
spot in the city that had been the capital of the once independent Roman
Catholic Christian country, Poland. The Russians had done this to give the
Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were now their
masters. After the re-establishment of Poland's independence in 1918, the
Poles had pulled this cathedral down. I do not greatly blame the Polish
Government for having pulled down that Russian Church. The purpose for
which the Russians had built It had been not religious but political, and
the purpose, had also been intentionally offensive."
The mosque Babar built at Ayodhya (but which was abandoned by Ayodhya
Muslims in 1936) was without doubt "a continuous ocular demonstration"
against the Hindus. Babar's purpose was "political and not religious."
That the ocular provocation is no longer there is not a matter of regret.
If Toynbee had been alive today, he too, like V.S. Naipaul and Nirad
Chaudhari, would have justified the demolition of this structure. What is,
however, regretted is the manner in which this happened. If any one is
squarely responsible for the actual course of events, it is the Narasimha
Rao Government.
Yours sincerely,
L.K. Advani
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