Midnight's Descendants

by John Keay

  The televised news footage had been showing scenes that did indeed recall the Great Partition. In the space of a week (6–13 December 1992), at least 1,200 Indian citizens had been horribly slaughtered by their fellow countrymen. As many again were now dying in Hindu–Muslim battles in Mumbai and elsewhere. Tens of thousands had lost their homes; girls were being raped and babies butchered. Advani and the other leaders in the Sangh Parivar were not directly involved. They were anyway in gaol, and the UP government had been dismissed. But it was all too little too late. As in 1947, the pogroms had acquired a momentum of their own. ‘Like the three domes that crowned the 464-year-old Babri mosque,’ ran an apocalyptic piece in Time magazine, ‘the three pillars of the Indian state – democracy, secularism and the rule of law – are now at risk from the fury of religious nationalism.’13 In short, Ayodhya had finally erupted. Though democracy and the rule of law would eventually prove robust enough, India’s cherished reputation for religious neutrality lay strewn among the ruins of Babur’s mosque.

  The decisive factor had been the victory of the BJP in the 1991 state elections in UP. State governments had extensive powers within their own borders, and could exercise considerable discretion in implementing directives from Delhi. With the new BJP government in UP committed to the Sangh Parivar’s policies on promoting Hindutva (‘Hindu-ness), the opportunity of pressing ahead with the Ayodhya temple had seemed too good to miss. On the other hand, state governments were also responsible for law and order, and could be dismissed for not enforcing them. The BJP government in the state capital of Lucknow had therefore to tread carefully. Hot-heads who saw Ayodhya as just the prelude to reclaiming sites in Mathura and Varanasi, both also in UP and both with mosques built on what may have been temple foundations, were brushed aside. In power, a government had to act responsibly. Even in the case of Ayodhya, legal sanction was desirable, failing which any impromptu action must not be seen as directly attributable to the government.

  This official ambivalence in Lucknow had partially reassured Narasimha Rao’s government in New Delhi. But it antagonised gung-ho members of the Sangh Parivar and brought a challenge from the VHP. To revive the momentum of the rath yatra, the VHP had declared 6 December 1992 to be the astrologically ordained day for recommencing construction of the Ram Mandir.

  Once again thousands of volunteers (kar sevaks) immediately headed for Ayodhya. Far from being stopped, this time they were fed and welcomed by the state government. Advani set off to join them. He left Delhi, where he was now leader of the parliamentary opposition, with an ominous ‘All I know is that we are going to perform kar seva.’14 Literally the term meant ‘work-service’, but figuratively something more like ‘physical labour’. As a precaution the Rao government ordered out 20,000 paramilitaries. But the number of kar sevaks now in the vicinity of Ayodhya was put at over 100,000. Some had brought along archaic tridents and bows and arrows, the accoutrements of the Hindu heroes on television; others had obtained access to pickaxes, sledgehammers and crowbars.

  If, as they claimed, the BJP leaders were unaware that the kar sevaks intended to demolish the mosque, on the night of 5 December they appear to have been alerted. At a top-level meeting in Lucknow, plans were concerted and objections overcome. From there Atul Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP’s political supremo, headed straight for Delhi, while Advani drove through the night to Ayodhya. ‘Something wasn’t as they had expected,’ noted Prashant Panjiar. A photographer working for India Today, Panjiar wondered whether Advani was in control of the situation. The BJP leader had even mistaken Panjiar for a member of his own press corps, and he now gave him a ride to Ayodhya.15

  Next morning the Sangh’s leaders, plus Panjiar, assembled on an illegally erected dais to watch the dedication ceremonies (pujas) for the new temple.

  Advani and Seshadri [of the RSS] looked nervous. The pujas began; so did the speeches. At around 11.30 some kar sevaks started climbing the domes [of the mosque] … Through the [camera] lens I could see men with iron rods … There was laughter on the stage. Suddenly a larger group appeared on top of the dome and it looked like the beginnings of a serious attack.16

  Advani now evinced – or possibly feigned – a look of horror. His companions ignored his protests and egged on the demolition squads. One by one the domes of the mosque crashed to the floor.

  A cloud of dust rose to fill the air. The sight of [the last] dome, tilted in mid-air, about to fall, remains a striking image. There was complete jubilation on the stage. Soon I saw the city’s horizon pierced with spirals of smoke. An acharya said into the mike, ‘Look at these Muslims. They are burning their own homes to malign us.’ The kar sevaks went berserk. The killing began. The sky was all on fire.17

  Muslims in Ayodhya, and then across India, vented their anger by attacking Hindus, but they were just as often attacked, and surely never resorted to self-inflicted incendiarism. Meanwhile the police stood by, and the state government signally failed to authorise the intervention of the waiting troops. In the weeks and months of communal killings, burnings and bombings that followed, this pattern would be repeated; and of the many thousands who died, often unspeakably, the majority were Muslims. Later, isolated Christian communities and missionaries would be picked off by elements of the Sangh Parivar; but it was against the 10 per cent of all Indians who adhered to Islam that the Sangh directed its venom.

  Nor was this venom easily contained or assuaged. In January 1993, at the height of the Ayodhya ‘riots’, Indian troops in Kashmir launched ‘the largest reprisal attack by the security forces’ in the whole ongoing insurgency there. The town of Sopore was set alight by members of the Border Security Force, who then allegedly ‘prevented fire fighters from putting out the blaze’.18 Around fifty civilians, all Muslims, were burned to death in their homes. In the preceding years virtually all of Kashmir’s Hindu community had fled the Valley following targeted attacks of the utmost ferocity by the Pakistan-backed Hizbul Mujahidin. The Sangh Parivar had rushed to condemn this ‘Islamic terrorism’, and may in fact have encouraged the exodus for its own purposes. Kashmir’s agony was being compounded by the Hindu–Muslim hostility generated by Ayodhya.

  And so it went on. In 2001, thirty-eight people died when the state assembly building in Srinagar was attacked. In December of the same year the Parliament building in New Delhi was stormed. The latter assault was as surprising as it was murky. Just the day before, the Prime Minister himself had warned that Parliament might be attacked. Yet a group of armed men dressed in military fatigues – there were either four, five or six of them – were able to drive unchecked through the gates in a white Ambassador car packed with explosives and attempt ‘what looked like an astonishingly incompetent terrorist strike’.19 Most of the explosives were never detonated, and the assailants all perished in a firefight with the police. The government blamed the usual suspects: the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohamed. But apart from a confession to that effect by Mohamed Afzal, a one-time terrorist who had turned counter-intelligence informant, the evidence was circumstantial. Afzal’s statement would anyway be rejected by the Supreme Court. His involvement in organising the attack was not disputed, but it remained far from clear on whose behalf he acted, and whether or not he had done so under compulsion. In 2013, when he was finally hanged after twelve years on death row, these questions remained unanswered.

  A year after the 2001 attacks, flames tore through a railway carriage near Godhra in Gujarat. It was full of kar sevaks returning to their home state after yet more dedication rituals for the still unbuilt Ramjanmabhoomi temple. Fifty-eight died, all of them Hindus. Though the cause of the fire was uncertain, the blame for it readily attached to some Muslim platform vendors at Godhra station who had been reviled by the kar sevaks.

  In retaliation for this train burning, Hindu mobs ran riot throughout Gujarat. For days the two main cities of Ahmedabad and Vadodara (Baroda) witnessed scenes of destruction and carnage ‘unprecedented in their savagery’. ‘More than 2,
000 Muslims were killed and at least fifty times that number rendered homeless.’20 The police and even some Ministers in the state government – it was another BJP government, led in this case by Narendra Modi, another former RSS commander – were accused of failing to protect the victims, and even of colluding with the perpetrators. Modi was unmoved. He would never admit any responsibility or express any regret. Actions brought against the officials responsible got nowhere; Gujarat continued as a BJP stronghold.

  Six years on, in a state room of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay/Mumbai, one of several bandana-ed gunmen was asked by one of his hostages why he wanted to kill them. According to the filmed testimony of a survivor, ‘He replied, “Have you not heard of Babri Masjid? Have you not heard of Vadodara?” Then he opened fire.’21 This 2008 commando-style attack on several of Bombay’s landmarks claimed 164 lives, and was watched live on television across the world. It followed a 2006 bombing of the city’s suburban railway that claimed around two hundred lives. Both attacks were attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the several militant Islamic organisations based in Pakistan, all of them subject to frequent name changes and all with close links to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Islamic zealotry, however divisive within Pakistan itself, became Islamic solidarity when it straddled borders. Every Hindu assault on Muslims, whether in Kashmir, Assam, Ayodhya or Mumbai, inflamed opinion in both Bangladesh and Pakistan, and swelled the ranks of the jihadist Lashkars.

  After the Ayodhya massacres of 1992–93, as after those in Gujarat of 2002, the need in India was for rehabilitation and trust-building initiatives. Some voluntary bodies rose to the challenge but there was no official ‘truth and reconciliation’ programme. Many Indian Muslim communities continued to live in fear for their livelihoods and lives; many Hindus, when pressed, evinced either indifference to the Muslims’ plight or a quiet sense of satisfaction. The baleful catalogue of transnational atrocities by militant Islamic terror groups in the Middle East, East Africa, Afghanistan and the West merely reinforced such attitudes.

  As for the Sangh Parivar, far from being disgraced by Ayodhya and its aftermath, its saffron star shone more brightly than ever. Four years later, in the general election of 1996, the BJP increased its tally of seats yet again. With 161 MPs to Congress’s 140, it was now the largest party in the Lok Sabha, and duly set about forming a national government. It proved a false start. Atul Behari Vajpayee’s first tenure as Prime Minister lasted just a fortnight, after which a Congress-backed coalition took over for the rest of 1996, and was followed by another in 1997. Still inching its way to power, in the elections called for 1998 the BJP hit back by taking 183 seats. It now formed a new ruling coalition, ‘the National Democratic Alliance’. This NDA increased its tally further in 1999. The BJP would remain in power for the next five years.

  ‘It appears,’ bemoaned the pro-Congress authors of an end-of-century account of India After Independence, ‘that the millennium will be ushered in by a government led by a party that for years seemed to be more interested in reviving and avenging the past than in heralding the future; … the indomitable Indian people deserve better.’22 Others put it more bluntly. One scholar drew parallels with Germany in the 1930s: the Sangh Parivar was orchestrating ‘a multiplicity of localised Kristallnachts’ prior to a quasi-fascist takeover.23 Another analyst foresaw an exodus of persecuted Muslims to Pakistan and of disaffected Hindus to the US. The former never materialised; and the exodus of mainly Hindu Indians to the US had more to do with career advancement than with dodging bigotry. Many headed for Silicon Valley, among them both supporters and opponents of the Sangh.

  The fact was that in the late 1990s the BJP was the party that ‘the indomitable Indian people’ did deserve. It best articulated the national mood, and it therefore attracted the most votes. Rao’s Congress government had turned the economy around; but it was the BJP’s promise to make India a ‘great power’ that resonated with the nation.

  To this end, within a few weeks of assuming office, the government of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance ordered a Richter-scale explosion in the Rajasthan desert. Known as Pokharan II (Pokharan I being Mrs Gandhi’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear test of 1974), it announced in unambiguous terms that India was now a member of the nuclear-armed fraternity. Three devices had been detonated, a temperature about that of the sun had been generated and an area the size of a football pitch had been gouged out of the desert. Anti-proliferationists, headed by the US and including most of the international community, were aghast. As one, they condemned the test in the strongest possible terms and imposed debilitating sanctions.

  In India the response was equally unconstrained. Thousands celebrated in the streets. One paper called the test an ‘Explosion of Self Esteem’, another a ‘Moment of Pride’. Congress being the party responsible for the bomb’s development, it too jumped aboard the bandwagon; so did most of the other opposition parties. The BJP government called for a programme of national celebrations, and the VHP promised to build a new temple at the test site; by way of preparation, its followers were invited to scoop up handfuls of sand from the vicinity and have them blessed for nationwide distribution. Acquiring the ability to incinerate millions seemed to count as a greater national triumph than conquering Everest, winning a Test match or doubling the growth rate.

  In testing its ‘bomb’, India was giving notice not just to old enemies like Pakistan and China but to the US. Without formally committing itself to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it now angled for recognition of its ‘great power’ status in the form of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and, once the sanctions and the sniping had subsided, a closer relationship with the world’s one remaining superpower. This looked a tall order, especially for a government headed by ‘sectarian chauvinists’ with neo-Nazi supporters. Yet it turned out quite otherwise. Circumstances would play into India’s hands; and the BJP, once in power, would prove a lot more pragmatic and conciliatory than either its critics or its supporters had expected.

  The chances of India reaping a reward for flouting international conventions became somewhat less improbable within a matter of weeks. For in May 1998 Pakistan responded to Pokharan II by test-firing its own nuclear deterrent in the Balochistan desert. India consoled itself by claiming that this ‘Islamic bomb’ vindicated the apprehensions that had prompted its own test; Pakistan, amidst more delirious celebrations, claimed that the threat of the ‘Hindu bomb’ had been neutralised and a parity of sorts restored. Intense US pressure, sweetened in this case with offers of conventional weaponry, debt write-offs and new borrowing, had failed to dissuade Nawaz Sharif’s administration from going ahead with the test. Washington, though mortified, was not surprised. Once India had publicly gone nuclear, it was ‘a certainty’ that Pakistan would follow suit.24

  More worrying were the circumstances surrounding the Pakistan tests. (Both countries had immediately followed their first tests with a second.) Unlike the Rajasthan tests, those in Balochistan had supposedly been prompted by reports of an imminent attack. A strike-force of Indian and Israeli aircraft was said to be preparing to enter Pakistan air space, its mission being a pre-emptive bombing of Dr Khan’s nuclear research facility at Kahuta and of the Balochistan test site. This story was almost certainly a fabrication; the Israelis had been implicated simply because they had once dealt in similar fashion with a nuclear facility in Baghdad. But it raised the question of who had concocted the story and why. A likely answer was that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had dreamt it up in order to persuade Nawaz Sharif and reluctant elements in the military of the necessity of an immediate response. But if the bomb could be tested on such spurious grounds, many outside Pakistan worried that it might be delivered on spurious grounds. They wondered who precisely was in control of ‘Bhutto’s Bomb’ in a now ‘military democracy’, and what safeguards were in place to protect it from dissident attack or unauthorised use.

  Concerns about an incidental armage
ddon were matched by those about an accidental armageddon. In early December 1984, soon after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, a greater tragedy than the subsequent Sikh massacres in Delhi had struck the Madhya Pradesh capital of Bhopal. Following an escape of highly toxic gas from Union Carbide’s ill-maintained and possibly sabotaged pesticide plant, Bhopal city had awoken to scenes of human devastation not witnessed since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eight thousand either lay dead or would die within the first seventy-two hours. As many as another 12,000 would later succumb to the effects of contamination. ‘Miscarriages, abnormal births and deformed babies would continue down the generations. It was – and still is – the worst industrial accident ever recorded.’25 Thirty years later, responsibility for the leakage was still being disputed and the survivors were still seeking justice.

  Pakistan suffered something similar in April 1988. At a place called Ojhri an underground arsenal in which US ordnance was being stored prior to shipment to Afghanistan exploded. As the bombs blew up, as the missiles rained down and the fires raged out of control, residents in the nearby cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi supposed they were under attack, presumably by India. Hundreds were killed, thousands wounded. Like General Ziaul Haq’s death in an air crash four months later, it could have been an accident or it could have been sabotage. Either way, Bhopal and then Ojhri had raised serious questions about the competence of South Asian governments in ensuring the security, supervision and regulation of volatile technologies, whether conventional or nuclear.