6th December 1992

He was nineteen years old, a joyful youth naive and indifferent to things out of his fort— academy. The teenager was a final year student in Darul Uloom Deoband, the largest nongovernmental Islamic seminary in the world. One afternoon he found his beautiful world suddenly engulfed by the pit darkness. Instead of enjoying football, his regular game, that day he was sitting alone on the roof of his two-story hostel building. Filled with anguish, he was looking towards the blue unknown, living in an imaginary India after that afternoon turmoil.

Fifteen years ago that afternoon was on December 6, 1992. The demolition of the Babri Masjid was a turning point in Hindu Muslim relations in the post independence Indian history. It was a moment when all truths about religious coexistence suddenly proved false.

Masjid, meaning the place where people prostrate before the Creator, is also referred to as the house of Allah. It occupies the heart of Muslim life and the centre of its settlement. The Qur'an says: "Certainly a Masjid founded on piety from the very first day is more deserving that you should stand in it…" (9:108)

With the phrase 'founded on piety' above the scholars of Qur'anic exegesis and Islamic jurisprudence enjoin that a Masjid can not be built on illegitimately owned land. Similarly Islamic Shariah (law) instructs that when a certain place is made a Masjid it can never change its status. The original land can never be replaced or sold out. It instead seizes to be a property of any individual or country and it becomes the house of Lord and His property — the property of all worshipers.

The earliest historic observation that the Babri Masjid is in proximity to the birthplace of lord Rama was made by Joseph Tieffenthaler, whose work in French was published in Paris in 1788. Joseph Tieffenthaler was an Austrian born Society of Jesus or 'Jesuit' priest and Missionary to India. He spent two years in Spain, where Muslims were in ruling earlier, before sailing for India in 1743. He first positioned in Goa and then was soon sent to be the Rector of the Jesuit High School in Agra.

Joseph Tieffenthaler startling revelation about Babri Masjid and Rama Temple raises every reason to doubt. Muslims and Christians had unsettled issues from Spain, to Central Asia to India. India the 'golden bird' was in the hands of Muslims then. A predominantly Hindu populace was religiously sensative same like their felllow countrymen—Muslims. Anything insulting to either religion, religious places or practices would surely devide them— and ultimately weaken the united strainght.

The Babar Nama or the autobiography of Babar supposed to be the higly valuable asset in the Babri Masjid dispute. The missing pages of the relivant period from Babar Nama makes the above case rather serious.

According to the District Gazetteer Faizabad 1905, it is said that "up to this time (1855), both the Hindus and Muslims used to worship in the same building. But since the Mutiny (first united war for freedom of India in 1857), an outer enclosure has been put up in front of the Masjid and the Hindus forbidden access to the inner yard, make the offerings on a platform (chabootra), which they have raised in the outer one." There onwards, I think, the actual clashes began between Hindus and Muslims which touched the peak on that fateful afternoon of December 92.

Recorded evidence shows that Mr. LK Advani led the religious caravan (rath yatra) in nineties across the country, which left behind a trail of anti-Muslims riots killing thousands of Muslims, burning and looting properties in many states. On December 6 Advani was sitting on a platform from where slogans like 'ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tod do' (give another push, demolish the Babri Mosque) were being raised… Thus the Hindutva forces—BJP, VHP, Bjrang Dal pulverized the five hundred year old historic Babri Masjid directing further violence at Muslims— killing, looting and raping women became like heroic deeds then.

It was not only a Babri Masjid but the symbolic inter-religious coexistence in India was also razed in to dust then. It was just a visible beginning of a new communal history in post-colonial India, followed by riots, Mumbai bomb blasts in 1992-93 and Gujarat carnage- 2002. Right wing Hindutva forces checked India's secular, democratic muscle in 6th December 1992 which unfortunately tested positive for them. They later campaigned for communal polarization of Hindus and Muslims which put them on throne from just two MPs in eighties in a house of 545 members in 1998.

Muslims in India remember December 6 as a black day. While the wounds were fresh, Indian Muslims observed the day each year remembering the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the ensuing violence. But the passage of time seems to turn December 6th into another forgotten day in history.

The nineteen years old youth in December 1992 after long fifteen years is now a so-called poet, a writer. He is still panicked, still imagines a peaceful, bombs-free India looking towards the same blue unknown sky from a narrow window towards the Arabian Sea in Mumbai. One of his close friends, Yunus Ali, was shot-dead by the UP police on December 7, 1992 before his naked eyes. Will Yunus' parents ever know the actual killer of their 18 year old son? If ever the justice will be done to the victims of riots in 1992-93? Will the Babri Masjid be rebuilt at its place as promised by then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao?