It was a temple, and will remain one: Kar sevaks recall role on fateful day
AYODHYA: Hajari Lal doesn’t remember the date of his birth but the day he helped tear down Babri Masjid is etched in his mind. The kar sevak (religious volunteer) climbed on to the central dome of the 16th century structure alongside hundreds of other men with a shovel, an iron rod and rope on the morning of December 6, 1992.
“I broke the structure with my own hands. Around 11.15am that day, someone hoisted a saffron flag atop the structure, and we broke loose. By 6pm, it was finished,” he says with a tinge of pride.
Lal says he is around 55 and spends his days in Ayodhya’s Karsevakpuram, the nerve centre of the temple movement that houses a prototype of the proposed Ram Mandir, set up in a mothballed pink room next to heaps of garbage, vials of organic medicines, glossy pamphlets and crumbling scaffolding. He is dressed in a soiled vest and his voice is frail, but quickly changes as we ask about Babri Masjid.
“Don’t call it a mosque, it is a structure. It was a temple, and will remain a temple,” he snarls. “It will be a two-storied temple with 212 pillars, Ram Lalla on the ground level and Ram and Sita on the first.”
Lal, a resident of Bathlaiya village in Shahjahanpur district, dropped out of college and travelled 300km to Ayodhya in 1990 — one of the thousands of young men in the Hindi belt who left their homes to converge for what they believed was a divine task. He is certain Muslims vandalised the Ram temple that legendary Hindu king Vikramaditya apparently built, but is confused sometimes whether Aurangzeb or Babar was the original plunderer.
Lal spent three months in hospital after December 6, nursing an injury he sustained buried under the debris. He went home for a week but returned to Ayodhya.
“My family was very angry. They locked me up in a room but I escaped. Ram temple hadn’t been built. How could I stay away?” Kar sevaks like Lal seethe with anger as they remember the day state police opened fire at them on orders of then CM Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1990. Sudhir Nag, like Lal, also survived the incident that killed 28 people but a .303 rifle bullet pierced his face and shattered the retina of his right eye. The 48-year-old nurses a scar, and is married with two children. On October 30, 1990, he says he fell unconscious. He regained consciousness on November 2, after emergency surgeries saved his life. “When I fell, I could faintly hear security personnel begin carrying away the dead bodies, including mine. But one of them saw one of my legs moving and said ‘Yeh zinda hai (he is alive).” He later spent six months at Lucknow’s King George Medical College and learnt his life was saved as the bullet had rebounded off a wall.
He rues that he couldn’t see the mosque demolition because some friends had locked him up. “Why should the judiciary meddle? All know that it is Ram Janmabhoomi. The structure was no mosque. I wish VHP gives a call for building the temple. And we will build it,” he said.
Marching as the same time as Nag from another part of town was Raghunandan Das, who was leading a troop of 100 men who were arrested and put on a bus around 8am that day. What happened next is now popular lore in Ayodhya. “We had barely moved a few metres when the driver, a Muslim, jumped off the bus and fled. We took control and I was at the wheel, smashing all barricades,” the 65-year-old said. They were stopped before the disputed site and clashes broke out. Minutes later, Das says bullets rained down on them, one hitting his ankle. Not everyone was as lucky.
Gayatri Pandey lost her husband in the firing and says she has had to bring up their four children on her own with much hardship. “Everyone thinks of Ayodhya but no one remembers us. Mulayam killed Hindus and got seats,” she says. She has filed cases against Yadav and has the backing of the VHP.
The movement evokes mixed reactions. Lal is convinced PM Narendra Modi was sent to build the temple. Pandey’s concern is the case. And Das is disillusioned. “There is no temple movement Litigants meet twice again for settling the dispute amicably, but fail