Five arrested for enacting Babri demolition in school

But what has come as an embarrassment for the ruling BJP in Karnataka is that the event was attended by Kiran Bedi, the Governor of Puducherry, and Union Minister Sadananda Gowda.

Cases have been booked against five people today under charges of hurting religious sentiments for motivating children to enact the demolition of the Babri Masjid in a school run by RSS strongman Kallada Prabhakar Bhat in Mangaluru in coastal Karnataka.

Cases have been booked against Bhat, the school principal and three teachers.

The children of the school were made to perform a chain of events, leading to the Supreme Court verdict allowing Hindus to construct the Ram temple at controversial the Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya.

But what has come as an embarrassment for the ruling BJP in Karnataka is that the event was attended by Kiran Bedi, the Governor of Puducherry, and Union Minister Sadananda Gowda.

Bedi tweeted pictures of the event in general, but did not include the demolition part. The enactment of the demolition of the masjid was part of the annual sports festival called Kreedotsava of Sri Rama Vidhya Kendra and was held on Sunday night.

The event went almost unnoticed till two videos of the demolition surfaced on the social media. The two videos showed children of the school, dressed in saffron dhotis, rushing in a frenzy towards a flex printed with Babri Masjid and demolishing it even as children of other classes cheered on.

As the event began, there was a running commentary explaining the demolition, even as other children who ware spectators chanted Jai Sri Rama and waved saffron flags.

While RSS has distanced itself from the event, Prabhakar Bhat justified it saying by “demolition the of the building, I refer to the structure as building and not mosque. It was a historic event for the Hindu community. In the annual Kreedotsava, we displayed all the historic events like Mangalayan, Chandrayana earlier, and this time, after the apex court allowed construction of shrine, we decided to put an act on the same.”

He further justified the enactment saying “children should know the history of Hindus and this performance will make them more nationalistic in nature”.

“The mosque was built on the temple devouring the sentiments of Hindus and we corrected the history finally. This needs to be told to our children. Hindus are not eunuchs to sit silent and face insults from others,” he said.

The enactment was not against Muslims, as RSS has nothing against Islam. They can live here, worship their god, but should not hurt sentiments of Hindus, he added.

But he was not clear if the event glorified the event or was a mere enactment of what happened.