Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

  The difference lay in his idea of secularism. As Haidar puts it, ‘He was well aware of India’s communality.’47 Unlike the westernized Jawaharlal Nehru, Rao did not see India as a nation of individuals but as a federation of caste and religious groups.

  Rao’s Hindu self-identity also led him to a naïve portrait of the BJP. Rao had to fend off communists through his electoral career, never Hindu nationalists. On the other hand, Rao’s rival within the Congress, Arjun Singh, had battled with (and lost to) the BJP in his home state of Madhya Pradesh. In his memoirs, Arjun Singh recalls lying in a hospital bed in Bhopal when he heard Advani’s rath yatra pass by, its menacing slogans adding to his sense of siege.48 Rao had never had this experience; he thought of the BJP as misguided Hindus rather than dangerous adversaries.

  Rao was also blinded by personal chemistry. He was close to several BJP leaders, from Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, to Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. The one leader Rao did not care for was L.K. Advani, at the time the BJP’s most prominent voice. Advani had fled Sindh in Pakistan during the partition of India. Unlike Rao, Advani was not a practising Hindu. As humourless as Vajpayee was jovial, he was also more disciplined. Advani’s organizational skills were almost solely responsible for the rapid rise of the BJP.

  For Narasimha Rao, this rise represented less a visceral threat to secularism than a threat to the Hindu vote bank that had historically voted for the Congress. While he was worried that Muslims were leaving the Congress, he was equally concerned that the majority—upper- and backward-caste Hindus—were moving towards the BJP. ‘If only minorities vote for the Congress, how can we win?’ Rao said to a friend. In his book on Ayodhya, Rao blames Congressmen for a ‘subconscious inhibition that any expression of [Hindu] religious sentiment on our part, even if we felt it strongly, would be seen as “non-secular”. As a result, the BJP became the sole repository and protector of the Hindu religion in the public mind.’49

  ‘You have to understand,’ he once told an unconvinced Mani Shankar Aiyar, ‘this is a Hindu country.’50

  This belief in India’s Hindu-ness as well as his own led Rao to his master stroke (or so, he thought) in protecting the mosque without imposing Central rule.

  As Indira and Rajiv’s chief negotiator with various dissident and separatist groups in the 1980s, Rao had specialized in backchannel talks, where pragmatic deals could be made away from the public glare. Starting in the middle of November 1992, prime minister Rao began similar backchannel talks with various Hindu groups, convincing them to protect the Babri mosque.

  While these groups had a somewhat common agenda, they were distinct organizations with their own leaders. The BJP was the political face, while the RSS was a nominally apolitical organization, as were the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. The Shiv Sena was an entirely separate political party. Besides, a profusion of religious sects and monasteries each had their own leaders. Narasimha Rao—scholar of Hinduism—was confident he could convince them all.

  Rao had personal relations with a number of swamis, from the Sringeri Shankaracharya to the Pejawar Swami. In addition, he deployed the Tamil Nadu Congressman R. Kumaramangalam to reach out to gurus from south India,51 while his astrologers N.K. Sharma and Chandraswami dealt with north Indian godmen. Rao’s appointment diary shows that he frequently met with N.K. Sharma, for example at 9.30 a.m. on 2 November and 8.45 p.m. on 16 November.52 Chandraswami remembers meeting Rao many times that November. ‘I took the Shankaracharya to meet the PM . . . also Acharya Ram Vilas Vedanti.’53

  In each of these meetings, Rao would press for an assurance that the Babri mosque would be unharmed. He would even break into Sanskrit and quote Hindu scriptures to make his point. A senior intelligence bureau official assisting Rao remembers being present. ‘They were frauds, some of them,’ he says. ‘I told the PM that these are men of straw.’

  ‘I am a Brahmin,’ Rao replied to this official. ‘I know how to deal with these people.’

  Since Rao had studied in Nagpur, knew Marathi, and had represented nearby Ramtek in Parliament, he knew many RSS leaders. N.K. Sharma says, ‘Most of the RSS leaders were Brahmins. They respected Rao who was also a Brahmin.’54 Rao’s old friend Madhukar Dattatraya ‘Balasaheb’ Deoras, was the head of the RSS. Rao spoke to him on the phone many times that November. He also met with the RSS leader (and Deoras’s eventual successor) Rajendra Singh. Singh, known as ‘Rajju bhaiya’, was less in the thrall of the prime minister. N.K. Sharma says, ‘Rajju bhaiya was a Thakur, so he was against Narasimha Rao.’55

  Rao also negotiated in secret with the VHP, whose messianic leader Ashok Singhal was an architect of the Ayodhya movement. Singhal came from a wealthy family of Allahabad, and lived close to Jawaharlal Nehru’s ancestral home. Their ideas of India, however, could not have been more different. Naresh Chandra recalls a meeting in 7 Race Course Road where Rao pressed Ashok Singhal to have more patience and not insist upon a showdown on 6 December. When Rao asked the BJP leader Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to speak to the VHP, Shekhawat confessed to Naresh Chandra that his efforts were not having much effect.56

  Finally, Rao spent much of November 1992 in secret meetings with the leadership of the BJP. Since Rao’s friend Vajpayee was less involved in the Ayodhya movement, Rao focused his attention on L.K. Advani—the party’s organisation man. If anyone in the BJP could protect the mosque, Rao felt, it was Advani. He asked B. Raman, from the spy agency RAW, for a ‘safe house’ where he could meet Advani in secret.57 Raman located a guest house that had been used by Rajiv Gandhi to meet the leadership of the Akali Dal right before Operation Blue Star in 1984.

  On 18 November 1992, Rao met Advani for a secret conversation. In preparation for the meeting, the home ministry sent him a memo, asking Rao to clarify with Advani the ‘plans for the resumption of Kar Seva at Ayodhya from 6.12.1992’. The memo asked that the BJP postpone either the kar seva until the Supreme Court resolved the feud, or issue a public statement saying that the proposed temple would not be built on the disputed land. Rao also met with Kalyan Singh that day, and once again the day after, on 19 November.58 A week later, he met the entire BJP leadership at one go. P.V.R.K. Prasad remembers, ‘Around November 25th, Advani, Vajpayee and Kalyan Singh visited house number five on Race Course Road. The meeting was top secret. I was in the room then. They assured him the mosque would be intact.’59

  In parallel, the prime minister sought reassurance from Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the chief minister of Rajasthan who had been representing the BJP during the negotiations with Muslim groups.60 A courtly and courteous Rajput, Shekhawat prided himself as a man of his word. Rao and Shekhawat shared a medical doctor. On 2 December, this doctor walked into Rao’s home and—within earshot of several others—said, ‘Shekhawat sahib se baat ho gayi hai. All is good.’ Chandraswami too spoke with Shekhawat. ‘He said nothing will happen to the mosque. Narasimha Rao believed him. Even I believed that the mosque will not be broken.’61

  The contents of Rao’s meetings—with a constellation of religious and political Hindu leaders —have remained undisclosed until now. They are not recorded in Rao’s appointment diary. He did not even mention them in his book on Ayodhya, published after his death. However, the fact that at least some meetings between the prime minister and Hindu groups occurred in November 1992 has made it to the press. They have been interpreted as proof that Rao had, what the legal scholar A.G. Noorani calls, a tacit ‘understanding’ with the BJP.62 The truth, unearthed here, reveals the opposite. Far from secretly conniving to demolish the mosque, Rao was, in fact, secretly conniving to protect it.

  They also demonstrate his miscalculation. ‘All these people who were consulted had a heightened sense of their importance. Rao misjudged that,’ Naresh Chandra says.63 ‘The people who were really creating the problem were the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena,’ a home ministry official adds. But these were the two groups that Rao did not reach out to, in the belief that they could be controlled by his friends in the BJP, RSS and to
a lesser extent, the VHP. As Jairam Ramesh puts it, ‘My own reading is that he overestimated his ability in dealing with these Hindu groups.’64

  The 24 November deadline before which Central rule in UP could be imposed without damaging the mosque came and went. In the meantime, the crowd around the mosque had increased, from 500 on 25 November 1992 to 175,000 on 30 November and over two lakh by 5 December.65 An army takeover at this point, in the midst of a hostile state government and crowd, would threaten human life as well as the mosque. The prime minister’s options had severely reduced.

  The sea of saffron-coloured humanity pouring into Ayodhya raised temperatures across the country. Though there was no violence as yet, mistrust between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh began deepening. The UP Brahmin leader N.D. Tiwari told the young Muslim MP Salman Khurshid, ‘You can’t imagine somebody you could trust even months ago, ordinary Congressmen, now you can’t trust them.’66 When Salman Khurshid landed in Lucknow airport in early December, he remembers sensing helplessness. ‘We were worried about communal violence.’67

  In early December, a few days before 6 December, Arjun Singh travelled to Uttar Pradesh. He met with Kalyan Singh in Lucknow, and spoke on the phone to Rao describing the meeting. Arjun Singh says that Rao ordered him not to proceed to Ayodhya, which is why he returned to Delhi.68 A senior Congressman from UP presents a different version. ‘Arjun Singh didn’t even want to go to Ayodhya. All he did when he met Kalyan Singh was to ask for security for a favourite [Muslim] politician of his from UP. He did not talk about Babri at all.’

  On 3 December 1992, three days to go, Rao phoned Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had taken a sturdy stance on secularism. Rao sounded upset, telling Aiyar, ‘I’ve tried everything.’ Aiyar replied, ‘At this stage, let us please fly in all of Parliament into Faizabad airfield, hold a day-long public rally. Have this shown on television.’ Rao suggested that Aiyar draft a speech. ‘I gave it to him that day itself,’ Aiyar says. ‘He did not use it.’69

  Around 4 December, two days to go, Rao wrote a little note to himself on the pros and cons of imposing President’s rule. This was a clarification of his thoughts to his own self, and has remained untouched in his private archives since. The note, written in red ink and his small, neat script, is titled, ‘reasons for and against trusting the government of uttar pradesh’.

  In reasons for trusting, Rao wrote on the left column, ‘CM gives assurance to NIC and SC’ and ‘Statements of local VHP leaders that kar seva will only be symbolic’.

  In reasons against trusting Kalyan Singh, on the right column in the page, Rao put down, ‘Kalyan Singh has consistently shown its disinclination to use force against religious leaders and kar sevaks’, ‘In his letter on november 17th, 1992, Kalyan Singh rejected central supervision over security forces’, ‘Intelligence report [that] mentioned, in passing, and using unconfirmed reports, that “balidani jathhas” were present in Ayodhya who were trained for the demolition of the structure’, and ‘Contra to state government assurance, MM Joshi and Advani increasing mobilisation for december 6th’.70

  Narasimha Rao must have spent the day considering his note, then reconsidering it. On 5 December 1992, his schedule shows he had a normal day. He met with N.K. Sharma at 10 a.m. ‘I had some information that the mosque might fall,’ Sharma claims. ‘I told the prime minister about threats to the mosque, and also the games that Arjun Singh was playing. I was keeping tabs on him.’71 That evening, Rao met a close friend of his. The friend says, ‘He talked about [Operation] Blue Star [when Indira Gandhi sent troops into the Golden Temple], saying that sending army into [a] religious place only made more problems.’ The prime minister seemed withdrawn, the friend adds. At 7.30 p.m., Rao’s diary shows that he met with ‘Naresh Chandra etc’. Chandra confirms this. ‘I met Rao along with [Cabinet secretary] Rajgopal and [IB chief V.G.] Vaidya. We spoke about the law and order situation. Godbole was a hard-working man. He had the [information] on his fingertips.’

  ‘We had an assurance from Kalyan Singh,’ Chandra adds. ‘That was our misjudgement.’72

  Rao returned home, where his cook Rajaiah made him a frugal meal in bungalow number three.73 He then retired to his room, sat on his bed, laptop perched on his stomach, and punched away while strains of Hindustani music played in the background.

  He went to sleep, having been convinced by the arguments on the left column of his note. He decided to trust Kalyan Singh.

  On the morning of 6 December 1992, Rao met Dr Srinath Reddy. He also met with his astrologer. ‘I cannot share what I said there,’ N.K. Sharma says. Since it was a Sunday, Rao remained in his house in bungalow number three.

  Meanwhile, at 9.30 a.m., Madhav Godbole spoke to the head of the Central paramilitary forces in Ayodhya, telling him that if the state government required his help he did not have to wait for formal orders from the Central government. This sequence of events is chronicled in a clandestine note that Godbole sent Rao after 6 December.74 By 11.30 a.m., a large but peaceful crowd was being addressed by leaders of the BJP and VHP. Between 11.45 a.m. and 12 noon, the chief of police and administration for Ayodhya walked around the perimeter of the Babri Masjid. Everything was in order.

  At about noon, a teenaged kar sevak jumped across the boundary and vaulted on top of the mosque dome.75 He was not stopped by any one of the policemen present. That first kar sevak was joined by thousands of others, who began chipping away at the domes. There was a galaxy of BJP leaders present who had spent the past year whipping up passion on the issue. L.K. Advani made requests on the public address system for the kar sevaks to come down.76 He was ignored.

  Rao’s home telephone began to ring. ‘I called up Kumaramangalam immediately,’ Jairam Ramesh remembers. ‘Kumaramangalam said that Rao was not to be reached.’ Another Congressman called up the PM’s house. ‘Khandekar picked up. He told me that the prime minister was in his room. He did not want to be disturbed.’ Arjun Singh later claimed that he had tried to reach Rao at his house, but was told ‘. . . he has locked himself in his room and our directions are not to disturb him under any circumstances.’77 Many other politicians called, none of whom could get through. This inability to reach Rao led to the rumour that the prime minister was sleeping while Babri was under attack. A senior journalist even claimed—on the basis of a conversation he claimed he had with a socialist politician who, in turn, claimed he had heard it from someone else, who, in turn, claimed he was witness to the fact—that Rao was doing puja when the mosque fell.78 Is there truth to these allegations?

  That Rao was sleeping is verifiably false. From 12.15 p.m., when the first dome was under attack, Rao was on the phone with several of his officials. Naresh Chandra and Madhav Godbole were both in the home secretary’s office, monitoring developments. ‘The prime minister was being informed on a regular basis,’ Chandra says. The Cabinet secretary S. Rajgopal was also present.79 In his memoirs, Godbole adds that during this time period, V.G. Vaidya had ‘already spoken to the PM’.80

  Around 2 p.m., Rao was joined by a host of officials. Two of them, P.V.R.K. Prasad and the law secretary, P.C. Rao, later gave a press conference confirming this. P.C. Rao even listed other officials who could vouch for the fact that Rao was awake and monitoring the situation.81

  One might still wonder why Narasimha Rao refused to take calls from some politicians between 12 and 2 p.m.. Even though he was awake and on the phone with officials, why did he remain within his locked room?

  A friend provides the answer. ‘I was with him in the room throughout,’ this person says. He was ‘normal until 12 [noon]. As he saw [what was happening] on TV . . . for a few minutes he couldn’t talk. He was not speaking. He trusted all those people very much.’

  ‘After a few minutes,’ this person says, ‘he began calling. He called the DIB [director of the intelligence bureau, Vaidya], then [home minister] S.B. Chavan. He was not asleep at all.’

  This testimony—along with the evidence of those whom Rao spoke to in those critical hours �
��is critical to disproving the myth of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burnt. Why then has this friend of Rao not spoken in his defence?

  ‘He promised me to keep it a secret. He made me swear.’

  Rao was not the only one stunned by the attack on the Babri Masjid. ‘It was like watching an India-Pakistan match’ one senior official recalls. ‘Of course, there is a chance that Pakistan will win. Obviously some people thought it [the demolition of the mosque] would happen. But that was guessing only. No one was sure.’ Salman Khurshid adds, ‘The destruction of the mosque came as a shock and a surprise. None of us were braced and ready for it.’82

  As soon as the mosque was under attack, the Central government put pressure on Kalyan Singh to use the troops stationed nearby. These troops consisted of ‘35 companies of the PAC, 4 companies of CRPF . . . 15 tear gas squads, 15 police inspectors, 30 sub-inspectors, 2300 police constables . . .’ apart from around 25,000 paramilitary forces nearby. These were all under the control of the district police chief and magistrate, who was ‘acting on a direct, minute-to-minute control of the chief minister’.83

  At around 2.30 p.m., three battalions of the Central paramilitary forces stationed outside Ayodhya marched towards the mosque. They were met by the magistrate, who asked them in writing to return. They turned back, since the Constitution was clear that Central forces could only act on orders of the state government. Meanwhile, in the words of the home ministry note: ‘The commissioner had been contacted who had informed that the CM, U.P. had ordered that there will be no firing under any circumstances.’ Kalyan Singh had even given an order in writing ‘not to resort to firing under any circumstances’.84