All through late 1992, Vajpayee covered genuine dilemmas with deliberate doublespeak. He questioned the clamour among some BJP men to rename his constituency of Lucknow as Lakshmanpur (Ram’s brother Lakshman apparently having founded the city), just as the state government was hoping to rename Allahabad as Prayagraj. On a tour of rural Lucknow, local party workers greeted him with cries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. After a while, the usually calm MP lost his temper: ‘Why don’t you say Jai Hind occasionally?’ The embarrassed slogan-warriors slunk away. Elsewhere, though, he bragged that his party was not afraid for the UP government: Kalyan Singh was going about ‘with the resignation letter in his pocket’. On his travels, he also often appealed to Muslims to relinquish their claim on Babri, ‘keeping in view the sentiments of the crores of Hindus’ who believed the spot to be the birthplace of their most revered god.
…The BJP national executive members, who met in Bhubaneshwar in mid-November, were mostly cheerleaders. Even so, the four BJP chief ministers did not want to lose their executive jobs, and, between them, Shekhawat — who had been involved in the backchannel negotiations with three prime ministers — volunteered to speak out. The Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Shanta Kumar recollected the scene the next day:
“The cry of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ was so loud there that Shekhawat did not stand up. I reminded him, but he was hesitant: ‘Chhodo, chhodo’. After a while I stood up arguing that since lakhs of people would congregate in Ayodhya on 6 December — and since we were governing the [UP] state, and were no longer in opposition — we ought to act responsibly. But I was snubbed by the crowd, and forced to sit down: ‘Baitho-baitho, baitho-baitho.’ Atalji was quiet; he just kept looking all around.”
There was near consensus within the BJP now to bring down the mosque. Over the decades since 1992, more robust circumstantial evidence has emerged of the rigorous plan to raze the three-domed Babri Masjid. Among the documents that reveal the psychology of the saffron brotherhood on the eve of the demolition is the memoir of a senior IB official who had been a Sangh fellow-traveller for decades — someone who was thick with the top BJP-RSS brass — but disagreed with their present strategy:
“I gathered an impression that they had adopted a multi-layered operational plan by assigning specific role to each segment of the Parivar. The VHP, Bajrang Dal and other associate bodies were under instructions to go ahead with the demolition of the disputed structure and their volunteers were trained at different locations under expert supervision. The BJP leadership was assigned the role of putting on ‘mukhotas’ (masks) of political rhetoric mixed with frenetic religious appeal. Leaders like Vajpayee and Advani managed to display the moderate face of the plan. However, most of them were fully aware of the plan of demolition of the mosque.”
All through November, Vajpayee moved between Delhi and the state capitals — Patna, Lucknow, Bhopal — to mobilize the state units for the kaarsewa. It seems he did not mind this mid-rank leadership as compared to the brains trust. For the same reason, he may have been unaware of the more granular details of the conspiracy.
…A week before the climax, the BJP trio operated with an informal division of labour. Advani and Joshi set out on padyatras, journeys on foot, from Varanasi and Mathura, entreating the crowds in UP to gather in Ayodhya on the weekend of 5-6 December. Before setting off on 30 November, Advani had pretty much let the cat out of the bag: the BJP would defy the courts as ‘courts are an inadequate forum for the purpose’. Others were less subtle. Vinay Katiyar made it clear that there was no such thing as symbolic kaarsewa. Something had to be destroyed for something new to be erected: ‘Kuch bigaadne par hi kuch banta hai.’
Even as Ayodhya overflowed with people and passions, Vajpayee defended the Sangh Parivar in the Parliament. The non-BJP opposition launched the winter session with a clamour in both houses. The situation in Ayodhya was not so serious or alarming, Vajpayee insisted in the Lok Sabha; the real problem was his opponents egging on the centre to dismiss Kalyan Singh. Vajpayee would try, halted by repeated interruptions, to soothe the fears. This went on for days: Vajpayee’s defence of the BJP, made incoherent by interruptions, would draw flak from the Congress and other parties. In turn, the BJP MPs would create a scene every time one of their detractors stood up to speak. Thus India dragged on towards a day of reckoning.
Babri Masjid - Ayodhya.
The padyatras by Advani and Joshi from Varanasi and Mathura converged on the evening of 5 December in Lucknow, where they were joined by Vajpayee. The trio was to address a public meeting in the old city of Aminabad. Asked that morning at Lucknow whether Babri would stay safe the next day, Vajpayee answered he hoped so, but could not be sure: ‘Asha hai, aur ashanka bhi.’
...Amid a home crowd, Vajpayee that evening was cheerful, passionate, humorous, sarcastic, boastful, elliptical, and wilfully ambiguous. He began by asserting that the Sangh Parivar had so far adhered strictly to the law: ‘Performing the kaarsewa in Ayodhya tomorrow would not mean breaching the Supreme Court’s directive. In fact, it would be akin to honouring the Supreme Court’s directive.’ His interpretation made it sound as if the Apex Court had been keen for the temple agitators to gather in Ayodhya. The opposite was true.
…There was then to this congregation a fundamental contradiction. Vajpayee and Advani were pumping up the kaarsewaks only to discourage them. Some of this may have been for the public record. The very next speaker, Joshi, who had arrived late, exhorted everyone to accompany him to the site of the climax the next morning. Speeches done, Advani and Joshi proceeded to their final destination. Vajpayee returned to Delhi the next morning. In a revealing slip later, he would admit that he ‘had to manage the aftermath at Delhi’. Since Vajpayee had always stayed away from the agitation, it suited the Sangh Parivar to have him in the capital on the final day. Faced with an emergency, his moderate credentials could be put to use.
On the afternoon of 6 December, Vajpayee sat in his drawing room, quietly watching on TV the tragedy unfold in Ayodhya. Many of the Sangh Parivar elders stood on a stage near the disputed site, awaiting the climax. The day began with the clownish, deceptive exercise of collecting sand from the Saryu River to be placed in pits outside the disputed site...
Real action began around 11.45 a.m., when a group of kaarsewaks wearing yellow bands on their foreheads emerged. They ran in a single file, crossed the police barricades, and entered the masjid area. They were followed by thousands of kaarsewaks, who pelted stones at the UP police and the CRPF standing by. The security forces, under orders not to fire, retreated. Someone brought out the idols of Ram Lalla installed in the mosque since 1949. Soon the crowd swarmed over the three domes.