When I entered Babri Masjid under an assumed name, When I became Sujata Menon for one night!
Jan 30, 2024
It was a sunny winter afternoon on 5th December 1992 when I arrived at the Kar Seva registration booth in Ayodhya to collect my press card for the ‘symbolic kar seva’ that was to take place the following day at the “disputed Babri Masjid / Ramjanambhoomi shrine”.
The small, sleepy, temple town had been taken over by hundreds and thousands of young men sporting saffron bandanas, emblazoned with a “Jai Shri Ram '' around their heads.
Posted in Lucknow for the Kolkata based newspaper The Telegraph since 1989, Ayodhya had become my second home. I covered every twist and turn in the Ramjanambhoomi movement launched by the BJP/VHP/Bajrang Dal combine, all part of the RSS family. But on none of my numerous trips to the holy town had I sensed the atmosphere generated by the crowds that I saw that day.
The normally press-courting VHP leaders and workers were sporting an aggressive face. There were checkpoints that day, manned by lathi-wielding kar sevaks at various entry points into Ayodhya. Another first was the registration for the press. I had been in Ayodhya for the ‘shilanyas’ of the Ram Mandir in 1989, and the kar seva of 1990 when a group of Bajrang Dal workers breached the security around the “disputed structure” as it was called by BJP leaders, and climbed to the top of the Babri Masjid, and again in 1991 when the anniversary of the 1990 “victory” was marked. But never did I have to register or obtain a name tag.
There were scores of reporters and photographers – it was in the days before the advent of 24/7 television channels – from both the Indian and foreign press milling around the desk. But with the atmosphere of violence in the air, it hit home that registering in my real name could make me a target. Fortunately, the young men manning the desk were not locals, so no one recognised me.
For the first time in my career, I decided that I would hide my Muslim identity. I walked out with a name tag for Sujata Menon. It was a name given to me by a cautious colleague during the 1990 kar seva when the situation was nowhere near as volatile. But it was the closest sounding Hindu name to my Muslim name, Sajeda Momin. So, it fitted the bill perfectly for this occasion; and for every subsequent reporting assignment, thereafter, whenever I felt unsafe as a Muslim.
So here I was, ‘Sujata Menon’ listening to Ashok Singhal, the head of the VHP and manager of the “symbolic karseva” telling journalists and the Supreme Court of India that there would only be some singing of bhajans and a small yagna just outside the 2.77-acre disputed area of the mosque and its surrounding graveyard on Sunday 6th December 1992.
The next morning as we drove the 6 kilometres from Faizabad to Ayodhya, there was no sign of the violence to come as we were checked, our press cards vetted at check-post after check post, before we were let through.
The Babri Masjid was empty. There was no one there barring the pujari of the Ram Lalla idol and a handful of policemen standing guard. Singhal and Vinay Katiyar, the president of the Bajrang Dal, were busy preparing the area for the yagna with some of the youths. BJP bigwigs L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and others were in Ayodhya and their arrival was awaited. Singhal gave us journalists a tame plan of how the karsevaks would come to the yagna site in “jathas (groups)” from one side and leave from the other without entering the ‘disputed area’.
After exiting the mosque, we moved to a vantage point by the yagna site. For a couple of hours there was very little activity and then as the auspicious time approached, chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ echoed, getting louder by the minute as the first jatha arrived. Within minutes and without any provocation, stones began raining on us reporters and photographers. As we ducked for cover, photographers had their cameras snatched and broken by the karsevaks. Other photographers had the rolls of film pulled out of their cameras and destroyed.
As the journalists began to scatter in different directions, a group of us were herded out of the yagna sthal and onto the terrace of a temple that overlooked the mosque. Before entering the terrace, our bags were opened, our notebooks, pens and cameras – the tools of our trade – confiscated by the karsevak guards who were running the show. Clearly , they wanted no evidence of what they were going to do next.
Another jatha came up to the wooden barricade protecting the mosque and began pushing and shaking it. The police standing guard did not move, ordered to remain mute spectators. A couple more jathas came from the other side of the lane and did the same. Finally, the fence came crashing down. Hundreds of karsevaks poured into the ‘disputed area’, shouting with joy, and began attacking the structure with bricks and stones.
As if on cue, the policemen and paramilitary stationed around the mosque filed out of Ground Zero and did nothing but watch events unfold from the police control room at the side. Finally, the pujari emerged from the mosque, carrying the idols of Ram Lalla, escorted by the policemen.
Like a well-planned military operation, karsevaks carrying pickaxes, shovels, ropes and iron rods appeared from all sides and took control of the mosque. Some clambered up the three domes. The central dome was breached and a saffron flag was victoriously planted on top of the Babri Masjid. The karsevaks danced deliriously singing “Ram Lalla hum ayain hai, mandir yahin banayge (Ram Lalla we have come, the temple will be built here)” and “Musalman ka sirf ek sthan, Pakistan ya kabristan (There is only one place for Muslims, Pakistan or the graveyard)”.
For the next five hours, we watched the 460-year-old mosque pulled down brick by brick. While some karsevaks pounded on it from the outside, others attacked it from the inside. Though the mosque was old, its walls were thick and it would not give in easily. After what sounded like a minor explosion at around 2:50 pm, the first dome fell. About an hour later, at 3:40 pm, the second dome caved in and finally at 4:55 pm the central dome went down. As dusk fell over Ayodhya, the Babri Masjid had been razed to no more than a pile of rubble.
There was mayhem in the temple town. The frenzied mob was delirious, drunk on power. As we made our way through the back lanes of Ayodhya which I knew well thanks to my umpteen visits, our car was stopped and an injured karsevak was thrust inside. We were told to take him to the hospital in Faizabad. We readily agreed. He was to be our ticket to safety.
That night, a few of us returned to the site to see what was happening. The karsevaks were working through the night with the help of spotlights. Bulldozers had flattened the ‘disputed' area and a small makeshift temple was being erected with brick walls and a tarpaulin roof where the next day the Ram Lalla idols would be installed.
As I stood watching them, still sporting the Sujata Menon name tag round my neck, trying to blend in, a karsevak came up to me and said menacingly “I know who you are”.
His words, his stare sent a shiver down my spine.
For the first time that day I was frightened for my life.
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That same sense of foreboding overwhelmed me, even 31 years later, as I watched the new Ram Lalla idol being installed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Ram Mandir on January 22. Knowing how close I came to being exposed, still filled me with dread.
