26 years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid:

The unity and solidarity of the Indian people is being wrecked by the big bourgeoisie and its state

26 years ago, on December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground in broad daylight in front of TV cameras that broadcast the event to the whole world. It was carried out by armed mobs openly incited by top leaders of the BJP. This act of destruction of a five century old historical monument was carried out right under the eyes of the Congress led Central government of Narasimha Rao and the BJP led state government in Uttar Pradesh. The central and state armed forces provided protection to the mobs in this dastardly act. It was an act of state terrorism.

The unity and solidarity of the Indian people is being wrecked by the big bourgeoisie and its state

26 years ago, on December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground in broad daylight in front of TV cameras that broadcast the event to the whole world. It was carried out by armed mobs openly incited by top leaders of the BJP. This act of destruction of a five century old historical monument was carried out right under the eyes of the Congress led Central government of Narasimha Rao and the BJP led state government in Uttar Pradesh. The central and state armed forces provided protection to the mobs in this dastardly act. It was an act of state terrorism.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid was aimed at humiliating all people of the Muslim faith. As people of the Muslim faith all over the country came out in spontaneous protests against this wanton act, the Indian state and its main political parties unleashed communal violence in many parts of the country. Thousands of innocent people, both Muslims and Hindus, were killed in this state organized communal violence. The destruction of the Babri Masjid and the organizing of communal massacres showed that the Indian state is a communal state which rules by dividing people on basis of religion.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid was a dagger driven into the heart of Indian people’s unity and solidarity. Recognizing the grave danger to people’s unity, women and men cutting across ideological differences and religious beliefs came together to condemn this act. They held the Indian state and the two main parties of the ruling class, the Congress and the BJP, responsible for this act. Protest demonstrations were held all over the country, demanding that the organisers of the destruction of the mosque be punished.

Since the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the BJP has emerged as the main party of the ruling class, along with the Congress Party. Over the past 26 years, spreading anarchy and violence and unleashing state terrorism including state organized communal massacres, has become the favourite method of rule, alongside periodic elections. The entire Muslim community has been labeled as “terrorist”, “anti-national”, “pro Pakistan” etc. Thousands of youth of the community have been arrested and tortured under fascist laws such as TADA, POTA and UAPA. Many have been killed in fake encounters.

Today, an extremely dangerous situation confronts our people. The rulers are deliberately whipping up communal frenzy as they did in the months and days before December 6, 1992. From behind the scenes, both the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress are egging on Sadhus and sants to demand that a Ram temple be constructed immediately, at the site where Babri Masjid stood. Both are competing with each other to show who is a bigger “Ram Bhakt”. Innocent people are being lynched by “gau rakshaks”. The Sabarimalai temple entry controversy has been deliberately raked up. All over India, people who have migrated from one state to another for livelihood are being attacked as “infiltrators”, “taking away jobs of local youth”. Caste divisions are being deliberately sharpened, using the lack of employment opportunities and promise of caste based reservation. Both BJP and Congress are cynically dividing the people along religion, caste, region etc. Both are endangering the unity and solidarity of our people.

Day in and day out, the propaganda is carried out that the Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir controversy is a “dispute” between two communities — Muslims and Hindus. It is made out that if the Muslim community gives up the claims to the Babri Masjid and allows a Ram Mandir to be built on the site of the demolished Masjid, then the problem of communal violence in India will be resolved. Both these are lies.

The aim of this propaganda is to blame people and their religious beliefs for the problem. It is to hide the role of the ruling class, its political parties and the state in systematically dividing people on religious lines.

The conflict in India is not a religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. The conflict is between the people of India, regardless of their religious beliefs, on the one hand and the ruling class and its state on the other.

A minority of exploiters, headed by the biggest capitalist monopolies, control and dominate the Indian state. All the arms of this state — the executive, including the intelligence agencies and the armed forces, the legislature including both ruling and opposition parties, and the judiciary — work at the behest of this minority.

In the 1980’s, this ruling class abandoned the old cloak of “building a socialist pattern of society” through which it had been fooling the people while enriching itself. It launched the program of globalization through privatization and liberalisation. This was a program of intensified exploitation of workers, robbery of the peasantry and loot of the natural resources by Indian and foreign monopolies. The state would have no pretense of any responsibility to provide for the people. Instead, the state would openly facilitate and enhance this exploitation and loot.

The implementation of this same program by successive governments of the Congress and BJP has led to widening gap between a minority of super-rich, and the vast masses of workers and peasants. It has led to increasing ruin of small producers. There has been growing opposition to this exploitation, loot and plunder from all sections of people.

The ruling class has been deliberately unleashing anarchy and violence, escalating state terrorism and setting people against each other on the basis of religion, caste, language and region in order to smash their unity and divert them from the real source of the problem.

It is this ruling class, its political parties and state that organized the demolition of the Babri Masjid and continues to inflame passions on this issue, in order to push through the anti-people, anti-social and anti-national program of globalization through privatization and liberalization.

This is why no matter which party has come to power at the center, the organisers of this crime have not been punished.

The fate and future of our country and our people is not safe in the hands of this ruling class and its state.

This ruling class has inherited and further developed the method of rule of the British colonialists of inciting people against each other on the basis of religion and caste. The colonialists deliberately spread the lie that Indian people were divided into warring religious communities. They encouraged political parties like Congress, Muslim League, and organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha, Arya Samaj and RSS to spread communal poison. They spread the lie amongst Hindus that the source of their oppression was people of the Muslim faith. They spread the lie amongst Muslims that their problems were because of Hindus. The colonial state organized communal massacres to smash people’s unity in the anti-colonial struggle. The tragic partition of India was a result of all this.

Over the past seventy one years, the ruling class, its political parties and state have repeated these lies. They have propagated the falsehood that society is divided into a “Hindu majority” and religious minorities. They have preached that the “majority community” must practice “tolerance” towards “minority communities”. Under this signboard of “tolerance”, the state persecutes people for their religious beliefs. Political parties like the Congress and BJP cynically manipulate the religious sentiments of people, to smash their unity.

This ruling class and its state, is neither capable nor willing to provide prosperity and security to all. People of India need to unite around the aim of establishing a new state in place of this present state which will break completely with the colonial legacy of dividing people on the basis of religion.

In the present deeply troubled times, the people of India need to draw inspiration from the fighters for freedom during the anti-colonial liberation struggle.

In the great Ghadar of 1857, the people of India — peasants and soldiers, maulvis and pandits — rose up as one, to get rid of the hated colonial rule. They fought with the slogan “hum hai iske maalik, Hindustan hamara”. The leaders of the great Ghadar warned the people against the cunning tactics of the British using their agents to make people fight each other on basis of religion.

The Hindustan Ghadar Party mobilised the people to rise up unitedly against the oppressive and exploitative colonial rule. It exposed the colonialists’ diabolical game of dividing people on communal lines to crush the struggle for liberation. People of all religions joined the Hindustan Ghadar Party and fought for liberation of India. Shaheed Bhagat Singh and other martyrs of the anti-colonial struggle repeatedly warned against the cunning machinations of the colonial state of dividing people along communal lines.

The times are calling upon the people of our country to unite with the aim of replacing the exploitative, oppressive and communal state with a state that will guarantee prosperity and security to all. Such a state must harmonise individual and collective interests with the general interest of society. We must establish this state on new foundations so that human rights of all members of society are guaranteed and no one can be discriminated against or persecuted on the basis of their religion, language, caste, nationality etc.

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