It suits the BJP quite well to keep the Ayodhya pot stirring. And the Opposition seems to be playing into the saffron party's hands by repeatedly disrupting the proceedings of the two Houses of Parliament using the Ayodhya case as a pretext. The adjournment of both Houses on Thursday took place on the ground that the CBI had not produced the taped version of the speech of L. K. Advani on the fateful day in December 1992 prior to the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya. The CBI counsel told the special court in Rae Bareilly that the agency did not have the speeches of Deputy Prime Minister Advani, HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and the BJP leader Uma Bharti on audio or video tapes.
These tapes, played in the chamber of the special judge, V. K. Singh, did contain the speech of firebrand Sadhvi Ritamhara. The CBI, however, told the court that it had sufficient `oral evidence' to support its case against Advani and other senior BJP leaders. Reportedly, there was no taped version of the speech of Advani and other leaders mentioned above simply because they did not get a chance to address the gathering on 6th December 1992 before the cataclysmic events overtook the pre-determined agenda of the day. Advani reportedly never got to address the crowd that day, so there can be no question of an audio or a video tape existing of his speech.
Following the disruption and forced adjournment of the two Houses on Thursday the presiding officers have yet again come under pressure to debate the Ayodhya issue early next week. The speakers on either side of the divide in parliament will yet again rehearse the old and worn out arguments, though both sides will pretend not to make a reference to the on-going proceedings in the court of the Rae Bareilly special judge, V. K. Singh. The latter too would be unavoidable since it is the revelation stemming from the proceedings in the court which had led to the latest pandemonium in the two Houses.
The opposition leaders who led the raucous protests insisted that they were keen to discuss the role of the CBI and not the sub judice case. How they can tread so gingerly as to refer to the role of the CBI alone while leaving the court proceedings unmentioned is beyond anyone's comprehension. Maybe the court will consider holding its proceedings in camera so that these do not generate controversy almost on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party,
Congress, cannot expect to extract any political mileage by flogging ad
nauseam the Ayodhya controversy. Without its passive and not-so-passive
connivance the denouement in Ayodhya would have been quite different. The
party is mistaken in believing that by constantly harping on the role of
Advani in the events leading to the demolition of the disputed structure
it would regain the confidence of the Muslims. It will not. For the
Muslims the Congress Party is a bigger villain in Ayodhya than even Advani
because what Advani did he did quite openly while various Congress administrations
in New Delhi did what they did to help Advani surreptitiously. The point
is that Advani burnishes his pro-Ram temple image every time Congressmen
target him for his role in Ayodhya while the Congress fails to convince
its target Muslim audience that it was on their side when the Ram bhkatas
were pulling down the disputed structure brick-by-brick. In other words,
let the Congress Party stop shedding crocodile tears over the events of
6th December 1992.