Horrified by the Babri Masjid verdict, I apologize to the thousands whose lives were ruined and lament the degradation of an ancient religion, writes Jyoti Punwani.

You see a massive crime unfolding before you. You follow all their evil twists and turns, horrified at the depths the perpetrators can go, shocked at the way they destroy the lives of others. The judge then acquits them all, blaming strangers for making the perpetrators’ plans come true. What then happens to the things you saw, the consequences of which are unfolding until today?

That is the reason why I dare not read the sentence of the IWC judge SK Yadav who acquitted all the defendants in the Babri Masjid demolition case. As a journalist, I must read it, but first I must apologize for it.

The apology goes to the thousands whose lives were ruined by the movement to demolish Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid and build a Ram Mandir on the very site where it stood. Mandir wahin banayengey, the motto of the Ayodhya movement launched by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and later led by BJP leader LK Advani, left no one in doubt about its intention.

The decade from 1982 to 1992 saw riots erupt between Hindus and Muslims in places that until now had not been largely affected by community violence. The VHP yatras during that decade, whose goal was to awaken Hindus to support their cause, and later Advani’s rath yatra, unleashed such poison that small towns exploded, including in Karnataka and Kerala.

The country’s most cosmopolitan city, its commercial capital, had slogans that read “Is desh mein rehna hoga a Vande Matram kehna hoga” and “garv se kaho hum Hindu hain” on its walls. When Jaywantiben Mehta of the BJP won his seat in the Lok Sabha in the 1989 general election, the temple bells rang and the slogans of “Hindustan Hinduon ka, nahin kisike baap ka” were raised.

The Ayodhya movement changed the image of Hinduism, transforming the personality of Ram from Maryada Purshottam into a vengeful warrior god. It was then that the gentle ‘Jai Siya Ram’ greeting became the ‘Jai Sri Ram’ rallying cry that remains to this day. “Bacha bacha Ram ka, ya chaachi ke kaam ka” was the triumphant slogan raised in Indore in front of Muslim households after the 1989 riots there, which broke out after a procession of VHP ram shila pujan was stopped and claimed 27 lives.

“Give us your children, or we will make you have ours, they will all be Ram bhakts,” was what Indore police told Muslim women when they attended their night raids.

Listening to these women, I remember feeling ashamed of what the VHP-BJP-Bajrang Dal had done to Hinduism. Today’s trial seems to send a message that the movement that spawned this degradation of an ancient religion known for its inclusiveness (though not to its own “lower” castes) was okay.

Advani, Ashok Singhal, ‘Sadhvi’ Rithambara, whom I heard at a well-attended rally exhorting Hindus to destroy all the illegal mosques and seize the land they were in, all these rioters are validated today, because they did nothing bad.

Also the RSS men who initiated Mumbai youth in the Bajrang Dal with trishuls, telling them to use them “freely against anti-nationals.” Weren’t they fomenting violence? I asked after the initiation, invariably carried out inside a temple. “It is time for Hindus to become extremists,” they angrily replied. Now they have a judgment that supports what they did.

And what about the Mumbai victims? There were two options for the victims of the riots that broke out in this city hours after the Babri Masjid demolition. Some took the easy option: They helped Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon carry out bomb blasts two months after the riots. The rest waited patiently. They first testified before a judge in a courtroom full of police officers who had refused to help them when they were being attacked.

Then they waited for measures to be taken against the accused by the judge. At each stage, they turned to the courts, from the Supreme Court to the magistrates’ courts. For the most part, the courts listened to them, even giving them hope that justice would one day be theirs. For years they waited for that day, knowing that the delay was not due to the courts, but because successive Maharashtra governments were determined to protect the accused.

Now, they don’t know. Was it worth your wait? They ask. There is no answer to that.

There was also a third option: SIMI. The late Fazal Sha’d, founder of the Bombay Aman Committee, spent nights in the JJ Hospital morgue during the riots, helping desperate families who came looking for their missing men. He witnessed the worst form of trauma resulting from the riots.

However, when the Islamic Student Movement of India (SIMI) put up their notorious poster on the domes of Babri Masjid shedding tears and the words “waiting for another Mehmood Ghaznavi”, it was Sha’d who was the first to denounce it.

Today’s trial will bring bitter satisfaction to those who designed this poster.

To Fazal Sha’d, to the women of Indore, to the victim of the Mumbai riots Farooq Mapkar, who has gone to every possible court to get the policeman who shot him when he was leaning towards namaaz to be punished; To the victims, including Hindus, whose childhoods were destroyed when their parents were killed by policemen or mobs driven mad by leaders like Advani and Uma Bharti, after today’s trial I can only say “I’m sorry. This is not justice.”

The only way to make things right is to send the message that no matter what governments and courts do, they are not speaking for the majority of Hindus.

At the height of the Ayodhya campaign, a Hindu father had complained to the principal of his daughter’s school about a teacher who had distributed VHP Ram Mandir badges in class. For this reason, he was mistreated by VHP sympathizers who broke into his apartment and demanded that he withdraw his complaint. He said no.

We have to be like that, Hindus.