It was the night of Eid-ul-Fitr, 1991. Muslims, who then constituted almost a fifth of Indore’s population, would normally have been celebrating all over the city, after a month of fasting. But this Eid was different.
The 18th century Rajwada palace was lit up, as were the bazaars around this historic quarter. Only, Muslims couldn’t enjoy them. General elections were round the corner, and that night, Rajwada Chowk had been reserved for BJP star campaigner Sadhvi Rithambara – a leading light of the VHP that had launched the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which was then at its peak.
Rithambara was by then notorious – audio cassettes of her speeches on the Ayodhya issue, much in demand, had been banned in Delhi. And Indore had been recovering from the deaths of 54 residents in two riots sparked off by rallies that formed part of the Ayodhya movement, including BJP president K Advani’s rath yatra.
Despite both these factors, the Indore police granted permission for a rally to be addressed by Sadhvi Rithambara on Eid. That might have been because the BJP was in power in Madhya Pradesh; visitors to Bhopal were even greeted by a banner saying: “Bajrang Dal heartily welcomes you to the capital of the Hindu Rashtra.” Though then Chief Minister Sunder Lal Patwa, an RSS veteran, had distanced himself from the rally, saying the BJP had nothing to do with it.
Admitting that the decision was a difficult one, police told this reporter that even if they had denied permission for the rally, the VHP would have held it anyway. It was safest to let Rithambara speak and then take action later, if necessary.
Almost 25 years have passed, and the system’s response to hate rallies remains the same: let them happen.
The significant change is that now, when the police deny permission, the organisers don’t flex their muscles; they just move court, perhaps confident of the outcome. Be it Delhi in August 2023, Yavatmal (Maharashtra) and Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in January 2024, or Mumbai in February 2023 and again March 2024, courts have told the police to allow such rallies – on condition there’s no hate speech. That condition has invariably been flouted, but the police have taken no action, except to file cases.
Interestingly, when Rithambara spoke in Indore, she had 12 cases against her.
Introduced as a mix of “Saraswati and Shakti” to an all-male, under-40s audience, what emanated from the frail-looking figure was neither wisdom nor strength, the qualities embodied by these two Goddesses, but abuse and exhortations to violence. Oddly, now and then through her inflammatory speech, the young Sadhvi, draped in full-sleeved saffron, would tug at her kurta, trying to pull it down from the back in a typically feminine gesture.
Using the term “hijdaas” for Janata Dal leader Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who had been forced to relinquish his prime ministership less than six months earlier, and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who as UP CM had ordered the police to fire on VHP followers attacking the Babri Masjid in October 1990, she urged her listeners to destroy “illegal” mosques and seize the land on which they stood. Her speech ended with a call to gouge out the eyes of those who were eyeing the disputed Ayodhya site, and not leave them alive.
With LK Advani’s portrait adorning the stage, her exhortations were met with vociferous shouts of “Jai Siya Ram” – the popular greeting had not yet been converted to the warcry “Jai Sri Ram”.
The next generation of rabble-rousers
Almost 25 years later, echoes of this rally were heard in Mumbai, when the Maharashtra assembly campaign was at its height. Madhavi Latha, the BJP candidate who lost last year’s Lok Sabha election to Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, addressed a small gathering inside a temple in November last. The BJP stayed away from this event organised by the Sakal Hindu Samaj. However, the demure-looking Latha, her head covered with her saffron sari pallu, left no doubt about her political intent.
Starting off by telling her listeners that their decision would decide the future of their city and state, Latha praised the “bada bhai and mota bhai from Gujarat” who had “brought Ram from the Treta Yug to destroy the raakshas kaum”. Interspersing her Hindi-Telugu speech with songs, repartee and a curious coquettishness, she invoked “love jihad, land jihad, and vote jihad”. Hindus would be deprived of jobs, of their religious festivals, and would even be pushed out of Mumbai if the “Aurangzeb sarkar”, who was close to the “Islamwaale”, was allowed to win, she warned. “Make your finger your sword,” she urged, “and let Sambhaji Maharaj feel Maharashtra has avenged him.” (Sambhaji Maharaj, the son of Chhatrapati Shivaji, was killed on the orders of Aurangzeb.)
The temple event wasn’t announced as an election speech, so there was no one from the Election Commission. The police, however, were there. Asked by this reporter if they were going to act, they pretended not to have heard the question.
Their inaction could be traced to the BJP being part of the governing coalition in Maharashtra. But hate speech went unpunished even under the Congress.
In Maharashtra, from Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray to Hindu Rashtra Sena founder Dhananjay Desai, Hindutva ideologues have had a free hand. When Desai was arrested in 2014 for the murder of IT professional Mohsin Shaikh in Pune, and for promoting communal enmity, he had 23 cases against him. He was acquitted of the murder case in 2023. For the others, he was never prosecuted.
Had Rithambara been prosecuted for half the cases against her, she might not have become a leading light of the Ayodhya movement. She was one of the 32 accused of the conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid. All of them were acquitted by a CBI court in 2020.
From Sadhvi Rithambara to Madhavi Latha via Uma Bharati (popularly known then as “sexy sanyasin”) and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (of the “Ramzade ya haramzade” remarks’ fame), there runs a straight line. On this 75th Republic Day, the earliest of these saffron-clad rabble-rousing women was honoured with the Padma Bhushan.
It was just fitting that the award came to Rithambara around the first anniversary of the consecration of the Ram Temple, underlining the uniquely bitter history of the temple. It is also a telling comment on how far our Republic has strayed from the Constitution, which it is meant to commemorate.
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