128 "Presenting" the Past
The government's further failure to appeal against the Allahabad High
Court's decision of permitting the devotees darshan of Ram at the make-
shift temple helped perpetuate the false legality accorded to the mosque
demolition. Converting the above ordinance into the Acquisition of Cer-
tain Areas at Ayodhya Act, the undeserving and incompetent custodian of
the disputed land rendered all the past illegalities as legal. More impor-
tantly, the Ayodhya Act allowed the New Delhi government to hand over
any part of the land it had acquired to a trust "set up on or after the com-
mencement of this Ordinance." This could help the Rao government keep
the VHP out of the temple-construction project, but the rulings of the P. K.
Bahri tribunal that quashed the ban on the RSS in June 1993 and the K.
Ramamoorthy tribunal that annulled the ban on the VHP in June 1995
brought the Hindutva forces back into the game. On February 3,1993, BJP
leader A. B. Vajpayee decried any court intervention in the matter, because
the Ram temple was a matter of faith.
About eight months after the demolition, at the Independence Day
(August 15) rally in 1993, Prime Minister Rao promised the nation that
"whatever has been demolished, we will build it, rebuild it."^72 However,
Rao changed his stand within a year. Addressing a massive rally orga-
nized by the Congress (I) party at the Red Fort grounds on July 14,1994,
he declared that he would not entrust the construction of the Ram Mandir
at Ayodhya to any VHP-controlled trust. There was no mention about the
reconstruction of the mosque. While some lauded Rao's effective stealing
of Hindutva's political thunder, others wondered why he should rake up
the controversy unnecessarily at that point. The Indian Express commented
editorially that Rao's assertion about the temple construction and studied
silence on the reconstruction of the mosque signaled a retreat from his ear-
lier assurances to the Muslim community.^73 BJP leader L. K. Advani was
quick to retort that the issue was not who would construct the temple but
whether it would be constructed at the site where the Babri Masjid stood,
and the present makeshift temple was constructed on December 6,1992.
When the Rao government attempted to float an apolitical trust, the
Ayodhya Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Pratishthan, under the aegis of the four
powerful sankaracharyas of Sringeri, Dwarka, Puri, and Kanchi, the VHP
was forced to review its temple policy, and the group decided to lend its
support to the new trust. VHP chief Ashok Singhal, who had declared that
the Ayodhya site would be forcibly occupied if it were not handed over to
the VHP's own Ramjanmabhumi Nyas, said in July 1994 that the occupa-
tion would take place only if the government constructed the temple at
a place other than the present makeshift temple. Instead of falling into
the government trap by taking on the sankaracharyas, the VHP demanded
that the temple be built at the makeshift temple site and that no Islamic
structure come up near the proposed temple. Although these two condi-
tions would definitely prevent the new trust from making any progress