138 "Presenting" the Past
served the cause of secularism better if the maulana were put up from a
Hindu-majority constituency even at the risk of getting defeated. Con-
gress communalism touched the deepest low in the early and middle
1980s, when Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi played the "Hindu card"
and manipulated the state apparatus to their party's advantage. With
an unpronounced Hindu communal plank, Indira Gandhi trounced the
BJP in Delhi and the Jammu region in the 1983 state elections. Soon fol-
lowed Operation Blue Star at the Sikh Golden Temple in June 1984, which
stirred up a vague communal fervor among the majority of Indians. Indira
Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984 and the
ensuing Congress-sponsored pogrom against the Sikhs delineated a clear
anti-Sikh atmosphere. As a result of all these, Rajiv Gandhi obtained
a massive mandate in the December 1984 elections. The telecast of the
pseudonationalist TV serial Ramayan in 1987-88 during Rajiv's rule, his
opening of the locks at the Babri Masjid to counterbalance the Muslim
personal-law issue, and other such moves worsened the situation further.
Even in the wake of the Sangh Parivar's agitations in Ayodhya, the Con-
gress government in Delhi did not counteract decisively.
With the erosion of secular values in the overall political scene in India,
the ever-growing fear and anxiety of the Brahminical orthodoxy, and the
increasing realization that the opportune moment had come to capture
power at the Center, the Sangh Parivar started in the early 1980s their Hin-
dutva offensive. The movement to liberate the three janmabhumis (in Ayod-
hya, Mathura, and Varanasi) was initiated through two Dharma Sansads
(religious meetings) held in 1984 and 1985 by the VHP. The BJP's national
executive met on June 9, 1989, at Palampur (HP) and took a categorical
position on the Babri Masjid issue. They complained that the other par-
ties, the Congress in particular, showed "callous unconcern" toward "the
sentiments of the overwhelming majority in this country—the Hindus."
The executive demanded that the Ram Janmasthan be "handed over to the
Hindus—if possible through a negotiated settlement, or else by legisla-
tion. Litigation certainly is no answer."^93
The Babri Masjid issue had not figured even once in any of the speeches
of the first president of the BJP, A. B. Vajpayee, nor had it appeared in any
of the party resolutions passed during the first decade of the party. On
the occasion of the 10th anniversary, however, L.K. Advani, who had
been the president since 1986, claimed in an interview that the "distinct
features of the BJP's personality"^94 included their stand on Article 370,
which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir; their demands that the
Minority Commission be replaced by a Human Rights Commission; that
the directive principle of state policy in respect of uniform civil code be
implemented; and that a Ram temple be constructed in Ayodhya at the
site believed to be Ram's birthplace.
When the Ayodhya confrontation was intensified in the late 1980s, the
Sangh Parivar worked with great consolidation and complementarity. As