This was in the third week of January 1986. A worried Rajiv Gandhi had called his cousin over to get his advice. On 18 January, R&AW and IB chiefs had both reported to Rajiv Gandhi that unhappiness was growing amongst the Hindus over the government’s decision to undo Shah Bano judgment.
Nehru suggested that the locks be opened at the enclosure in the Babri Masjid. A Ram idol had been clandestinely placed in the sanctum sanctorum by militant Hindus in December 1949. The mosque had been locked up, and neither Muslims nor Hindus were allowed entry. Hindus were allowed to offer prayers from outside the locked grille.
“If Rajiv got the locks opened and a temple built there, the Hindus will be happy,” Nehru told Rajiv. Many Hindus, he told his cousin, were feeling aggrieved with Rajiv’s ‘appeasement’ of Muslims. Arun Nehru did not pull his punches. He told the PM that he was losing ground. It was not just conservative Hindus who were upset with him, even liberal opinion was now against him.
Rajiv Gandhi asked Arun Shourie over to the PM’s office. “I found Rajiv completely innocent of Muslim Personal Law, of case law in India and even the bill (he was planning to pass),” Shourie recalled. “I told the PM the bill would stoke a reaction. Already people were beginning to feel that the state was bending before extremists. This had happened in Punjab (and claimed the life of Indira Gandhi).”
“Can the locks be opened?” Rajiv asked Arun Nehru, according to Arif Mohammed Khan who told me this story. “I will find out what can be done,” Nehru said. He then spoke to Vir Bahadur Singh, the Congress chief minister of UP, where the disputed Babri Masjid was located. Unknown to Rajiv, Singh had already been on the job. A month earlier, the UP CM had visited Ayodhya to attend the Ramayan mela in the temple town.
While there, Singh asked officials to show him the entire file on the Ayodhya dispute. He discovered that the locks had been put there by an ‘administrative’, and ‘not a judicial’, order in 1949. Since Singh was a protégé of Arun Nehru, it is not inconceivable that Nehru had put him on the job even before he called on Rajiv and suggested opening the locks. Singh felt indebted to Nehru for having installed him as UP CM.
Nehru reported back to Rajiv. “Tell Vir Bahadur to get it opened,” PM directed Nehru.
Nehru was to tell Arif Khan later, “I did not want it said later that Arun Nehru had given instructions to Singh (of his own accord).”
(Edited excerpts from Neerja Chowdhury’s ‘How Prime Ministers Decide’ published by Aleph Book Company)