Ram Rath Yatra

The Ram Rath Yatra (lit. 'Ram chariot journey') was a political and religious rally that lasted from September to October 1990. It was organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist affiliates, and led by the then-president of the BJP, L. K. Advani. The purpose of the yatra was to support the agitation, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar, to erect a temple to the Hindu deity Rama on the site of the Babri Masjid.

The masjid, or mosque, had been built in the city of Ayodhya following the Mughal conquest of the region in 1528. According to hearsay, it was built over a temple dedicated to Rama, and stood on the site of his birth. In the 1980s, the VHP and other Sangh Parivar affiliates began an agitation to build a temple to Rama at the site, with the BJP lending political support to the movement. In 1990, the government of India led by V. P. Singh decided to implement some of the recommendations of the Mandal commission, and announced that twenty-seven percent of government jobs would be reserved for people from Other Backward Class. This announcement threatened the electoral constituency of the BJP, which decided to use the Ayodhya dispute to unite the Hindu vote by mobilising anti-Muslim sentiment.

In order to further this movement, the BJP announced a rath yatra, or "chariot journey" across the country to Ayodhya. The procession was led by L. K. Advani, and involved thousands of kar sevaks, or volunteers, from the Sangh Parivar. The yatra began in Somnath on 25 September 1990, and passed through hundreds of villages and cities. It traveled approximately 300 kilometers a day, and Advani often addressed six public rallies in a single day. The yatra caused an outpouring of both religious and militant sentiments among Hindus, and became one of the biggest and greatest mass movements in Indian history.

The yatra also triggered religious violence in its wake, with riots in cities across North India. As a result, Advani was arrested by the government of Bihar as the yatra passed through that state, and 150,000 of his supporters were also arrested by the government of Uttar Pradesh. Tens of thousands of activists nonetheless reached Ayodhya and attempted to storm the mosque, resulting in a pitched battle with security forces which left 15 dead. These events caused further Hindu-Muslim riots to break out across the country, in which hundreds were killed. Muslims were often the victims of these riots, particularly in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Following these riots, the BJP withdrew its support to the Union government, leading to early parliamentary elections. The BJP made significant gains in these elections, both at the national and the state level, on the back of religious polarisation caused by the yatra.

In Hindu tradition, the birthplace of the deity Rama, known as "Ram Janmabhoomi", is considered a holy site. This site is often believed to be located in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, at the place where the Babri Masjid stood. Historical evidence to support this belief is scarce, and several historians have stated that Ayodhya became a religious centre with a number of temples only in the 18th century AD. Additionally, the location of Ayodhya itself is a matter of dispute, since the city has shifted slightly over the millennia. Following the Mughal conquest of the region in 1528, a mosque was built in Ayodhya by the Mughal general Mir Baqi, who named it the Babri Masjid after the Mughal emperor Babur. According to hearsay, Baqi destroyed a pre-existing temple of Rama at the site. Limited historical evidence exists to support this theory, and the existence of the temple itself is a matter of controversy. Numerous historians have stated that there is limited evidence to support the notion that Rama was born at the precise location of the Babri Masjid, or that a temple to Rama once stood at the site.

For several centuries after the construction of the mosque, the site was used for religious purposes by both Hindus and Muslims. The first recorded claim that the mosque stood on the site of Rama's birth was made in 1822. Citing this claim, the Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu sect, laid claim to the mosque, resulting in inter-communal violence in the period 1853–55. In 1949, an idol of Rama was surreptitiously placed inside the mosque, and an attempt was made to convince devotees that it had appeared miraculously. An official investigation concluded that the mosque had been desecrated and the idol placed there by three men, together with a large band of supporters. This caused an uproar among Muslim people who used the mosque, and the gates to the mosque were locked on the orders of the state government. In the 1980s a movement led by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) began advocating demolishing the mosque and building a temple there dedicated to Rama, heightening religious tension across the country. In 1986, the district magistrate of Ayodhya ordered that the gates be opened once more, and Hindus be allowed access to the shrine. Following its poor performance in the 1984 parliamentary election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shifted toward a policy of more hardline Hindu nationalism, and lent its support to the demand that a temple be built at Ayodhya. On the strength of this agitation, the BJP won 86 Lok Sabha seats in 1989, a tally which made its support crucial to the National Front government.

In August 1990, then-Prime Minister V. P. Singh, acting on the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, decided to introduce a policy of reserving twenty-seven per cent of state level government posts for people from lower castes. The new policy was partially an attempt to trim the electoral support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The core constituency of the BJP were people from upper castes, who had until then held a monopoly over government jobs. The new policy thus fed resentment among the upper-castes, and raised inter-caste tensions in some parts of the country. Mobilising Hindus around the Ayodhya dispute was seen by the BJP as a way to unite its electorate, by creating an issue around which all Hindus could be united against Muslims. This effort tied in well with the philosophy of the Sangh Parivar, which professed "cultural nationalism", and believed in the unity of the highly fragmented Hindu population. Since its founding in 1925, supported for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had been restricted to people of upper castes. The same was true of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and its successor, the BJP, which acted as the political wing of the RSS. By supporting the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, the BJP hoped to spread its influence outside this demographic.

As a part of its support for the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, the BJP organised a rath yatra, or "chariot journey" across the country to Ayodhya in 1990. The yatra was led by then-BJP President L. K. Advani. The Sanskrit word Yatra is variously translated as "journey", "procession", or "pilgrimage": the idea of pilgrimage is a significant one in Hindu traditions. The term Rath Yatra refers to a procession involving a rath, or chariot, a frequent occurrence at religious sites. In recent decades, displays of strength by Hindu nationalist groups have often been described as yatras, and the idea of the pilgrimage itself has often been harnessed by Hindu nationalists to mobilise support. The city of Ayodhya, in particular, is a place of pilgrimage in the Hindu tradition, because it is seen as a site where a devotee may obtain eternal salvation, a belief used to inspire support for the Ram Rath Yatra. Hindu pilgrimages have traditionally been spaces where caste and gender barriers have been broken to a limited extent. Thus the BJP, seeking to unite its electorate, which was divided by caste-based discrimination, found the imagery of a pilgrimage useful. Furthermore, pilgrimages or processions frequently involve an assertion of dominance over a physical space, which was also relevant to the Ayodhya dispute; the ultimate aim of the yatra was to support the agitation of the VHP and its Sangh Parivar affiliates to erect a temple to the Hindu deity Rama on the site of the Babri Masjid.