December 6: A Look Back At The Babri Masjid Demolition And Its Lasting Wounds

Since it’s December 6, the atmosphere across India always feels a little heavier.

It’s a date that returns every year with a kind of quiet insistence, pulling old memories back into the public conversation. December 6 is not just another day on the calendar.

It marks the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, an event that reshaped the country’s social and political arena in a way few other moments have.

To understand why this day matters so much, one has to go back to the core of the issue.

The Babri Masjid, constructed between 1528 and 1529 during the early Mughal period, stood in Ayodhya on a hill known as Ramkot.

For centuries, the structure existed within a relatively undisturbed socio-religious abode. But by the 19th century, contesting claims emerged that the Hindu groups believed the mosque stood at the birthplace of Lord Rama, while Muslims saw it as a functioning, historic place of worship.

These competing beliefs gradually hardened into political identities, catalysed by colonial administrative records, petitions, and occasional conflicts over access and rituals around the site.

Also, read| What PM Modi Gifted President Putin

As the 20th century progressed, the dispute intensified. In 1949, idols of Rama and Sita suddenly appeared inside the mosque, triggering a legal and administrative freeze.

The government locked the premises, treating it as a disputed structure while allowing only limited Hindu worship outside the main building. Over the next decades, various religious bodies, Hindu and Muslim, filed suits claiming ownership, and courts became the central arena of the conflict.

The site remained physically still but emotionally charged, as political organisations increasingly understood its potential to mobilise mass sentiment.

By the 1980s, the controversy had transformed from a legal dispute into a nationwide political movement. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allies launched campaigns asserting that a Ram temple once stood at the site and was destroyed to build the mosque.

The unlocking of the structure’s gates in 1986 for Hindu worship intensified tensions. The situation escalated dramatically with L. K. Advani’s 1990 Rath Yatra, which turned the matter into a mass political storm, drawing hundreds of thousands of supporters and sharply polarising the public.

All of this tension culminated on December 6, 1992, when a mobilised crowd gathered in Ayodhya for what was officially announced as a symbolic kar seva.

Also, read|35 Years After Ex-Home Minister’s Daughter Was Abducted, CBI Arrests Absconder

The atmosphere, however, quickly turned volatile. By early afternoon, the first dome was breached. Within hours, the 16th-century mosque was reduced to rubble, despite the presence of senior political leaders at the site.

India witnessed one of its darkest moments as riots broke out across the country, claiming thousands of lives and permanently reshaping the national political landscape.

The demolition was not just an act of physical destruction; it marked the beginning of prolonged communal tension, international criticism, and internal debates about secularism, majoritarianism, and the role of the state.

The Liberhan Commission, formed to investigate the demolition, took 17 years to submit its report, which criticised several political and organisational leaders for enabling or facilitating the event.

Meanwhile, the dispute found new life in litigation. Archaeological surveys, depositions, and decades-long arguments eventually culminated in a case that reached the Supreme Court.

On 9 November 2019, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi — along with Justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S A Nazeer- pronounced the final verdict in the Ayodhya land dispute case.

They delivered their landmark judgment. It acknowledged that the mosque had been built over a non-Islamic structure but found no evidence that a temple had been demolished to construct it.

The Court awarded the land for the construction of a Ram temple and ordered that Muslims be given a separate five-acre plot elsewhere in Ayodhya for a new mosque.

The judgment attempted to bring closure, though debates over history, justice, and reconciliation remain deeply contested.

Many critics, legal scholars, and civil society voices have continued to argue that the 2019 Ayodhya verdict stands among the most contentious and widely-debated judgments in India’s judicial history.

The Babri Masjid dispute has also been documented in India’s cultural memory, most notably in Anand Patwardhan’s acclaimed documentary Ram Ke Naam (“In the Name of God”). Released in 1992, just weeks before the demolition, the film captured the rising communal mobilisation, the political symbolism around the Ram temple movement, and the voices of ordinary citizens caught between competing narratives.

Patwardhan’s documentary remains one of the most significant visual records of the pre-demolition climate, probing, bold, and deeply human. It is still referenced in academic, journalistic, and cultural discussions about the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and serves as a reminder of how propaganda, fear, and identity politics can alter the course of history.