Ayodhya is not a problem, it is only the manifestation of a problem rooted in our political system and interpretations of secularism. Is it really a simple property dispute? Can we believe that one of the most important national political parties got involved in the movement because it wanted a temple and real estate? If this were true, the BJP would not have shelved it as easily as it had four years ago along with the Common Civil Code and the Abolition of Article 356.

Yet, it's strange that building a temple at Ayodhya became a major issue in a country with 11 crore people who are unemployed, six crore children who are not attending schools, five crore people diagnosed with TB and has the world's largest number of lepers and
blind people.

In the 1980's, the Congress opened the locks of the Babri Masjid and allowed the pooja to be performed there. They did it to strike a balance between the Muslim fundamentalists they had
appeased while overturning the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case and the Hindu fundamentalists.

Secularism which should be defined as intolerance of all kinds of fundamentalism had instead become a policy of tolerating all kinds of fundamentalism. The run up to the demolition of the mosque in 1992 was not about a clash between two religions, rather a power struggle between conflicting groups, a clash between liberal progressive modern thought and the reactionary fundamental thought, majority communalism versus minority fundamentalism.
At one stage, it even became a contest among fundamentalists of different hues within their own communities. It was a battle for political real estate. But it now appears that the BJP has failed to control the very forces which it unleashed to catapult itself into power. Raths don't come with reverse gears and genies are seldom squeezed back into bottles. We've seen it with the LTTE in Sri Lanka, Bhindranwale in Punjab and Pakistan's creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The BJP is now seeing it in Ayodhya.

Yet, in a sense, it was after the demolition of the mosque in 1992 that the politics of hate expended itself. Though they may momentarily see visions of grandeur with Godhra and Ahmedabad, fundamentalists have lost the game. Indians irrespective of religion are no longer willing to get excited by sloganeering. In the Muslim community itself, they have lost their voice and fail to instigate people after the community saw that their rigid stands were taking them on a self-destructive course.

We have communal riots because we are not as communal as vested interests would want us to be. Politicians have a very low opinion of common people who they think will not buy good ideas and honest intentions. Because they believe the average Hindu and Muslim is
deeply communal, the so-called secular parties will hobnob with the Shahi Imam to prove their secular credentials to the Muslims.

At the same time, they would not arrest a Hindu fundamentalist leader because they are scared of upsetting the Hindus. What's the solution to the problem? As far as Ayodhya is
concerned, the Ram Janambhoomi Nyas and the Babri Masjid Action Committee are part of the problem and should have nothing do to with the solution---we have an impartial legal body, the Supreme Court, whose final verdict should be accepted by all parties. As for the politics of hate, it has been left far behind by liberalisation and the sea changes in our society.