Many will be aware of what Butterfly Effect is. It’s a chain of events that gets triggered by one incident in the past and the impact of that one original incident wouldn’t have been fathomed initially. This is about one such butterfly effect moment in India.
In 1978, a man called Mohammad Ahmed Khan, a very affluent and well to do lawyer in Indore stopped giving the alimony money of ₹200 per month to his divorced wife Shah Bano. His wife was 63 years old and had five children. He had infact lived with two wives for many years and then divorced Shah Bano who was his first wife. Shah Bano then approached the local court. Mr. Khan argued that since he had divorced his wife, under the Muslim Personal Law, he was not under obligation to pay for maintenance or alimony. But the local court directed him to pay ₹25 per month to Shah Bano. The cases then went to High Court. High court directed him to pay ₹179 per month to Shah Bano as alimony. The case then went to Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in a landmark judgement asked him to pay ₹200 per month to his old divorced wife for herself and her children’s maintenance.
This caused a huge uproar and protests from the Muslim community who saw the Supreme Court as interfering in their personal laws while actually, it was not. Maintenance is not personal law whereas divorce is. However the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and other groups started applying pressure on the then Central Government. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who had a whopping 413 seats in Lok Sabha was under pressure from his “advisors” and inner circle to bring a law to overturn the Supreme Court judgement. He was advised that if this was not done, then the party would lose in the next Lok Sabha elections as Muslims won’t vote for the Congress. The Rajiv Gandhi government brought an amendment to law through an act of Parliament that over turned the Supreme Court’s judgement of paying a monthly maintenance amount to divorced Muslim women. The Congress still lost the Lok Sabha elections in 1989 is a different matter.
This over turning of Shah Bano Supreme Court judgement by the ‘secular’ Congress government created another furore and uproar in the country, but this time, it was from the Hindus, civil society, women groups and others. The ‘secular’ Congress government was seen as caving to fundamentalists and playing open and active minority appeasement politics. Hence, once again Rajiv Gandhi’s advisors advised him, now to placate the Hindus, to open the doors of the locked Babri Masjid and allow daily shilanyas to be performed. The ‘secular’ Congress government did the same. Till then the Ayodhya movement hadn’t gathered much steam as BJP did not involve itself directly into the movement. It may sound quite unbelievable now. But then BJP had no high stake Hindu cause in its manifesto till then. Uniform Civil Code was more of a constitutional and legal reform and the abrogation of Article 370 was more of a nationalist position.
Seeing the blatant interference of the ‘secular’ Rajiv Gandhi government into religious affairs of the citizens in Shah Bano case and then in Babri Masjid, BJP picked up the cause of Ram Mandir as part of its political agenda and manifesto in the 1989 elections. BJP was pushed into doing this because, the Hindus were repeatedly being taken for a ride on the Ayodhya issue due to the interference of a certain section of politicians, self-proclaimed intellectuals and historians with ulterior motives who were twisting and turning at every point to conceal the truth. Rajiv Gandhi commenced his 1989 election campaign from Ayodhya promising Ram Rajya. He did this to placate the anger of Hindus triggered by overturning of Shah Bano judgement. This is the misunderstanding that our politicians, media and even most citizens have on being neutral or secular. Being neutral means being objective. It does not mean doing something for one group to compensate for what was done to another group. Being secular means the government not interfering in the religious affairs of anyone. It does not mean appeasement. Playing appeasement is neither secularism nor neutrality.
Thus, it is this non-payment of a meagre amount of ₹200 a month by a man to his divorced wife that paved the way for a chain of events to happen – Congress’s over turning the judgement, Congress opening the locks of Babri Masjid for Hindus to pray there, BJP taking Ram Mandir as an election issue, BJP growing strong and big in North India and winning a lot of seats in 1989 and 1991 elections, VP Singh government going back on its word to solve the dispute, Advani commencing Rath Yatra, Advani being arrested by Lalu Prasad in Bihar, VP Singh government falling, Chandrashekhar government trying to solve the issue, Congress toppling his government, Mulayam Singh Yadav government firing and killing Kar Sevaks in UP, BJP under Kalyan Singh winning a majority in UP, Babri Masjid being demolished, Bombay riots, Bombay blasts by Dawood group, a Hindutva government forming for the first time in Maharashtra, Vajpayee becoming Prime Minister courtesy Ram Temple movement, Godhra train burning of Hindus, Gujarat riots, Modi becoming the leader and becoming Prime Minister twice, a strong Ram Mandir propenent Yogi Adityanath becoming CM of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Parasaran representing Ram Lalla in court and finally Lord Ram returning back to his throne from exile.
In a way, it looks as if Lord Ram chose to return from exile through a Muslim woman, thus standing as a testimony to the ethos of this great land.