The Bhoomi Pujan event for the construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya is set to take place on the 5th of August, 2020. After the Supreme Court verdict paved the way for the Hindu reclamation of the Janmabhoomi, the Mandir is finally getting built. However, victory was not so easy and great sacrifices had to be made by Hindus across generations for it.
The Supreme Court Ram Mandir verdict in 2019 marked the end of a struggle that lasted over 500 years. In Independent India, there has been a conspiracy of silence to whitewash the crimes that have been committed against the Hindu Community. Not only have historical injustices been brushed under the carpet, efforts have also been made to whitewash even the atrocities that have been meted out to Hindus by the Secular State in Independent India.
One such incidence was the despicable act of police brutality that was inflicted on Hindus in November 1990 at the behest of then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mulayam Singh. The Samajwadi Party patriarch had ordered fire upon the Karsevaks who had gathered at Ayodhya. It was later revealed by Republic TV in a sting that the UP Government conspired to hide the actual number of Hindu deaths and although the official number was 16, the actual number was quite higher.
It was also revealed that a lot of the Hindus who lost their lives were buried instead of being cremated in order to hide the real number of deceased Hindus. In 2016, Mulayam Singh Yadav had said that although he regretted ordering the killing of Karsevaks, it was necessary to “keep the faith of Muslims in this country intact.” It was in this carnage that the heroic Kothari brothers lost their lives.
The mainstream media in India has conspired to whitewash the horror that was forced on Hindus on the 2nd of November, 1990. And as it turns out, they are engaging in such attempts even now. Several media houses have published timelines of events in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, and we have discovered that numerous media networks do not even mention the cruel slaughter of Hindus by the UP Government in their timeline of the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute.
While they maintain a chronological record of events that transpired since the demolition of the Ram Mandir at Janmabhoomi during the Mughal era, mainstream media reports entirely ignore the shooting of the Karsevaks at Ayodhya in 1990. Business Standard in its timeline mentions the arrest of L.K. Advani in September 1990 and then skips directly to the demolition of the disputed structure in December 1992.
One would have expected any reputed news network that takes itself seriously to mention the slaughter of Karsevaks by the Police in November 1990, however, Business Standard does not believe it is necessary. The Hindu Businessline takes a similar approach. It mentions events of September and even October 1990 but avoids mentioning the police shooting of Karsevaks in November.
Along expected lines, Shekhar Gupta’s The Print, too, ignores the massacre of Karsevaks on the orders of the Mulayam Singh Yadav government. It takes a leap from L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra in September 1990 to Kalyan Singh’s acquisition of the 2.77 acre of land around the Janmabhoomi in 1991.
NDTV, of course, went a step further and mentioned that the Babri Masjid was damaged partially in 1990 by VHP kayakartas but ignored entirely the slaughter of Karsevaks. One would have imagined such killings of Karsevaks was a pretty huge event but it does not appear as such in the eyes of our mainstream media.
Firstpost skipped the events of 1990 entirely. They mention the events of 1989 briefly and then move directly to 1992. It is made to appear as if nothing of consequence happened in 1990.
When Indian mainstream media networks do not mention the brutal slaughter of Karsevaks, it is perhaps too much to expect foreign news networks to mention the tragedy. But then, it is only to be expected that the BBC which is known to further a biased narrative against Hindutva would not mention the catastrophe in its timeline.
When a timeline of any issue of historical importance is prepared, it is expected that the major incidents will make it to the list even if it makes the timeline a little longer than previously planned. A timeline of major events ought to contain in them the major events that occurred related to the matter at hand, in this case, the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute.
When readers come across such timelines, they believe that they will be made aware of all the major events related to the episode. But in this instance, quite clearly, the readers are not receiving what they should. Quite clearly, the mainstream media networks do not believe that such a grave loss of Hindu life was worth mentioning in its timeline of major events.
It only goes on to demonstrate the complete disregard for Hindu lives in the eyes of the mainstream media. It is also an effort to to obliterate the grave injustice that Hindus suffered under the Mulayam Singh government from public memory. It is through these acts of omission that the mainstream media whitewashes the gross injustice that Hindus have suffered during the struggle for Ram Janmabhoomi.
