Oldest Babri litigant passes away: Hashim Ansari was a true liberal who died unsung

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people," said Martin Luther King Junior a long time ago.

Indeed, the oldest living litigant in the Babri Masjid case, Hashim Ansari, 96, who died unsung in the wee hours on Wednesday morning at Ayodhya, may not have read the writings of Martin Luther King Junior. But he certainly felt the same way, more so in the evening of his life. He was pained to see the “passiveness” of the silent majority in the ongoing tug of war between vocal sections of Hindus and Muslims over the seemingly unending Ayodhya tangle. He had turned a complete liberal in the true sense of the word.

Two years before his death, he had told reporters on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of demolition of the Babari Masjid: “I have seen many ups and downs in this case. I am a poor man. So are most of the Hindus and Muslims in this country. I have realised over the years that vested interests on both sides of the fence are flourishing in life because of this dispute. These people — the contractors of Hinduism and Islam — don’t want a solution. In fact, they would never let peace prevail.”

Speaking in the same breath, he had added: “We need to give our children and grand-children peace without any conflict. Don’t you see that almost all those who are fighting over this issue have become netas, chief ministers, governors and millionaires?”

Ansari was a very, very poor man. All his life, he lived in a hutment of sorts. His father was a tailor. He too took to tailoring. But after Emergency days, when he was sent to Bareilly jail along with many others from both sides of the religious divide, he opened a small cycle repairing shop. That was his only livelihood. But he never grumbled. Nor did he seek help from the high and mighty names with whom he was in touch, thanks to the Ayodhya crisis.

On Ashok Singhal’s death, Hashim Ansari had observed proper mourning. “Singhal sahab was a towering man who could mobilize masses for the Ram Janambhoomi movement”, he had said adding that “the BJP, which could raise its Lok Sabha tally from 2 to 282 seats, could never have reached this height without Singhal Sahab’s efforts.”

Few people know that Ansari had, in fact, initiated a proposal for permanent resolution of the Ayodhya conflict. Along with Mahant Gyan Das, president of Akhara Parishad, he had prepared a blueprint for peaceful co-existence which was meant to be submitted to the Supreme Court for an out-of-the-court settlement. Death intervened abruptly in the meantime.

According to the peace formula agreed upon between Ansari and Das, a hundred-feet high wall was to be built separating a magnificent Ram Mandir and an equally wonderful Masjid on the disputed 70 acres of land in Ayodhya. Ansari had said: “We shall get this proposal for out-of-court settlement signed by all top leaders from both the communities before submitting the papers in the Supreme Court." But now that he is no more on the scene, chances are that the proposal shall find itself hanging in mid-air again. After all, there are too many hawks on both sides of the divide who don’t want this to happen. All this apart, many people were taken back in Ayodhya on 20 October, 2015, when Ansari gave a call for total ban of beef across the country.

“The issue is very sensitive and there shouldn’t be any politics over it," he had said and had described Mohammad Azam Khan’s statements that came in the aftermath of the Dadri lynching incident as communally divisive. He knew he was running against the current. Nevertheless, he carried on in the same vein: “The Samajwadi Party is behaving like the Congress. Muslims supported the Congress for 50 years but the party return-gifted the community a series of communal riots. And now the SP appears to be emulating the Congress.”

But in the cacophony caused by both Hindu and Muslim hardliners, nobody listened to Ansari. He lived poor and died poor. Helpless and buried.