Sonia Gandhi, the top leader of India’s opposition Congress party, has said she wept while watching on television as Hindu extremists tore down the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992.
She said this to the British newspaper The Guardian, in remarks published on Saturday (7 November). “I cried while watching the Babri Masjid being razed on television,” she said. “Through that I understood that India had a long fight ahead to protect its secularism.”
At the time, the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was spreading among hardliners in Uttar Pradesh. The mosque was demolished on the claim that an ancient temple lay beneath it.
Noting that the BJP, now India’s ruling party, had a hand in it, Sonia said: “I understood that India was entering a hard test of protecting the secular India that Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues had dreamed of.”
Sonia also acknowledged that Congress had played a part in the rise of the BJP and its hardline Hindutva in India.
The BJP mocked her after the remarks. Party spokesman Pradeep Bhandari accused Congress of being “anti-Hindu”.
He wrote on X: “Sonia Gandhi sheds tears for Babri Masjid, Sonia Gandhi sheds tears for Batla House. Sonia Gandhi has proved that Congress is pro-Babur and against Lord Ram. Sonia Gandhi’s vote bank will keep shrinking.”
The demolition of the Babri Masjid set off clashes in many parts of India, and their effects lasted a long time.
The BJP had promised to build a Ram temple on the site of the mosque. Prime Minister Narendra Modi fulfilled that promise when the temple was built there in 2024.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report