- After the Babri Mosque come another 5,000 mosques
India’s Supreme Court ordered a settlement of the Ayodhya dispute through ‘mediation’ despite resistance by the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas (Ram birth-place trust). This decision is sequel to the court’s first error of opening a Pandora’s Box by allowing excavation of the Babri Mosque site. On 6 December 1992, a mob under Shankaracharya’s razed the mosque. They claimed that the mosque was a ‘temple built over an 11th century temple that marked the birth place, 900,000 years ago of the god-king Ram’. The Frontline dated July 4-17, 1998 called it ‘Ram drama’. In their over-ebullience, the India media forgot that British colonial rulers had annexed the mosque site and created separate Muslim and Hindu places of worship in 1859. The trust originally owned only one acre of land, the rest of the land (additional 42 acres of so-called undisputed land) was given to it on lease by then chief minister Kalyan Singh in 1992 to develop a Ram Katha Kunj (park)!
Besides killing Muslims en masse, the fanatic Hindus use anti-Muslim riots in India as an opportunity to dispossess the affluent Muslims of their hard-earned belongings (movable and immovable)
It is unfortunate that even India’s apex-court judges buckled under the influence of a Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas (Ram birthplace trust) to investigate the fictitious claim about Ram’s birth. The court’s orders about excavation and subsequent ‘mediation’ are porous. The Muslims owned the disputed site since times immemorial. There is no evidence that the Mughal Emperor Babar ever constructed a mosque at Ayodhya after demolishing a temple. Why there is no mention of Babri Masjid in Babur’s memoir Baburnama, Humayunnama by Babur’s daughter Gulbadan Begum, Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazal, or Tuzk-e-Jahangiri? The first reference to Babri Masjid appears in a travel account by the Jesuit priest Joseph Tiefenthaler in 1768. The inscriptions, inside the mosque, were fixed in the mosque 280 years after its supposed construction in 1528.
Babur did visit Gwalior temples. But, neither he, nor his commander Mir Baqi (distinct from Baqi on masjid inscriptions), ever visited Ayodhya. Mir Baqi of the Baburnama was never governor of Ayodhya. Why Hindus did not raise the issue during the Mughal or British raj? Now some BJP’s legislators have demanded excavation of 3000 to 5000 mosques, including Delhi’s Grand Mosque. MP Sakshi Maharaj even offered to be hanged if idols were not found underneath the staircase of the Jamia Masjid. He demanded that Modi 2.0 should ‘bring in a law for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya as he did in regard to Somnath Temple before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections’. No chronicle mentions Babur ever constructed a mosque at Ayodhya after demolishing a temple.
The dispute is about property. The claim that god (Ram) was born there is fictitious. The Muslims owned disputed site since times immemorial. Shankaracharya’s Nyas originally owned only one acre of land, the rest of the land (an additional 42 acres of so-called undisputed land) was given to it on lease by Kalyan Singh government in 1992 to develop a Ram Katha Kunj (park). Another pernicious demand is that Indian Muslims should be pushed into Pakistan. Or, at best, they should live in India as ‘aliens’. It is said that population exchange was integral to Partition plan. India’s Constitution drafter R Ambedkar and India’s president Dr Rajendra Prasad also supported the exchange idea,
BJP’s MP Sakshi Maharaj even offered to be hanged if idols were not found underneath the staircase of the Delhi Jamia Masjid. He demanded that Modi 2.0 should ‘bring in a law for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya as he did in regard to Somnath Temple. Earlier, Uttar Pradesh BJP’s president Vinay Katiyar had warned the Muslims that if they failed to take the initiative to facilitate the construction of a temple at the disputed Ayodhya site, the Hindus may stake their claim on 5,000 sites in courts. At a press conference in New Delhi, Katiyar said, “The court has shown the way. Why should we confine (ourselves) to Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura? Why not talk of 5,000? All sites should be dug up to verify the claims on the pattern of Ram Janmabhoomi”.
The Babri Mosque site became disputed over the period 1949 to 2005, owing to Hindutva fanatics. The court ignored the maxim that ‘possession is nine-points of ownership in law’. For centuries, Muslims’ possession of the Babri Mosque remained undisputed. Possession of property for a prescribed period makes the non-entitled ‘stranger’ an ‘owner by reason of prescriptive ownership’. Legal decisions abound concerning owners of immovable property owners who lost their titles to trespassers or adverse claimants because of the lawful owner’s cavalier attitude in protecting his property. The statutory provisions contained in Articles 64 and 65 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1963, further elucidate this point. Section 28 of the Limitation Act, deals with the extinguishment of the right to property. The Court ignored proven possession of the disputed site by Muslims. For centuries, Muslims’ possession of the Babri Mosque remained undisputed.
When Jinnah left for Pakistan on 7 August 1947, India’s first Home Minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, said, ‘The poison had been removed from the body of India’. He added, ‘As for the Muslims they have the roots, their sacred places and their centres here. I do not know what they can possibly do in Pakistan. It will not be long before they return to us’.
The anti-Muslim flamboyant statements by BJP’s legislators are capable of triggering anti-Muslim riots. As far back as 1809, bloody anti-Muslim riots took place at Benares on a quasi-Babri Mosque issue– the allegation that Aurangzeb, during his tenure, had built a mosque atop a temple.
The Muslim minority in India fears that riots are a convenient excuse to massacre Muslims. In the wake of the 2002 Godhra train-bogey fire-incident, thousands of Muslims were killed. Later, investigations revealed that the fire was caused by a stove inside the bogey. No person from the outside had intruded into the compartment.
Besides killing Muslims en masse, the fanatic Hindus use anti-Muslim riots in India as an opportunity to dispossess the affluent Muslims of their hard-earned belongings (movable and immovable). In the wake of the post-Godhra carnage, ‘more than 15,000 Muslim families across Gujarat are still not being allowed to return to their native villages. Many of them had been forced to sell their property at throw-away prices. Let us hope that history does not repeat itself.
It is not facts but fiction that is being debated in the Babri Mosque to make Muslim lives more miserable. Indian Muslims are a gagged voice. All the nine Muslim candidates nominated by BJP were ‘mysteriously’ defeated. The current wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in Modi 2.0 La-la Land caricatures his slogan sab ka vishwas (everybody’s trust), and Nehruvian and Patel’s secularism.