Ayodhya debate

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The Ayodhya debate
Timeline
Babri Mosque
Ram Janmabhoomi
Archaeology of Ayodhya
2005 Ram Janmabhoomi attack in Ayodhya
People and organizations
L. K. Advani
All India Babri Masjid Action Committee
Babur
Bharatiya Janata Party
Koenraad Elst
Indian National Congress

The Ayodhya debate is a political, historical and socio-religious debate that was prevalent especially in the 1990's in South Asia.

The Babri Mosque was a mosque constructed by order of the first Mughal emperor of India, Babur, in Ayodhya in the 16th century. Before the 1940s, the mosque was called Masjid-i Janmasthan ("mosque of the birthplace").^[1] The mosque stood on the Ramkot ("Rama's fort") hill (also called Janamsthan ("birthplace"). It was destroyed by Hindu activists in a riot on December 6, 1992.

Contents 1 Before the demolition 2 Politics 3 Hindu view 4 Muslim views 5 Secularist view 6 Political fallout 7 2002 Gujarat violence 8 References 9 Further reading 9.1 In fiction

[edit] Before the demolition

It was until about 1990 the standard view that an ancient Ram Janmabhoomi temple was demolished and replaced with the Babri Mosque. References such as the 1986 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica reported that "Rama’s birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babar in 1528 on the site of an earlier temple".^[2] According to the Hindu view, the ancient temple could have been destroyed on the orders of Mughal emperor Babur. This view is challenged by many Muslims, and 'Marxist'^[3] and 'Nehruvian' Indian historians (many a times referred to as'Mainstream' historians) since the early 1990s.

[edit] Politics

Many Indian observers see the controversy surrounding this mosque within the framework of Hindu fundamentalism and Hindu Revivalism. It was commonly believed by Hindus until about 1990 that the mosque stood on an ancient Hindu temple, though some commentators disagree and say that although the judiciary has been debating on the dispute of Babri Masjid (mosque) in Ayodhya for more than 40 years, it had remained a nonissue until the mid-1980s [1]. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1989 reported that the Babri Mosque stood "on a site traditionally identified" as an earlier temple dedicated to Rama's birthplace. ^[4] According to their view, the ancient temple could have been destroyed on the orders of Mughal emperor Babur. This view is challenged by the Muslims, Indian secular, Marxist ^[5] and mainstream Indian historians since the early 1990s.

[edit] Hindu view

Historians say that in the year 1527 the Muslim invader Babur came down from Ferghana in Central Asia and attacked the Hindu King of Chittodgad, Rana Sangrama Singh at Sikri and with the help of cannons and artillery (used in India for the first time) overcame Rana Sangrama Singh and his allies.

After this victory, Babar decided to spread terror among the subjugated Hindu population. His general, Mir Baqi was incharge of the region. Mir Baqi came to Ayodhya in 1528 and gave special attention to the main and biggest temple in the town. This was the temple which was built on the place where Samrat Shri Ramachandra, an ancient King of India was born. Samrat Shri Ramachandra was (and still is) revered by the devout among the Hindus as a god, also referred to as Rama, believed by Hindus to be an avatar of Vishnu.

Babar, whose general Mir Baqi allegedly destroyed this temple at Ayodhya, built by the Hindus to commemorate their king Samrat Ramchandra. Mir Baqi built a mosque at the site of the destroyed temple. This was called the Babri Masjid (Mosque), named after King Babar.

The claim of the destruction of this temple and the erection of a mosque in its place is also mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The advocates say that many Indians - and even many of the educated Indians - are unaware of this truth. Indian History books at School and College do not tell the story in its true detail. Hindu advocates allege that the Government of India has 'shamelessly' pandered to the muslims in this and other issues in order to secure the minority electoral bloc as part of their partisan vote bank politics, the VHP especially voicing this concern.

Advocates also allege that the excessive sypmathy for muslims in this issue is due to a zeitgeist of Pseudo-secularism in Indian society brought about by communist thinking, where struggles between Hindus and Muslims are viewed as a "class struggle" rather than a communal one. This identification of muslims as an "opressed underclass" are viewed as fallacious, since many Indian muslims are quite wealthy and well-represented in many walks of life.

They claim that the Muslims claims to the region are unfounded, in violation of common law and based on the beliefs and practices of Islamic Fundamentalism. They allege that this is part of a malicious agenda of hate against Hindus and is an attempt to delegitimize the Hindu ethos in India.

Until 1989 when the BJP made into a political issue there had been no question about the site’s history [2]. All the written sources, whether Hindu, Muslim or European, were in agreement about the pre-existence of a Rama temple at the site. “Rama’s birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babar in 1528 on the site of an earlier temple”, according to the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry “Ayodhya”. However, this text was changed in subsequent editions. Neither was there any document contradicting this scenario: no account of a forest chopped down to make way for the mosque (already unlikely in the centre of an ancient town), no sales contract of real estate to the mosque’s builder, nothing of the kind. By contrast, there were testimonies of Hindus bewailing and Muslims boasting of the replacement of the temple with a mosque; and of Hindus under Muslim rule coming as close as possible to the site in order to celebrate Rama’s birthday every year in April, in continuation of the practice at the time when the temple stood.

In case authors of testimonies may be unreliable, there was also the archaeological evidence: in the 1970s, a team of the Archaeological Survey of India led by Prof. B.B. Lal dug out some trenches just outside the mosque and found rows of pillar-bases which must have supported a larger building predating the mosque. Moreover, in the mosque itself, small black pillars with Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples to flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism.

The only remaining question about the site was its status in the period 1192-1528. In 1192 and the subsequent years, practically all the Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries in North India were demolished by Mohammed Ghori and his Turkish invaders. It is impossible that the medieval temple at the site could have survived until 1528. The most likely scenario is the one well-attested at another famous temple site: the Somnath temple in Gujarat. No less than nine times did Hindus reclaim it as a temple, until Muslims retook it and turned it into a mosque again. Since Ayodhya was a provincial capital of the Delhi Sultanate, opportunities for wresting the site from Muslim control were certainly more limited than in the case of the outlying Somnath temple. Then again, the frequent infighting among the Muslim elite may have given rebellious Hindus some opportunities too. From peculiarities in the architecture of the Babri Masjid, art historians on both sides of the debate (Sushil Srivastava, R. Nath) have deduced that the main part of the structure had been built well before the Moghul invasion, probably in the 14th century. In that case, the tradition that it was built by Mir Baqi may be based on the following scenario: towards the end of the Sultanate period, Hindus may have managed to recapture the site and to turn it into a functioning temple, until Babar and his lieutenant Mir Baqi firmly imposed Muslim control again and gave some finishing touches to the mosque architecture in replacement of any Hindu elements that had come to adorn it. But this must for now be kept inside speculative brackets. What is certain is that a major Hindu temple at the site was demolished by Islamic iconoclasm and replaced with a mosque symbolizing the victory of Islam over Infidelism. Of that, evidence is plentiful and of many types.

The Hindu Nationalist movement has been pressing for reclaiming these Muslim buildings and calls this period a period of Hindu slavery and foreign rule. This is often unpalatable to the minority Muslim community and secularists who consider this period as culturally Indian noting that these rulers made India their own home and enriched India's varied traditions.

The Hindu nationalists and some western scholars believe that more than 3000 places of Muslim worship have been built over Hindu & Jain temples^{[citation needed]} and in the immediate VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal are asking for three of them, Ram Janmbhumi -Ayodhya, Kashi Vishwanath- Varanasi and Krishna Janmbhumi - Mathura .^[6] Forced by this situation and in the eyes of this movement, engaged in the so called politics of Minority Appeasement, Congress government under P.V.Narsinharao enacted a law to maintain status quo of all the religious places as on 1947 except Ramjanmbhumi- Babri Masjid which is sub judice.

The legal case continues on the title deed of the land tract which is for the major part a Muslim trust (Wakf Board) or government controlled property; while the Muslim parties have not agreed to hand over the land (not unlike the Masjid Shaheedganj case in Lahore) even if it is proven a temple existed and demanding it be proven that it is indeed Ramjanmbhumi (i.e. Ram was born on this site), the Hindu side wants a law in parliament to have it constructed saying faith in the existence of Ram Janmabhoomi can not be decided in a court of law.

[edit] Muslim views

Muslim claims over the site are largely represented by the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, demanding the restoration of the site and the mosque. It also holds that the case should be decided by the courts and if it is proved that a Hindu Temple existed at the spot the same will be handed over to the Hindu party; while the Hindu parties have been asking the minority Muslims to show magnanimity by handing over the land for the construction of the temple.Some Muslim members of the Hindu nationalist party BJP do not share the views of the Babri Masjid Action Committee like Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, president of the so called Muslim Youth Conference, an organisation known for its cooperation with the Hindu parties but equally unpopular with the Muslims who believe he is not Muslim, he said: "It is the duty of every nationalist Indian to protect the birthplace of Lord Rama to save India's honour, prestige and cultural heritage.... Anti-national and communal activities of Muslim fundamentalists are a blot on the entire community... It is the duty of all nationalist Muslims to expose such designs and accept the truth.” (Indian Express, 21/9/1990.)

Hindu parties have also cited that a Muslim scholar Asghar Ali Engineer wrote: "The Muslims, in my opinion, should show magnanimity and [make] a noble gesture of gifting away the mosque... (“Communalism and Communal Violence in India (Ajanta Publ., Delhi 1989), p.320.)However, a majority of Muslims question this idea saying as minority community and thereby deprived - they should themselves be shown magnanimity.

One option discussed was also to build the temple next to the mosque or to relocate the mosque to another site (many mosques in Islamic countries have been relocated for reasons such as road expansion).However, Indian Muslim parties claim that the place of prayer is what is constituted by the mosque and not the structure.

Muslims have claimed that this issue is just the crest of an iceberg. The Hindu parties whether shunning violence or doing it are just waiting for another moment to repatriate other Muslim places of worship. They cite many places where actions by the right wing Hindu party BJP and its affiliate religious organisations have either led to the closure of these places of worship to the Muslims or partial curtailment of the prayers to a few days in a week or limiting the number of people who could perform the prayers.

[edit] Secularist view

A large number of prominent people, many of them sympathisers of the Communist/Congress party oppose the destruction of the Babri Mosque e.g. Anand Patwardhan, Gyanendra Pandey, Pujari Laldas etc. But it is claimed by some other Hindus associated with the BJP led movement that at the time the structure was felled, it did touch a chord with millions of Hindus who looked to this incident as a fountainhead of Hindu religious nationalism in India. Muslims on the other hand regarded this as a black day for the Indian nationhood and Indian secularism. While Muslims observe December 6 , when this historic mosque and monument was felled as a Black day, Patriotic Hindus observe this as the Shourya Divas - Victory Day.

The situation regarding the Ram Janmabhoomi has been compared to the Temple Mount controversies and claims in Israel by the Middle East scholar and Islam critic Daniel Pipes [3]. In particular, Pipes writes:

"Ayodhya prompts several thoughts relating to the Temple Mount. It shows that the Temple Mount dispute is far from unique. Moslems have habitually asserted the supremacy of Islam through architecture, building on top of the monuments of other faiths (as in Jerusalem and Ayodhya) or appropriating them (e.g. the Ka'ba in Mecca and the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople)."

[edit] Political fallout

The descriptions of temple destructions in Muslim chronicles have been the matter of some controversy.

Moreover, the Shah Bano controversy that turned down the divorce provisions of Muslim personal laws in India and the aftermath in which the Indian parliament enacted a law to reinstate them contributed to some Hindus claiming that Muslims were enjoying a favoured status. Some observers see this as the major factor for the flare of this movement at the same time the Muslims regarded this as an attempt to curtail their religious freedom.

[edit] 2002 Gujarat violence

Riots in Gujarat in 2002 were caused as a consequence to Godhra Carnage where more than 57 Hindu Kar Sevaks were burnt to death while returning from the Ayodhya site in a train. This was perpetrated allegedly by the Ghanchi Muslims of Gujarat, which has, as of October 2006, been established by the Gujarat High Court. The riots led violence resulting in around 1000 deaths,mostly Muslims. As a consequence, the Gujarat government was severely chastized for ignoring (as well as allegedly endorsing) the riots. On the same year, Muslim terrorists led the Akshardham Temple attack on the Hindu temple in Gujarat. Also. the riots were followed by the rise of Wahhabi Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism among Gujarati Muslims[4].

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. 1996. Edited, translated and annotated by Wheeler M. Thacktson. New York and London: Oxford University Press.
• The Ayodhya Reference: Supreme Court Judgement and Commentaries. 1995. New Delhi:Voice of India.
• Ayodhya and the Future of India. 1993. Edited by Jitendra Bajaj. Madras: Centre for Policy Studies.
• Elst, Koenraad. 1991. Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society. 1991. New Delhi: Voice of India. [5]
• Elst, Koenraad, Ayodhya, The Finale - Science versus Secularism the Excavations Debate (2003) ISBN 81-85990-77-8
• Elst, Koenraad, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002) ISBN 81-85990-75-1
• Emmanuel, Dominic. 'The Mumbai bomb blasts and the Ayodhya tangle', National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City, August 27, 2003).
• Sita Ram Goel: Hindu Temples - What Happened to Them, Voice of India, Delhi 1991. [6] [7]
• Harsh Narain. 1993. The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources. Delhi: Penman Publishers.
• R. Nath. Babari Masjid of Ayodhya, Jaipur 1991.
• Rajaram, N.S. (2000). Profiles in Deception: Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New Delhi: Voice of India
• Thakur Prasad Varma and Swarajya Prakash Gupta: Ayodhya ka Itihas evam Puratattva— Rigveda kal se ab tak (‘History and Archaeology of Ayodhya— From the Time of the Rigveda to the Present’). Bharatiya Itihasa evam Samskrit Parishad and DK Printworld. New Delhi.
• Thapar, Romila. 'A Historical Perspective on the Story of Rama' in Thapar (2000).
• Thapar, Romila. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University, 2000) ISBN 0-19-564050-0.
• Ayodhya ka Itihas evam Puratattva— Rigveda kal se ab tak (‘History and Archaeology of Ayodhya— From the Time of the Rigveda to the Present’) by Thakur Prasad Varma and Swarajya Prakash Gupta. Bharatiya Itihasa evam Samskrit Parishad and DK Printworld. New Delhi. (An important work on the archaeology of the temple.)
• History versus Casuistry: Evidence of the Ramajanmabhoomi Mandir presented by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to the Government of India in December-January 1990-91. New Delhi: Voice of India.

[edit] In fiction

• The Babri riots are depicted in the 1995 film Bombay.
• Nasrin, Taslima: Lajja