Religion though is meant to unite and help people achieve a better and a peaceful life but unfortunately history has proved the contrary. Instead of living peacefully and going along with the teachings of one’s religion, one have tried to impose and spread one’s religion by different means, and all this have led to various wars and killings and the same has been witnessed throughout the history. I am going to talk about one such incident, “The Ram-Mandir- Babri Masjid case” which is most commonly Known as the Ayodhya dispute.
Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical and a religious debate in India which pertains to the ownership of land in the ancient city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The issue revolves around the control of a site traditionally regarded among Hindu’s to be the birth place of the seventh incarnation of Vishnu i.e. Lord Ram, the history and location of Babri Masjid and whether the ancient temple was demolished or modified to built a mosque.
Today i.e on 09.11.2019, Supreme Court through a constitutional bench headed over by the Chief Justice of India Shri Ranjan Gogoi gave a historic judgment and paved the way for the construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site and directed the centre to allot a 5 acre alternate plot to the Sunni Waqf board for the construction of the mosque. In a historic 1045 pages judgment the Supreme Court decided upon the contentions of the disputing parties and protected the interest of both the parties by solving the dispute in the spirit of due process of law. Every point of discrepancy was given adequate time and opportunity and once again proved that everyone is equal before the law. It was a unanimous judgment and the judgment delivery started at around 10:30 A.M. The Supreme court also dismissed plea of Shia waqf board against Sunni Waqf board on Claim to Babri Masjid. Nirmohi Akhara’s suit was also dismissed by the apex court as not maintainable, it was further decided that the Nirmohi Akhara did not have a shebait right (priestly rights). The judgment was given keeping in view the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India and the revenue records which clearly showed that the land was in the possession of the government. The disputed land is now given for the construction of Ram Mandir and the mosque will be shifted to the 5 acre land given to the Sunni Waqf board.
Talking about the History of the site, Rama is one of the most widely worshipped Hindu deities and is considered the seventh incarnation of god Vishnu. According to the Ramayana, Rama was born in Ayodhya to Queen Kaushalya and King Dashrath. According to the Garuda Puran, a Hindu religious text, Ayodhya is one of seven sacred sites where Moksha, or a final release from the cycle of death and rebirth, may be obtained. Babur was the first Mughal emperor of India and the founder of the Mughal Empire. It is believed that one of his generals, Mir Baqi, built the Babri Masjid (“Babur’s Mosque”) in 1528 on his orders. The belief came into currency since 1813–14, when the East India Company’s surveyor Francis Buchanan reported that he found an inscription on the mosque walls which attested to this fact. He also recorded the local tradition, which believed that emperor Auranzeb. (1658–1707) built the mosque after demolishing a temple dedicated to Rama. The first recorded instances of religious violence in Ayodhya occurred in the 1850s over a nearby mosque at Hanuman Garhi. The Babri mosque was attacked by Hindus in the process. Since then, local Hindu groups made occasional demands that they should have the possession of the site and that they should be allowed to build a temple on the site, all of which were denied by the colonial government. In 1946, an offshoot of the Hindu Mahashaba called Akhil Bharatiya Ramayana Mahasabha (ABRM) started an agitation for the possession of the site. In 1949, Sant Digvijay Nath of Gorakhnath Math joined the ABRM and organised a 9-day continuous recitation of Ramcharit Manas, at the end of which the Hindu activists broke into the mosque and placed idols of Rama and Sita inside. People were led to believe that the idols had ‘miraculously’ appeared inside the mosque. The date of the event was 22 December 1949. Jawaharlal Nehru insisted that the idols should be removed. However, the local official, K.K.K. Nair, known for his Hindu nationalist connections, refused to carry out orders, claiming that it would lead to communal riots. The police locked the gates so that the public (Hindus as well as Muslims) could not enter. However, the idols remained inside and priests were allowed entry to perform daily worship. So, the mosque had been converted into a de facto temple. Both the Sunni Wakf Board and the ABRM filed civil suits in a local court staking their respective claims to the site. The land was declared to be under dispute, and the gates remained locked. In September 1990, BJP leader L.K.Advani began a “rath yatra” (pilgrimage procession) to Ayodhya in order to generate support for the movement. Advani later stated in his memoirs, “If Muslims are entitled to an Islamic atmosphere in Mecca, and if Christians are entitled to a Christian atmosphere in the Vatican, why is it wrong for the Hindus to expect a Hindu atmosphere in Ayodhya?” The yatra resulted in communal riots in many cities in its wake, prompting the government of Bihar to arrest Advani. In spite of this, a large number of ‘Kar Sevaks’ or Sangh Parivar activists reached Ayodhya and tried to attack the mosque. They were stopped by the Uttar Pradesh police and the paramilitary forces, resulting in a pitched battle in which several kar sevaks were killed. On 6 December 1992, the VHP and its associates, including the BJP, organised a rally involving 150,000 VHP and BJP kar sevaks at the site of the mosque. The ceremonies included speeches by the BJP leaders such as Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. The mob grew restive through the duration of the speeches, and stormed the mosque shortly after noon. A police cordon placed there to protect the mosque was heavily outnumbered. The mosque was attacked with a number of improvised tools, and brought to the ground in a few hours. This occurred despite a commitment from the state government to the Supreme Court that the mosque would not be harmed. More than 2000 people were killed in the riots following the demolition. Riots broke out in many major Indian cities including Mumbai, Bhopal, Delhi and Hyderabad. A suit was filed in the Allahabad High Court and the court decided that the disputed land should be distributed in three equal parts amongst the Hindu maha Sabha, Sunni waqf board and the Nirmohi Akhara. The same has been appealed in the supreme court and the court gave its judgment today.
Well, what I believe is, religion has always tried to create peace and harmony in the World, let it be Islam, Christianity or Hinduism, every religion has always professed peace but not us. We humans have always tried dominating others and professing our psychology and thought process over others. Babur built a mosque by demolishing a temple, Mohmad Ghazni looted and destroyed Somnath and built a mosque, and years later we did the same, we destroyed the mosque and built a temple (I am talking about Sardar Patel reconstructing Somnath Temple on the original site) and now we will have Ram Mandir back. I don’t understand it, why do we like destruction that much, what did Babur or Mohd. Ghazni achieved by destroying the temples and what we achieved by destroying the mosque, nothing I guess, we just lost something, we lost thousands of lives and a cultural heritage.
The Somnath temple, howsoever beautiful it might be now, will never have the originality it had years ago and the newly built Ram Mandir could never have that historical significance that it once had. We will never have the masjid built by Babur anymore. We are doing nothing but destroying history, though a new mosque will be constructed but it will never be the same as one did by Babur, and in all this process we have lost to humanity, we lost culture and we lost lives. When all the religion teaches one and the same thing i.e. to pray god and profess love why can’t we do it by ourselves. Why can’t we just spread peace over the world, why can’t we create a World where people feel loved, feel important and have compassion? Why do we need a Ram Mandir or a Babri Masjid when we all are one, when God is one.?