[Monthslong religious riots followed, killing around 2,000 people. The question of what to do dragged in India’s courts. Hindu litigants pushed to erect a temple. Muslims vowed to rebuild the mosque. India’s identity as an inclusive and secular nation hung in the balance.]
By
Kai Schultz and Hari Kumar
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A model of a proposed
Hindu temple draws visitors in Ayodhya, India. Since elections
in May, Hindus have
become increasingly confident that the temple will be built
on a disputed site. Credit
Rebecca Conway for The New York Times
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AYODHYA,
India — The barefooted
pilgrims passed by watchtowers, checkpoints and walls topped with barbed wire.
They emptied their pockets, stepped through four metal detectors and lined up,
single file, to enter a path enclosed by a narrow cage.
At the end of the walkway was a tent with a
golden idol at its entrance. Inside is the spot Hindus consider the birthplace
of the god Ram.
Visitors bottlenecked to catch a glimpse.
Women placed soggy bills into a donations box. And the pilgrims chanted, “Hail
Lord Ram!”
For decades, Hindus and Muslims have sparred
over this speck of land in Ayodhya, India’s most disputed religious site, a few
barren acres near the country’s northern farmlands.
Now, many Hindus are confident the land will
remain in their hands.
A 16th-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, once
stood here, a reminder of India’s history under Mughal rule. In 1992, Hindu
activists demolished the stone structure, spurred by the belief that Ram, a
widely revered deity, was born thousands of years ago on the same spot.
Monthslong religious riots followed, killing
around 2,000 people. The question of what to do dragged in India’s courts.
Hindu litigants pushed to erect a temple. Muslims vowed to rebuild the mosque.
India’s identity as an inclusive and secular nation hung in the balance.
Judges feared more bloodshed if they hinted
at partiality, though a de facto solution has persisted: Men who destroyed the
mosque erected a makeshift tent that approximated a Hindu temple. It still
stands, drawing thousands of visitors every day.
With the recent commanding election victory
for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., many
expect that the arrangement will be made permanent.
Ashok Baba Saheb Bhosle, 55, a sweat-slicked
farmer plopped near the site’s exit, said a ruling from India’s Supreme Court,
which could come this year, seemed a mere formality.
“It is 100 percent going to be a temple,” Mr.
Bhosle said as a cheer went up among his friends, who had traveled hundreds of
miles from central India to pray in Ayodhya. “Modi is in the temple!” he cried out.
“It’s Modi’s house!”
He may be right.
Mr. Modi’s party, with its ties to far-right
groups that believe in Hindu supremacy, has doggedly supported building the
temple. During a recent speech, Amit Shah, India’s new home minister and a
close adviser to Mr. Modi, promised pilgrims that his party would not budge
“even by an inch” from its position. Some of the men who destroyed the mosque
were members of the party.
Preparations to build the temple have already
started. At a yard run by the Ram Birthplace Trust, an organization overseeing
construction, men pounded chisels into slabs of stone, carving swirls of
flowers.
For years, the trust has readied pillars for
the temple. Tour guides speaking half a dozen languages lead pilgrims with
shaved heads, a mark of piety, around finished pillars inscribed with “Hail
Lord Ram.” They claim that the pieces can be assembled in just 24 hours if the
court gives permission.
Swami Ram Vilas Vedanti, a white-bearded
leader of the trust and a former B.J.P. parliamentarian, said erecting the
temple was about correcting a historical injustice. His group believes Mughal
rulers tried to humiliate Hindus by taking over such a sacred spot.
In 2010, a lower court divided the disputed
land between Hindu and Muslim groups. Mr. Vedanti said a ruling like this one —
which the Supreme Court stayed — was not acceptable to either side.
“Eighty percent of Muslims believe we should
construct a temple,” he said. “Only a few are resisting.”
Some Muslims in Ayodhya seemed fatalistic.
Since Mr. Modi rose to power in 2014, the far
right has never been more enfranchised to spread an us-versus-them mentality.
Such thinking has tried to make villains of India’s roughly 200 million Muslims
and shrunk space for dissent.
In the last few years, governmental bodies
have started rewriting textbooks, cutting sections on Muslim rulers and
changing Muslim place names to Hindu ones.
Vigilante mobs have killed dozens of Muslims
and lower-caste Indians suspected of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal in
Hinduism. Activists found that most of the time the attackers got away with
their crimes.
Increasingly, hate crimes have also involved
yelling Hindu slogans. In June, a Muslim man was tied to a poll in eastern
India, beaten by a mob for hours and forced to shout “Hail Lord Ram.” He later
died of his injuries.
In his tiny living room, Iqbal Ansari, a
Muslim litigant whose family has publicly supported the mosque for decades,
offered none of the cheery enthusiasm or grand predictions expressed by the
temple’s supporters. He spoke numbly about the dispute, playing down reports of
persecution and saying that whatever the court decides, “we will have to accept
it.”
Zafaryab Jilani, a lawyer advising Mr. Ansari
and other Muslim litigants, tried to stay upbeat.
For now, he said, the court has kept a
healthy and impartial distance from the political theater. Judges recently
appointed mediators to meet with lawyers, who have completed several rounds of
talks.
Mr. Jilani said that Muslims he met with
privately were more incensed than they let on, and that the fight for a mosque
was not one they could give up in good faith.
“A mosque does not belong to Muslims or any
other human being,” he said. “It belongs to God almighty. No Muslim has the
right to surrender it.”
But among the temple’s most vehement
defenders, it was hard to find anybody willing to concede that a mosque had
even existed.
At a storeroom managed by the Ram Birthplace
Trust, where a replica of the planned temple sits on a stage, Hazari Lal, a
squat, jovial caretaker, said activists had simply torn down a “disputed
structure.”
“It was not a mosque,” he said. “Politicians
gave it that name.”
He brightened at this line of thought, and
recounted his own role in the demolition.
In December 1992, Mr. Lal and other men
wearing saffron headbands broke through a security cordon, screaming, “Atom
bomb! Atom bomb!” and then climbing the building’s domed top. They slammed
shovels, hammers and spears into the stone facade and toppled walls using
ropes.
Rubble crushed Mr. Lal’s arm. Thousands more
gathered, setting Muslim shops ablaze. Foreign journalists were beaten.
Terrified families fled Ayodhya, where blood seeped into the city’s main river.
Violence spread from India into neighboring countries.
For his involvement, Mr. Lal spent several
weeks in prison. Looking back, he said he had no regrets: A “long unfinished
job” was finally coming to an end.
“We people had no fear then, and no fear
now,” he said, smiling and holding up his mangled arm. “Very soon you will see
a temple here. Everything is ready.”
