The
ruling paves the way for Hindus to build a temple where the Babri Mosque once
stood, a decision that raised fears of sectarian tensions.
By
Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir
 |
|
A model of the proposed Hindu
temple to be built at the site where the Babri
Mosque once stood in Ayodhya, India. Credit
Rebecca Conway for
The New York Times
|
NEW DELHI — India’s Supreme Court ruled
in favor of Hindus on Saturday in a decades-old dispute over a holy site
contested by Muslims, handing the prime minister and his followers a major
victory in their quest to remake the country as Hindu and shift it further from
its secular foundation.
The
ruling greenlighted construction of a Hindu temple on a site where a mosque had
stood before Hindu devotees destroyed it in 1992 with sledgehammers and their
bare hands. The demolition of the Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya set the
tone for sectarian tensions that haunt India today.
The
prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata Party swept India’s
elections in May by campaigning on a Hindu nationalist agenda, and the court
case became an emotionally charged flash point. The party cast its quest to
build a temple as a key step in establishing India as Hindu, wiping away
centuries of oppression at the hands of the Muslim Mughal Empire and British
colonialists.
Many
Hindus believe that the disputed site was the birthplace of their revered god
Ram and that an earlier temple was demolished during Mughal rule to build the
mosque. The case has been in Indian courts since the 1950s, but when it reached
the Supreme Court in 2010, the deity Ram was given legal standing, awkwardly
pitting the god Hindus revere most against the country’s Muslim population.
Many
of India’s Muslims fear that the court’s decision will relegate them to
second-class citizenship and empower Hindu extremists. Though many appeared to
accept the ruling with sullen resignation, they see an India where mob
lynchings of Muslims are seldom condemned by the government and where members
of the governing party are implicated in sectarian violence.
Mr.
Modi tried to calm those fears in an address to the nation on Saturday night.
“Today’s
message is to unite, to associate and to live together,” Mr. Modi said. “In the
new India, fear, animosity and negativity should have no place.”
In
its highly anticipated ruling, the five-judge panel unanimously decided that
the sliver of barren land in question — barely three acres — would be placed in
a government-run trust. The decision allows Hindus to construct a temple, which
they have planned since the Babri Mosque was destroyed.
The
court also ruled that Muslims would be given five acres to build a mosque at a
prominent site in Ayodhya, the town at the center of the dispute, in the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
When
the Babri Mosque was demolished by Hindu extremists, it set off riots across
the country that killed around 2,000 people in some of the worst violence India
had seen since its bloody partition in 1947. In place of the mosque, Hindus
erected a tent resembling a temple, which still stands and draws thousands of
tourists every day.
The
mosque was built in the 1500s during Mughal rule, a period that many right-wing
Hindus believe serves as a reminder of their humiliation under Muslim
occupation. Although sites like the Taj Mahal — also built under the Mughals —
are considered famous symbols of India, right-wing Hindus see them as
testaments to past oppression.
Some
Hindu nationalists want to erase that history and replace it with symbols that
reinforce India as a Hindu nation. About 80 percent of India’s population is
Hindu.
“Post
the independence of our country, we have erased all the symbols of British
imperialism,” said Ram Madhav, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party,
or B.J.P. “The names of our roads have been changed, the statues of Queen
Elizabeth and all of them have been removed.”
India
should undergo a similar exorcism of certain symbols of Mughal rule, including
the Babri Mosque, Mr. Madhav said, calling the 300-year reign of the Mughal
Muslim emperors “cruel.”
“It’s
as simple as that,” he said. “This is not about religion. We are not against
any religion. India is one of the most religiously diverse places in the
world.”
When
the Supreme Court announced its decision, lawyers outside the court yelled,
“Hail Lord Ram” while Hindu devotees blew conch shell horns, a celebratory tradition.
In
Ayodhya, just yards from the disputed site, Indian sadhus shouted, “Praise
mother India,” while devotees passed out sweets to mark the victory. But not
all pockets of Ayodhya were filled with jubilation.
Much
of the town’s Muslims kept off the streets and tried to keep their heads down.
Some appeared to hope that now that the decades-long court decision had been
settled, the sectarian tensions that have become a way of life in Ayodhya would
finally ease.
Iqbal
Ansari, a resident of Ayodhya whose father was a litigant in the case and had
demanded the Babri Mosque be restored, said he welcomed the decision and hoped
it would end years of sectarian strife.
“We
should stop seeing each other from the religious prism,” he said. “The court’s
verdict is final, and we will not appeal against it.”
Mr.
Modi’s government praised the ruling but was quick to call for unity and warned
Hindus against boisterous celebrations for fear they would set off clashes.
While India under Mr. Modi has adopted a Hindu tilt, the prime minister has
also focused on raising India’s profile on the international stage.
Officials
in Delhi have been dismayed by the persistent news coverage of India’s
sectarian disharmony, including antigovernment protests in the Muslim-majority
state of Jammu and Kashmir, which was stripped of its autonomy in August.
In
the hours after Saturday’s ruling, India’s Muslims were divided between those
who want to contest the decision and those who want to move on for the sake of
sectarian harmony. Those who want to contest it have come to see the
restoration of the Babri Mosque as a proclamation of Muslims’ place in India,
and they fear that more religious sites will be targeted for destruction.
After
the court announced its verdict, senior government officials were quick to call
journalists in and promise — anonymously — that no more mosques would be
destroyed and that they, too, wanted to move on and focus on building the
nation. Before this year’s election, Mr. Modi promised to deliver ambitious
growth, to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2025. But growth so far has been
sluggish, with unemployment reaching a 45-year high.
“There
is short-term fear about communal tensions,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s South Asia program. “The
soil is pretty fertile for conflict.”
“The
longer term fear,” he added, “is do Muslims and other minorities of India begin
to feel resigned to a permanent status as second-class citizens? The genius of
India in the way it was constructed is that it avoided that tension eating away
at the state, unlike its neighbors.”
The
ruling comes just three months after Mr. Modi’s government achieved another
goal written into his party’s manifesto by stripping the Muslim-majority state
of Kashmir of its autonomy, increasing central government control over the
territory, which Pakistan also claims.
Many
in the B.J.P. say they believe that Muslims and other minorities in India,
including Christians, have been given a special status that has set them apart
from their Hindu peers, creating a nation with a tiered structure that they
would like to flatten. Hindu temples, for example, are controlled by the
government, while Christians and Muslims control their own churches and
mosques.
Ahead
of the verdict, schools were shut and 4,000 security officers were deployed to
the area in case of sectarian violence. Rallies were banned, shops barred from
selling kerosene and people prevented from collecting bricks or stones.
A
rush of Hindu pilgrims had visited Ayodhya ahead of the verdict. Sudarshan Jain
and his family, pilgrims from Rajasthan, a state hundreds of miles away,
visited an open-air workshop where craftsmen chiseled floral designs and
figurines of Ram on pink sandstone slabs that will form the temple. Its first
floor is ready to be fixed in place, the craftsmen said.
Hindus
from around the world have donated hundreds of bricks carved with the
inscription “Sri Ram,” hoping that the court would rule in favor of building
the temple. The bricks have sat in organized piles next to the contested site,
numbered and ready to be fixed and shaped into a temple, which devotees say can
be constructed within hours once they get the green light.
“These
are not stones, but feelings of millions of Hindus,” Mr. Jain said. “Now the
dream is going to be a reality.”
Sitting
in the courtyard of his home in Ayodhya, Haji Mahboob Ahmad, a litigant who had
wanted the mosque to be rebuilt, said that Muslims would accept a ruling
against them but that he feared that right-wing Hindu forces would be
emboldened and more mosques would be destroyed.
“Violence
against Muslims will rise, and it will become institutionalized,” said Mr.
Ahmad, 75, who had to flee the town for a month after the mosque was demolished
nearly 30 years ago.
Maria
Abi-Habib reported from New Delhi, and Sameer Yasir from Ayodhya, India.
Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.
Maria
Abi-Habib is a South Asia correspondent, based in Delhi. Before joining The
Times in 2017, she was a roving Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street
Journal. @abihabib
