Grand new India temple raises memories of murder

Ayodhya, India — AFP

While for many Hindus in India, the opening of a grand new temple this month was a long-held ambition that materialized, for India’s over 200 million Muslims like Mohammed Shahid, the day will evoke only blood-soaked memories.

The shrine in Ayodhya has been built on the ground where an ancient mosque had stood for centuries, before it was torn down by Hindu zealots in a campaign backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.

Shahid, 52, vividly remembers the day in 1992 when hundreds of fanatical Hindus demolished the Babri Masjid with pickaxes and sledgehammers in a religious frenzy, leaving a trail of death in their wake.

“My father was chased down a street by a mob. They hit him with a broken glass bottle before burning him alive,” he recounted the horror.

“My uncle was also brutally killed. It was a long, dark night for our family.”

Shockwaves from the demolition of the mosque were felt around the country and triggered riots that killed 2,000 people — mostly Muslims.

Hardline Hindu nationalist Modi will this month inaugurate the shrine built to replace it in a grand ceremony that will burnish his image as a custodian of the Hindu religion, a de facto campaign launch for national elections later this year.

Shahid shudders at the thought of the thousands of pilgrims expected to throng the quiet riverside town each day once the temple’s doors are thrown open.

“For me, the temple symbolizes nothing but death and destruction,” he said.

– ‘Given my blood and sweat’ –

The temple is dedicated to Ram, one of the most revered deities in the Hindu pantheon, said to have been born in Ayodhya around 7,000 years ago.

Devout Hindus say the historic Babri Masjid was built over his birthplace in the 16th century during the Mughal Empire — a claim not substantiated by historical evidence.

Carved from pink sandstone and marble, the temple complex has been constructed at an estimated cost of 20 billion rupees ($240 million), which the government said was sourced entirely from public donations.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had campaigned for decades to build the temple and its activists were instrumental in the demolition of the ancient mosque.

Santosh Dubey, a member of the mob that destroyed the mosque, said the temple’s opening on January 22 would be a “more significant” day for his country than when India declared independence from Britain in 1947.

“I have given my blood and sweat for the temple,” Dubey, 56, said. “A lifelong dream of all Hindus is coming true.”

Dubey, then in his mid-twenties, recalled how thousands of religious volunteers had gathered in Ayodhya on the eve of the 1992 demolition.

“It was all well-planned,” he said. “We were determined to bring down the mosque, come what may.”

Around 50 men including Dubey climbed up to the mosque’s central dome with ropes and used sledgehammers to reduce it to rubble.

Dubey fell from the roof of the mosque during the fervour, breaking 17 bones.

He spent nearly a year in prison afterwards on charges of criminal conspiracy and promoting religious enmity before a court released him.

“But I have no regrets,” he said. “I am proud of what I did. I have been born to serve Lord Ram… He is the living soul of India.”

– ‘So what if Muslims died?’ –

Dubey said he was untroubled by the bloodbath that followed.

“I can give up my life for Ram and I can also take a life for Ram. So what if Muslims died? So many Hindus have also sacrificed their lives for the cause.”

The site where the mosque once stood lay vacant for decades before India’s top court gave permission for the temple’s construction in 2019, after years of legal wrangling. As a compensation, land has been earmarked for the construction of a new mosque mandated by the court verdict, some 25 kilometres away from the city.

A vacant field greets visitors to the site, with a poster on an otherwise bare wall announcing a “masterpiece in making” alongside an image of the proposed design.

Fundraising for the project has not begun, as many within Ayodhya’s Muslim community are unhappy with the isolated and distant location.

The court verdict greenlighting the temple has emboldened Hindu fanatical groups to pursue other claims against Islamic houses of worship they insist, without evidence, were built over Hindu shrines during Mughal rule.

Last month an Indian court permitted a case to proceed on whether a mosque in the holy city of Varanasi should be opened to Hindu worshippers, with a ruling expected later this year.

Azam Qadri, the president of a local Muslim body in Ayodhya, said he feared more mosques would meet the same fate as the Babri Masjid.

“Muslims should be allowed to live in peace and their places of worship should not be taken away,” Qadri said.

“The rift between Hindus and Muslims should be finished. Only love and brotherhood should prevail.”

Human rights activists say India’s 204 million-strong Muslim community — the country’s largest religious minority — have been systematically marginalized under the Hindu nationalist BJP’s rule, whereas extremist Hindu groups have been sheltered and emboldened.