Photo: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the inauguration of the grand Ram temple’s Pran Pratishtha ceremony at Shree Ram Janmaboomi Temple, built at the site of the demolished 16th-century Babri Mosque in northern Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, on January 22. (Credit: Indian Press Information Bureau/Handout/AA)
M Ghazali Khan
On January 22 Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated a temple in Ayodhya, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh dedicated to the mythological Hindu king, or deity, Rama, constructed on the site of 16th century Babri Mosque, pulled down by frenzied Hindutva mobs on December 6, 1992, in the presence of heavy police and paramilitary forces and full media glare.
In seven states public holiday was declared for schools and government offices to mark the occasion that was celebrated like Diwali, one of the main festivals in Hinduism. Indian TV channels had started covering the preparations around the clock a few weeks before the actual ceremony and telecasted the inauguration live.
Modi and his party, the BJP, have been projecting the mosque’s destruction and construction of the so-called Rama Temple on its site as a triumph of Hindutva (Hindu supremacist ideology) over Islam.
Hindutva activists have also circulated on social media a photoshopped picture of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa showing Rama’s projection on it.
Encouraged by BJP leaders and the complete and meaningful silence of the Prime Minister over anti-Muslim violence and mob lynchings of Muslims, going on since he rose to power in 2014, BJP’s foot soldiers chose to celebrate the day by affirming their assumed “victory over Islam” by attacking Muslims and rampaging their businesses and properties in different parts of India. In Mumbai’s Muslim area, Naya Nagar, where Muslims resisted and repulsed the attackers, Muslims’ houses and businesses have been bulldozed by the state government to “teach them lessons” for this audacity and console the attackers while several youths have been arrested.
In some cities, Hindutva supporters climbed the rooftops of mosques and churches and hoisted saffron flags on them. In some cities, lone Muslims were attacked on the streets.
Opposition politicians, including the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, turned down the invitation to attend the ceremony and accused Narendra Modi of using the ceremony to exploit Hindu sentiments and gain electoral mileage. According to the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Shivanand Tiwari, Modi was “more visible in Ayodhya than Lord Sri Ram.”
Supporters of Hindutva are celebrating the opening of the temple as the beginning of the establishment of Hindutva rule or Ram Rajya. What the so-called Ram Rajya may mean to Muslims and other minorities in India may be guessed from the Hindu militant organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) senior member Indresh Kumar’s demand to Muslims to chant, ‘Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram’ to show their participation in the celebration. It should be remembered that invoking any deity other than Allah is against the basic Islamic belief in the Oneness of Allah. It should be noted that Indresh Kumar’s name repeatedly surfaced in the Samjhauta Express blast enquiry in which 43 Pakistani citizens and 10 Indians were killed in 2007. He is also the founder of Muslim Rashtriya Manch, RSS’ special wing to misguide and recruit Muslims.
In the UK more than 200 temples, many of them registered as charities with the Charity Commission, have celebrated the temple inauguration in Ayodhya. Interestingly, in the eighties when BJP leader L.K. Advani, who later became India’s Home Minister, started his campaign for the demolition of Babri Mosque and toured the country during his so-called Rath Yatra (chariot journey), inciting anti-Muslim violence, British Hindus were the first to send him a golden brick for the then proposed temple. The news was widely reported by the Indian press.
Hindus in the US have also marked the occasion by organising a rally at Times Square. A similar rally was organised at the Eiffel Tower, and in Canada as well. There are reports that at the Times Square rally slogans were chanted making claims on two historical mosques, Shahi Idgah Mosque in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.
Before this, in the second week of this month, a fierce social media debate was raging in India following the visit of a delegation to Madinah, Saudi Arabia, almost adjacent to the Prophet’s Mosque and other holy sites in the vicinity, headed by actress-turned-politician and Minority Affairs Minister, Smriti Irani.
On January 8, Irani posted several photographs on X (formerly Twitter) with the message, “[I] undertook a historic journey to Madinah today; one of Islam’s holiest cities, included a visit to [the] periphery of the revered Prophet’s Mosque… the mountain of Uhud, and [the] periphery of the Quba Mosque.”
Like all other such incidents, BJP supporters projected her Madinah visit as a Hindutva’s triumph over Islam. Commenting on her message, a fan wrote, “You have shown true strength by not wearing [a] hijab in a staunchly Muslim country. Kudos to you for that.”
The Saudi Government removed restrictions on non-Muslims visiting Madinah Munawwarah in May 2021. Commentators have expressed extreme disapproval of the delegation’s visit, since the majority, if not all, were non-Muslims. Many commentators are upset at the delegation being taken to Madinah, and Irani’s brazen disregard towards the Holy City, where she did not even bother to cover her head.
“The progeny of Al-Saud can do what they please to do in their Kingdom. But are the holy cities also part of their private wealth and property? In that case, as followers of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), are all Muslims also their subjects? Let them make it clear if the Harmain [the two sanctuaries] are site-seeing places,” asked Dr Tasleem Rehmani, President of the Muslim Political Council of India, in his angry Facebook post written in Urdu.
Several other young social media users have expressed their anger at the Indian Muslim leadership for not condemning the saga, the basis of which, they say, was Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s Vision 2023, under which the Kingdom is being drastically Westernised.
Photo: Smriti Zubin Irani, Minister of Minority Affairs became the only non-Muslim on her historical visit to the holy site of Madinah led by the Saudi-Arabian delegates, where she signed the Hajj Agreement 2024. (Credit: World Economic Forum/Boris Baldinger)
The angry social media users said that the extraordinary treatment given to the BJP-led Indian government’s delegation would be used by the agents of the unabashedly anti-Muslim party in power as yet another example of its conquest of Islam.
BJP leaders may be trying to show the tolerant face of Hindutva ideology outside India by visiting Madinah, for example, however, with the general election approaching in the summer, anti-Muslim venom is being spewed more vehemently by its supporters. Islamophobic speeches by Hindutva leaders, many of them BJP members, are regularly posted on social media without any action against the perpetrators.
In contrast, Muslims are immediately punished without legal formality. In one such incident, following the example set by Hindutva’s Zionist friends in Israel, on January 11, the house of a Muslim was demolished in Shajapur town in the ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, for an alleged incident of stone pelting at a Hindu religious procession passing through a Muslim area on January 8.
The procession’s participants chanted Islamophobic slogans that led to an argument and resulted in stone-pelting. Immediately, cases were registered against 25 Muslim youths, and the house of Rahim Patel, allegedly the ringleader, was bulldozed only four days after the incident of the alleged crime.
In another incident, a more than three-decade-old madrasa and mosque, Madrasa Gulshan Ahmed Raza and Masjid Tahira, on Andheri Link Road in the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, was razed on January 14 as part of an effort to widen the road.
This month, the 150-year-old Sunehri Masjid, in Delhi, was facing a similar threat from the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and was saved after an intense campaign by Muslims and a petition filed by the Imam of the mosque, Abdul Aziz, in the New Delhi High Court.
Despite the Places of Worship Act 1991 in place, prohibiting any change in the status quo of a religious place as it was on August 15, 1947, cases filed by Hindutva campaigners were encouraged by the central and state governments. The Allahabad High Court admitted and is hearing cases filed by Hindutva campaigners to take possession from Muslims of the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah Mosque in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh to construct Hindu temples on their sites. Meanwhile, Hindutva campaigners have made claims over the Jama Masjids of Budaun, Aligarh, Meerut, and other places in the state. Allahabad High Court set January 17 for the hearing of the Shahi Idgah Mosque.
Several cities with Muslim-sounding names have already been renamed and given Hindu names, while proposals have been passed by local bodies to rename other cities, including Aligarh and Ghaziabad, in Uttar Pradesh.
In December last year Home Minister, Amit Shah, who was Gujarat’s Home Minister during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots, announced in a public meeting in West Bengal that the controversial and divisive Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), “is the law of the land and no one can stop it.”
Muslim women, particularly in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, had staged massive sit-in protests against the CAA in December 2019.
On the other hand, a case against the minority (Muslim) character of the historic Aligarh Muslim University is already being heard by the Supreme Court. The Muslim community fears judgment that may deprive them of the famous institution founded on January 7, 1877, by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (October 17, 1817–March 27, 1898).
Ignoring Muslims’ sentiments and evading sane voices in the country, Modi proudly cites the anti-Muslim measures taken by his government as his achievements before his voters. So widespread are the Islamophobic feelings in the country that BJP supporters openly admit the failures of the Modi government but are content because “Modi ji ne Musalmano ko un ki auqat dikhadi.” (Modi ji has shown the Muslims their right place.) Observers feel that, given the polarised situation in the country, Modi is set to win the third term.
How did Modi show Muslims their “right place?” He launched this “mission” with the savage anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002. He was then the Chief Minister of the state. Reporting the intensity of this violence, BBC’s Delhi correspondent Jill McGivering said: “British officials in India say the recent widespread violence in the Indian state of Gujarat was pre-planned and carried out with the support of the state government.”
She went on: “This leaked report is the result of an investigation into the Gujarat violence by British officials in India.
“It is a damning indictment of the state government.
“It says the violence, far from being spontaneous, was planned, possibly months in advance, carried out by an extremist Hindu organisation with the support of the state government.
“The aim, it says, was to purge Muslims from Hindu areas, and it says at least 2,000 people died.
“Reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims will be impossible, it concludes, while Gujarat’s chief minister remains in power.”
Like the Palestinians and the Uyghur Muslims, Indian Muslims feel abandoned by the Muslim world. They cite Saudi Arabia’s granting of the highest civilian award to Narendra Modi in 2016, followed by a reception for him by Iran in 2016, and then 2018, and being honoured by UAE in 2019, as examples of it. As for European countries, with an eye on India’s huge market, they had started courting Narendra Modi as far back as 2013 when he was Gujarat’s Chief Minister and the anti-Muslim hatred spread by him had almost made it certain that he was going to be the next prime minister.
While Modi and his party have already started using the inauguration of the temple to impress upon his supporters that if allowed to come to power the third time, he will change the constitution and declare India a Hindu state, Smriti Irani’s Madinah visit with her head uncovered has also added one more achievement to Narendra Modi’s list of triumphs against Muslims.
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