Ayodhya

[Guest]

As a Muslim my perspective on this subject are somewhat different to most of you.

Abdul, I appreciate your speaking from the heart. It requires courage to say it as you perceive the situation.



There are however major differences in perception on this issue. Let us see if we can articulate what these differences are.



First some facts - 1. The Babri structure had ceased being a Masjid long before independence. In fact no namaz had been offered at the site since about the 1930's. So to call it a Masjid is a misnomer. There is evidence that throughout the history of the structure , the periods where it was used exclusively as a Masjid have been few and far between. so, to call it a Masjid in the first place is a highly tenuous proposition. In my view it has not served as a Masjid for most of the 20th century.



2. The dispute is not new. It has been ongoing for a hundred and fifty years and attempts to regain the site has been going on much longer . The first lawsuits were filed immediately after 1857 when the Brits took possession of the territory. The current lawsuit has been ongoing ever since independence. Most of the original people who filed have died and this is the second generation of players who are currently active in this law suit.



Furthermore , there is no dispute regarding who owns this property. It has been handed over to the Hindus by the local Magistrate since 1950, primarily because the Muslims had abandoned it. The dispute is about the future use of the site.



3. There is overwhelming evidence that there was a very large structure with many pillars prior to the Babri structure, so the question of whether there was a Temple there in the first place is really not in doubt. Even the Saudi Government has stated unequivocally that a Masjid built on top of an already existing religious structure is against the tenets of Islam, and if that is the case, it is OK to replace it with a structure similar to whatever was existing before.

While I abhor the actions of Muslim invaders in the atrocities they committed in the past, you cannot hold present day Indian Muslims as responsible for those actions and you should not seek to punish us for them.

I am glad you have stated that you abhor the actions of the invaders, because in my entire life i have heard very few IM express it as unconditionally and publicly as you have. Many such as eminent historian Irfan Habib even deny that any atrocities took place, and even if they ever did, they say it was just for plunder (as if that makes it right) rather than driven by religious bigotry. These acts took place over a sustained period of over 6 centuries with regularity and were not restricted to invaders, they were committed by IM Sultans like Allauddin Khalji whose forefathers were in India for at least 4 generations prior to his ascending the throne. The scale of these atrocities was so horrendous that it reduced the population of India for several centuries.Equal or greater number of Indians were sold into slavery in the slave markets of Samarkhand, Damascus and Isfahan



When it comes to not blaming the present generation of IM for what happened in the past,I am inclined to agree with you. But i would like to see remorse expressed at the utter barbarity of what happened and i see this very rarely and almost never is it publicly expressed like you have done. However when it comes to restitution for past wrongs , the Constitution of India has penalized me by setting aside reservations for SC/ST/OBC at my expense, in order to compensate for the alleged mistreatment that my forefathers inflicted on the ancestors of these people.



I am not suggesting that we penalize the IM just as the Constitution has penalized me for what my forefathers have allegedly done. I ask only that they admit that one of the greatest holocausts in the history of mankind was inflicted by successive sultans and rulers over long periods of time in India and show remorse for such actions. Why do i ask for remorse . Not to humiliate the Muslim, but to ensure that we have their agreement for the proposition that they will not support any such actions in the future. I say this because in the only Muslim majority state in India they have ethnically cleansed almost all Hindus from the Muslim majority area (the Valley of Kashmir). not only do they show no sign of remorse for what happened in the past, but they continue to act in the same barbaric manner.

I feel it was an act of political terror to demolish the Babri Masjid in the manner it was done. The masjid was in disuse and should have been acquired legally. I have no problem with selling/giving it to the Hindu community as long as it is done with legality and goodwill.

I do not understand what the term 'political terror' means. You must remember that not a single life was lost during the demolition. As I said the property was already under the defacto management of Hindus. The ownership of the property was never in dispute. If the so called masjid (where no namaz was offered for over 50 years) was in disuse, why the brouhaha and the importance given to it. Surely this was an insignificant structure with very little religious value for the IM. Also remember that the property was already handed over to the Hindus by the local magistrate shortlly after independence in 1950. So there was never any question as to who owned it.

If the Hindus get the Ram temple, I fear that we will see more mob demolitions of mosques as it will set a precedent. Pakistan can even ensure this by infiltrating certain groups and leading them to demolish mosques to stir up conflagration between the two communities like they tried with the church bombings.

On what do you base this assumption on ? After all since independence there have been very few masjids that have been destroyed and when it has happened on relatively rare occasions, it has happened during riots .That does not make it right but the incidence of such destruction is very low in the rest of India (outside of Kashmir). As for setting a precedent, the Babri structure was extensively damaged in 1936 during fights between Hindus and Muslims. The then English magistrate made the Hindus pay to repair the damage. The point is that the precedent had been set in 1936. But what you say has not happened in the intervening 70 years. No other masjids have been vandalized in this period. So, there is no basis for your assumption.



The Babri structure is the only one that i know off that has been deliberately destroyed. Contrast with the destruction and defilement of temples in the Indian subcontinent. Hundreds of temples have been destroyed or defiled in B'Desh (long before 1992) , Pakistan and Kashmir after 1947. The fact of the matter is that in general Hindus do not go around destroying other peoples place of worship without any provocation. The Jamma Masjid, one of the largest Masjids in the entire world, stands proudly in Central Delhi,the capital city of India, as a testament to the tolerance of Hindus for those of other faiths. There are literally hundreds of cathedrals and churches in most of the metros in India often in very choice central locations of the cities, testifying to the fact even though they form only 2% of the population, the Christians occupy a place of prime importance in the national life of the country. Do you really believe that had we wished to do so , we could not destroy the Jamma Masjid ?. But that is not the way we Hindus behave. Contrast with Pakistan. The Indus Valley and the Punjab are the cradles of our Vedic civilization. Not only are there no Hindus left in Pakistan from the millions who once resided there, there are very few temples in good repair and the situation is similar in the Kashmir valley.

They only way out of this is to build a non-denominational structure on the site regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation. This will help the people of Ayodhya far more than a temple or masjid.

I am sorry but this is completely unacceptable to me and to a significant section of the Hindu population. This is like asking Mecca to be turned into a tourist resort or the city of Mashhad in Iran to be turned into a Pharmaceutical Research complex. Ayodhya has far too much significance for Hindus for the RJB site to be turned into a Hospital. In fact such an attitude smacks of ' if i cant have it why should you '.



We are not asking for every masjid built over a temple to be returned to the Hindus. Just the three - Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi. In each case there is overwhelming evidence that the Masjid was deliberately built over a temple and these 3 sites have immense significance to Hindus and such an act would contribute immensely to future good relations between the 2 communities.