Shia Board to gift silver arrows for Lord Ram’s statue

LUCKNOW: After welcoming Yogi Adityanath Government’s move to build a 100-metre high statue of Lord Ram on the banks of the Saryu in Ayodhya, the Uttar Pradesh Shia Central Waqf Board has said it will gift 10 silver arrows for the statue quiver as its mark of respect.

In a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath, board’s chairman Waseem Rizvi said the construction of the statue would be a matter of pride for all Indians and put UP on the world map. “UP government’s decision to erect a statue of Lord Ram is commendable. In keeping with the Ganga-Jamuni tehezeeb of Awadh, these silver arrows will be just a token of admiration and esteem in which Shias hold Lord Ram,” he said.

“The Nawabs of this region always respected the temples in Ayodhya. Even the land for Hanuman Garhi in central Ayodhya was donated by Nawab Shuja-ud-Daulah in 1739, while the funds to construct the Hanuman Garhi temple were provided by Nawab Asif-ud-Daullah, between 1775 and 1793,” Rizvi pointed out.

Waseem’s statement comes days after member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board Zafaryab Jilani and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi criticised the UP government proposal. Both the leaders termed the move illegal and unconstitutional saying in a secular country a government cannot involve or associate itself in a project like this (building the statue of a religious deity).

But Rizvi brushed aside such arguments. Once a close of senior Samajwadi Party leader and former UP minister Mohd Azam Khan, he is in the cross-hair of the Yogi Adityanath government for alleged anomalies in land deals and bungling in the waqf board. He had earlier created a flutter by coming out strongly in support of the construction of Ram Temple at the disputed site in temple town claiming the land actually belonged to Shias and not Sunni Waqf Board.

Rizvi filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court saying the board had no problem if the mosque was built at a reasonable distance from 2.73 acre of disputed land, preferably in a Muslim dominated locality, in Ayodhya. The Shia Board is one of the parties in the pending appeals in the SC. The Board had also claimed in the affidavit that the property on which Babri Masjid stood and demolished by a frenzied mob on December 6, 1992, belonged to it and that only the Board was entitled to negotiate an amicable solution with the consent of all the stakeholders in the dispute.

The Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid issue has been pending in the Supreme Court since 2010, after the Allahabad HC divided the land equally between ‘Ram Lalla’, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Central Waqf Board.