INDIAN TOP COURT HANDS DISPUTED HOLY SITE TO HINDUS
A separate piece of land will be given to Muslims to build a new mosque
INDIA’S top court yesterday handed a huge victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party by awarding Hindus control of a bitterly disputed holy site that has sparked deadly sectarian violence.
India had stepped up security nationwide ahead of the decision and Modi called for calm, fearing the final ruling on an issue that had been a focal point of HinduMuslim tensions for decades could again trigger unrest.
The Supreme Court ruled that the site in Ayodhya in northern India, where Hindu mobs destroyed a 460-year-old mosque in 1992, must be handed over to a trust to oversee the construction of a Hindu temple, subject to conditions.
A separate piece of land in Ayodhya would be given over to Muslim groups to build a new mosque, the court ruled in a historic judgment aimed at ending a bitter and legal wrangle dating back decades.
Thousands of extra personnel, including riot police, were deployed and schools closed in and around the northern city of Ayodhya, centre of the thorny dispute, and elsewhere.
In Ayodhya, gatherings of people were banned and barricades were erected on roads leading to the Supreme Court building here with officials and volunteers scouring social media for inflammatory posts.
Hardliners among India’s majority Hindus, including supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, believed that Lord Ram, the warrior god, was born in Ayodhya some 7,000 years ago.
They said in the 16th century, Babur, the first emperor of the Mughal Islamic dynasty, built a mosque on top of a temple at the 1.1ha site.
According to media reports, the court ruled that archaeological evidence indicated that there was a structure built before the mosque at the site “of Hindu origin”.
The verdict, it was hoped, would put an end to an angry and at times arcane legal wrangle that British colonial rulers and even the Dalai Lama tried to mediate.
Zafaryab Jilani, a lawyer representing one of the Muslim litigants, said, however, that the verdict was “unjust” and that he was considering filing a review.
Varun Kumar Sinha, a lawyer representing one of the Hindu groups, said: “It is a historic judgment. With this judgment, the Supreme Court has given the message of unity in diversity.”