Do-it-yourself Hindu temple awaits move to holy site

Huge slabs of pink Rajasthan stone, carved pillars and bricks from across India are already waiting to form a Hindu temple to be built on the site of a demolished mosque at the centre of decades of deadly turbulence.

Enough stone to build a small mountain was waiting at a complex in the holy city of Ayodhya years before the Supreme Court ruled on Saturday that the site should be handed over to Hindus to build a new temple.

A mosque stood on the site for almost five centuries until it was demolished by Hindu zealots in 1992, sparking riots across the country in which 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, died.

Dozens of stonemasons and artisans have been chipping away at the blocks since an appeal for contributions towards a “grand Hindu temple” here was launched in 1990, without knowing when, or whether, it would be erected. Cash donations and bricks were sent from around the world.

Workers went back to their hometowns and villages just before Saturday’s verdict, which said Muslims would get land on a new site to build a mosque.

Activists, priests and pilgrims thronged the Nyas Karyashaala workshop, a few kilometres from the contested site where Hindus believe the god Rama was born.

“We never lost faith. We always believed that a grand temple would be built,” Sharad Sharma, a spokesman for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) said at the site. “Almost 65 per cent of the stone and pillars needed for the temple are ready. Our designs have also been approved by a gathering of religious leaders.”

While there are no officially approved plans for the temple, many believe the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will follow the design prepared by the workshop.

The new temple would use about 170,000 cubic feet of stone, will be 38m tall and 81m long and will have a shed for cows.