Babri Mosque decision, to please Hindu extremists

• India is only one country of the world where extremist organization (BJP) was elected for government which is notorious for killings of minorities.
• Indian court verdict regarding Babri Mosque is just pleased the Hindu extremists who threatened, that “court should not forget the riots of 1992 before judgment of case”

The Babri Masjid also known as Masjid-i-Janamsthan was a mosque in Ayodhya, a city in the Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh, on Ramkot Hill ("Rama's fort"). It was destroyed in 1992 when a political rally developed into a riot involving 150,000 people, in spite of a commitment to the Indian Supreme Court by the rally organizers that the mosque would not be harmed. More than 2,000 Muslims were burnt alive in resulting riots in many major Indian cities including Mumbai and Delhi.

The mosque was constructed in 1527 by order of Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India. Before the 1940s, the mosque was called Masjid-i-Janmasthan ("mosque of the birthplace") acknowledging the site as the birthplace of the Hindu idol, Lord Rama. The Babri Mosque was one of the largest mosques in Uttar Pradesh, a state in India with some 31 million Muslims. Although there were several older mosques in the surrounding district, including the Hazrat Bal Mosque constructed by the Shariqi kings, the Babri Mosque became the largest, due to the importance of the disputed site. Despite its size and fame, the mosque was little used by the Muslim community of the district and numerous petitions by Hindus to the courts resulted in Hindu worshippers' of Rama gaining access to the site.

Indians believed that this mosque was built on the place which is birth place of their Ram. So now it is not the possession of Muslims. According to many historians Babar didn’t destroyed any Hindu temple to build this mosque. When 1949 Hindus put their idols in the mosque, that time Jawahar Lal Nahro was the prime minister and he asked to remove these idols because it is against the laws to harm the religious place of any religion. But it never happens because of the extremism of Hindus.

India blames Muslims for extremism but the biggest reality of world is that in all countries of world no fundamentalist and extremist party elected but in India, where BJP was elected and remain in power for many years. BJP is the party which was in power in Uttar Pardesh when Babri Mosque was demolished and nearly 2,000 Muslims were burnt alive but government never took action against liable of this mass murder of Muslim community.

Indian court verdict regarding Babri Mosque is just pleased the Hindu extremists who threatened the government before the verdict, that “court should not forget the riots of 1992 before judgment of case” if the decision would be against the Hindus will protest across the country.

Nearly two decades after Hindu zealots tore down the 16th-century Babri mosque, there appears to be some sense of closure to the divisive issue. After all, when religion, mythology and politics come together in issues such as this, the mix is nothing less than fire-starting.

For the Congress-led government under whose watch the mosque was demolished in 1992 (though a BJP government was in power in Uttar Pradesh and the party’s leaders egged on the extremist) the verdict must have come as a relief. A totally pro-Hindu verdict would have put a question mark on the government’s secular credentials while a pro-Muslim judgment would have alienated the government from the Hindu majority. The Indian government was taking no chances as nearly 200,000 troops fanned out across UP and 40,000 of them in Ayodhya alone. Perhaps the memories of communal violence in the aftermath of the mosque’s destruction were still fresh. Both before and after the verdict the Indian government fervently appealed for calm. The verdict also comes at a time when the Indian government is faced with a number of security problems, including securing the controversy-plagued Commonwealth Games, unrest in Kashmir and the Maoist insurgency.

Elements within the Indian political spectrum especially the Hindu right wing have milked the issue for political mileage. The first recorded incidents of violence surrounding the Babri mosque did not emerge until the middle of the 19th century. It was only in the mid-’80s that the Sangh Parivar made building the Ram temple its ideological rallying cry. Though what happened in 1992 is intolerable, perhaps the verdict will be viewed as sensible if it soothes communal passions and ensures such ugly incidents do not happen again.