NEWDELHI/AYODHYA/KARTARPUR: India's Supreme Court yesterday awarded a bitterlycontested religious site to Hindus, dealing a defeat to Muslims who also claimthe land that has sparked some of the country's bloodiest riots sinceindependence. The ruling in the dispute between Hindu and Muslim groups pavesthe way for the construction of a Hindu temple on the site in the northern townof Ayodhya, a proposal long supported by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rulingHindu-nationalist party.
Yesterday'sjudgment, which is likely to be viewed as a win for Modi's Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP) and its backers, was criticized as unfair by a lawyer for theMuslim group involved in the case. However, the group's leader said ultimatelyit would accept the verdict and called for peace between India's majorityHindus and Muslims, who constitute 14 percent of its 1.3 billion people.
In 1992, a Hindumob destroyed the 16th-century Babri Mosque on the site, triggering riots inwhich about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across the country.Court battles over the ownership of the site followed. Jubilant Hindus, whohave long campaigned for a temple to be built on the ruins of the mosque,cheered and set off fire crackers in celebration in Ayodhya after the courtdecision was announced. Thousands of paramilitary force members and police weredeployed in Ayodhya and other sensitive areas across India. There were noimmediate reports of unrest.
"Today'sSupreme Court decision has given the nation the message that even the mostdifficult of all problems falls within the ambit of the constitution and withinthe boundaries of the judicial system," Modi said in a televised addressyesterday evening, calling for "a new India" free of hatred. He hadearlier tweeted that the verdict should not be seen as "a win or loss foranybody".
The ruling comesmonths after Modi's government stripped the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmirregion of its special status as a state, delivering on yet another electionpromise to its largely Hindu support base. Neelanjan Sircar, an assistantprofessor at Ashoka University near New Delhi, said the verdict would benefitthe BJP, which won re-election in May, but a slowing economy would ultimatelytake center stage for voters. "In the short term, there will be a boostfor the BJP," said Sircar. "These things don't work forever ... RamTemple isn't going to put food on the table."
Hindus believethe site is the birthplace of Ram, a physical incarnation of the Hindu godVishnu, and say the site was holy for Hindus long before the Muslim Mughals,India's most prominent Islamic rulers, built the Babri mosque there in 1528.The five-judge bench, headed by the Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, reached aunanimous judgment to hand over the plot of just 2.77 acres (1.1 hectares), orabout the size of a football field, to the Hindu group.
The court alsodirected that another plot of five acres (two hectares) in Ayodhya be providedto the Muslim group that contested the case, but that was not enough to mollifysome critics. "The country is now moving towards becoming a Hindunation," Asaduddin Owaisi, an influential Muslim opposition politician,told reporters.
Across the borderin archrival Pakistan, the foreign ministry said the decision "shreddedthe veneer of so-called secularism" in India and showed minorities were nolonger safe. India's foreign ministry responded that Pakistan's"pathological compulsion to comment on our internal affairs with theobvious intent of spreading hatred is condemnable".
Modi's partyhailed the ruling as a "milestone". "I welcome the courtdecision and appeal to all religious groups to accept the decision," HomeMinister Amit Shah, who is also president of the BJP, said on Twitter. A lawyerfor the Sunni Muslim group involved in the case initially said it would likelyfile a review petition, which could have triggered another protracted legalbattle, but its chairman Zafar Farooqui later yesterday told reporters theverdict had been accepted "with humility".
Muslimorganizations appealed for calm. The Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -the parent organization of Modi's party - had already decided against anycelebrations to avoid provoking sectarian violence. The BJP owes its origins tothe RSS, a militaristic group that has long espoused "Hindutva", orHindu hegemony in officially secular India. Under Modi, a former RSS cadre,Islamic-sounding names of several cities have been changed, while some schooltextbooks have been altered to downplay Muslims' contributions to India. Therehas been a string of lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs over cows, sacred formany Hindus, and other hate crimes including Muslims forced to perform Hinduchants.
Restrictions wereplaced on gatherings in some places and Internet services were suspended.Elsewhere, police monitored social media to curb rumors. Streets in Ayodhyawere largely deserted and security personnel patrolled the main road toLucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Meanwhile,hundreds of Indian Sikhs made a historic pilgrimage to Pakistan yesterday,crossing through a white gate to reach one of their religion's holiest sites,after a landmark deal between the two countries separated by the 1947 partitionof the subcontinent. Cheering Sikhs walked joyfully along the road from DeraBaba Nanak in India towards the new immigration hall that would allow them topass through a secure land corridor into Pakistan, in a rare example ofcooperation between the nuclear-armed countries divided by decades of enmity.
Some fathers ran,carrying their children on their shoulders. Buses were waiting on the Pakistaniside to carry them along the corridor to the shrine to Sikhism's founder GuruNanak, which lies in Kartarpur, a small town just four kilometres insidePakistan where he is believed to have died.
For up to 30million Sikhs around the world, the white-domed shrine is one of their holiestsites. However for Indian Sikhs, it has remained tantalizingly close - so closethey could stand at the border and gaze at its four cupolas - but out-of-reachfor decades. When Pakistan was carved out of colonial India at the end ofBritish rule in 1947, Kartarpur ended up on the western side of the border,while most of the region's Sikhs remained on the other side. Since then, theperennial state of enmity between India and Pakistan has been a constantbarrier to those wanting to visit the temple, known in Sikhism as a gurdwara.
Pilgrims on bothsides of the border hoped the corridor might herald a thaw in South Asiantensions. "When it comes to government-to-government relations, it is allhate and when it comes to people-to-people ties, it's all love," one ofthe Sikh pilgrims, who did not give his name, told Pakistani state TV as hecrossed. Among the first pilgrims was former Indian Prime Minister ManmohanSingh, who told Pakistani state media that it was a "big moment".
The opening eveninspired a singular message of gratitude from Indian Prime Minister NarendraModi to his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan for "respecting thesentiments of India". For his part, Khan said a day would come "whenour relations with India will improve". "I am hopeful that this thebeginning," he told the pilgrims at the shrine.
For years Indiahad been asking Pakistan to grant Sikhs access to the shrine. Many believe ithas happened now because of the friendship between Khan, a World Cup winningcricketer-turned politician, and India's Navjot Singh Sidhu - anothercricketer-turned-politician. "When Sidhu asked me to open the border, Ikept it in my mind," Khan told devotees yesterday. He compared thesituation to Muslims being able to see holy sites in Madinah, but never visit.
The opening comesjust days ahead of the Guru Nanak's 550th birthday on Nov 12 - an anniversaryof huge significance for the global Sikh community, and which may also haveplayed a role in the timing. Sikhs from around the world have been arriving inPakistan ahead of the celebrations for days already. An estimated 7,000 were atthe shrine to hear Khan's speech, though it was not clear how many had come viathe corridor and how many had arrived from elsewhere. Indian officials saidjust 700 were expected to cross through the corridor yesterday.
Many wereemotional, some in tears. Others posed for selfies before a giant gold- andsilver-colored kirpan, the dagger which Sikhs must carry with them at all timesas an article of their faith. There are an estimated 20,000 Sikhs left inPakistan after millions fled to India following the bloody religious violenceignited by partition, which sparked the largest mass migration in human historyand led to the death of at least one million people. - Agencies