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Sambhal, a little-known town in north India’s Uttar Pradesh, was in the news this week when violent protests and riots claimed five lives and left several others injured.
Protests erupted after the lone Mughal-era 16th century Shahi Masjid in the town, built in Emperor Babur’s time, was visited by a court-monitored team to assess whether the mosque was built after demolishing a Hindu temple on the site.
Hindu nationalist groups have been campaigning to “reclaim” what they say are Hindu religious sites in several cities including Varanasi, Mathura, and Agra ever since the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. Incidentally, the BJP is also at the helm in Uttar Pradesh.
In January this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram Temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. The temple was built on the site where the Babri Masjid once stood. In 1991, Hindutva mobs pulled down the mosque alleging that it was built at the site of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram.
So when a judicial team started assessing the origins of the ancient masjid in Sambhal, the agitated local Muslim population erupted in protests to stop what they perceived to be a “biased” survey. The Uttar Pradesh police administration is alleged to have fired at the Muslim mob but the police have refuted the charges claiming that the crowds, not the police, had used firearms.
Hindutva activists and lawyers filed a petition before the local court on November 19 with the plea that the Shahi Masjid had been built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of the “centuries-old Shri Hari Har Temple dedicated to Lord Kalki.” Kalki is the tenth and final avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu. The petitioners included Hari Shankar Jain an advocate who has filed a similar petition in another “mandir-masjid” (temple-mosque) dispute in the case of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. The petitioners said that Hindus be allowed unrestricted access to pray at the Shahi Masjid mosque site.
Within hours of the plea, the court ordered a survey which Muslim groups have criticized for being hasty as it did not give them the chance of a hearing. The first survey was conducted peacefully but suddenly a second survey was conducted on November 24, during which Hindu activists deliberately incited the Muslims with provocative sloganeering. The situation soon spiraled out of control with stone pelting, vandalism, firing, and the imposition of a curfew by the state administration.
Muslim organizations have questioned the “judicial fairness of the probe” and demanded a judicial investigation into the killings.
Demanding justice for the victims, Malik Moatasim Khan of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind told The Hindu newspaper that The Places of Worship Act 1991, which protected the character of religious sites as they stood in August 1947 when India gained independence, must be implemented. Khan urged the courts to “address this trend of targeting Muslim places of worship and trying to acquire them illegally by claiming that there stood a Hindu temple on the land in ancient times.”
Opposition leaders across party lines have criticized the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh for mishandling the situation. Akhilesh Yadav, leader of the Samajwadi Party, the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh demanded that the police officers be held accountable and “booked under murder charges.” Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi held the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government for the deaths and hit out at the BJP’s tactics to create a Hindu- Muslim divide.
It must be mentioned that Hindutva activists have been bolstered by favorable court orders citing “historical archaeological” evidence. In fact, former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud’s controversial order in the Gyanvapi mosque case opened the floodgates of such litigation. While stating that there could be no conversion of the place, Chandrachud nonetheless allowed an archaeological survey using “non-invasive technology” to determine the Gyanvapi structure’s “original character,” thereby arguably rendering the Places of Worship Act 1991 meaningless.
The law was enacted in the aftermath of the horrific Babri Masjid demolition and the failure of the administration and the courts to protect the heritage structure.
Little wonder then that the minority Muslim community felt threatened and wanted to prevent a repeat of the Babri Masjid debacle. It is no secret that the Modi regime has retained power through this past decade through intense polarization of society and inciting communal hatred between the two communities.
Interestingly in February this year, Prime Minister Modi laid the foundation stone of a Kalki Dham temple a few kilometers away from the disputed site in Sambhal. Speaking at the event, Modi vowed that the temple would be no less grand than the grand Ram Temple inaugurated at Ayodhya.
Sambhal is a town in which 77 percent of the population are Muslim. Therefore, it would be a major achievement for the Hindutva proponents, if they could “restore” the glory and pride of Hindu religion to Sambhal like they did in Ayodhya. Hence the concerted effort of reclaiming the mosque using the “temple under a mosque” Hindutva template as well as establishing a Hindu temple in the town dedicated to Kalki.
The biased role of the judiciary has been highlighted once again. In an editorial, The Indian Express drew attention to the equivocation of the top court. Chief Justice Chandrachud, through his Gyanvapi Masjid order, had effectively rendered the Places of Worship Act “a dead letter.” Ironically, Chandrachud was part of the bench that delivered the Ayodhya verdict in 2019, in which he condemned the demolition and underscored the Indian Constitutional commitment to religious equality and secularism for all citizens.
Following the Gyanvapi order, a Mathura court next admitted a petition seeking the transfer of the land of the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura to a Hindu trust for the construction of a temple to the god Krishna.
Undoubtedly, what the Ram Janmabhoomi case decision in 2019 on the long-standing Ayodhya dispute, did was to condemn the Babri Masjid demolition (by the Hindu mobs) while strangely awarding the disputed site to the majority Hindu community.
The consecration of the sparkling new temple at the same site has only strengthened Hindutva nationalists and helped to erase the tainted history of the bloody communal riots that followed with a newfound legitimacy sanctioned by the courts.