Security heightened in northern Indian state on Babri Masjid demolition anniversary

ANKARA

Security has been heightened on Friday in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on the 32nd anniversary of the historic Babri Mosque's demolition.

The 16th-century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya city was demolished by Hindu hardliners in 1992, triggering violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims.

In Ayodhya, security forces conducted a flag march and additional forces were deployed to ensure law and order in the city, police officials said.

Balachari Dubey, a senior police official, said that the paramilitary personnel and other officials are deployed for security.

Many Indians have remembered the demolition of the Babri Mosque.

“Protection of Masjid is protection of faith and Identity! Lest we Forget! Babri Masjid,” Asma Zehra Tayeba, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, wrote on X.

Retired Indian Supreme Court Judge, Justice RF Nariman on Thursday expressed that the judgments over the years relating to the Babri Masjid dispute by the country’s top court did not do justice to the principle of secularism.

"In my opinion, a great travesty of justice was that Secularism was not given its due by these judgements," he said according to the Indian legal news website Livelaw while speaking on Secularism and Indian Constitution.

The 400-year-old Babri Mosque was razed to the ground on Dec. 6, 1992, by a large group of activists belonging to the Hindu nationalist organizations like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), affiliated to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The decades-long dispute between Hindus and Muslims over the ownership of the site was settled by the Indian Supreme Court in 2019 when it handed over the site to Hindus and allowed the construction of a temple. The court also directed authorities to allow a separate land on the outskirts of Ayodhya to the Sunni Central Waqf Board to build a new mosque, which is yet to come up.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year inaugurated the grand Ram temple built at the site of the demolished Babri Mosque in Ayodhya.

Amid the Babri Mosque’s anniversary, Hindu groups are demanding surveys claiming prominent mosques were built on the former site of temples in the recent past.

A local court in India recently accepted a petition to survey a 13th-century famous Muslim saint shrine in Ajmer city in western Rajasthan state. The country’s top court, however, halted the local court’s proceedings in the matter.

Earlier, a local court ordered a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal town in northern Uttar Pradesh, in response to a petition claiming that a temple stood on the mosque's site.

A 17th-century Shahi Idgah Mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district is also facing a legal battle as a Hindu group is claiming that the mosque was built on the birthplace of Lord Krishna.

Recently, a Hindu group demanded a survey of India’s iconic Jama Masjid, or the main mosque of the national capital New Delhi alleging that Hindu deities' idols were buried within the mosque.