Babri Masjid: A Blow to Secular Identity

                    December 6, 1992, was a day that the entire country was shocked, a day when democracy was struck at the mast. A day that was completed by killing thousands of people and shouting murder. After years of conspiracies, hard work, and false propaganda, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the name of mere myth, sowed the seeds of hatred, spread like a giant tree, and unleashed its wrath on a community in the country. That day, the Babri Masjid was demolished.

Time traveled back a long way and reached 1528. The Babri Masjid was built in 1528 by Mirbaqi, the governor of the Mughal emperor's residence (Ayodhya). The people there were a community that lived in unity and religious harmony. Both communities fully accepted it. On the wall of the mosque, there was an inscription in Persian, "By the order of Emperor Babur, the ruler of the palace of justice that rises to the canopy of the heavens, the good Mirbaqi built this meeting place of angels. May this happiness last forever."

Emboldened by this, the British community started devising all sorts of cunning strategies to break the Hindu-Muslim unity. They started showing the true color of the British who had divided the two communities here too. There was a legend among the Hindu community that the birthplace of Ram was in Ayodhya. However, no one believed that Shri Ram was born inside the Babri Masjid and that the mosque was built by demolishing the temple. All this started with the British's strategy. They started spreading various hate propaganda among the people of Awadh. They raised the issue of ownership of the mosque to create a Muslim-Hindu divide. Although the beginning was unsuccessful, they continued their efforts and started to see success. They constantly gave incentives to Hindus to perform pujas near the mosque.

In the following years, several riots began to break out, alleging that the mosque was built by destroying the temple. Thus 1934, riots began to break out again in the areas near the festival of Eid. The riots, which started on the accusation of cow slaughter, damaged the atmosphere of peace in Shahjahanpur and Ayodhya. In the riots, which resulted in the assault of many people, the rioters demolished the walls and dome of the Babri Masjid. Later, it was restored with the financial assistance of the British government. The assassination of Gandhi on January 30, 1948, was a major step in the efforts to place the burning ideas of Hindutva above the sovereignty of the country and religious sentiments. In the vast Indian territory, the public arenas of action began to be prepared in a way that could allow radical Hindutva groups to emerge.

Without stopping the assassination of Gandhi, they continued to harass those coming to the mosque and create obstacles by reciting the Ramayana and performing pujas in front of the mosque. In the meantime, one night after the prayers, a group of people entered the mosque, attacked the Muadhin, and installed idols in the mosque. Then they painted pictures on the mosque walls with saffron and yellow paints. They misbehaved with the Muslim community who expressed their dissatisfaction with this and drove them away. Perhaps because all the ruling classes were in their favor, the police took up the case after a long time. The matter became serious and reached the court. The court also ruled in their favor. With that, the Babri Masjid became a temple. How quickly the church became a temple!!!. The legend that few believed in has destroyed the minarets that were seen for many years.

January 22 The Ram temple was consecrated in Ayodhya today. Even though the temple was built at a cost of crores, the 5 acres allotted in place of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya are still standing motionless. With the continuous distortion of history, India, which proudly proclaimed itself as a democracy, is now moving towards the path of just one community. Babri is not the issue of just one community. Rather, it is a symbol of India's secularism.

If it is Ayodhya today, Kashi tomorrow, and Mathura later, this is the agenda of the BJP government today. The exact agenda of the Sangh Parivar can be understood from the announcement made on the day of the victory in Ayodhya,” Ayodhya is only a symbol, Kashi and Mathura are yet to come”. The Supreme Court verdict of November 2019 overturned the 1991 verdict that ruled that the ownership of temples is the same as it was before independent India. This has further fueled the Sangh Parivar.

The mosques claiming ownership along with the Babri Masjid are the Gyanvapi Mosque near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, and the Shahi Mosque in Mathura, which is said to be the birthplace of Sri Krishna. We can only guess at the future of these two mosques, which are facing many challenges. It is an open secret that the route from Ayodhya to Kashi and from there to Mathura is being shortened with a precise agenda.

Even though many temples in Ayodhya claim to be the birthplace of Ram, why did the Ram Janmabhoomi happen at the same place where the Babri Masjid was built? How did the argument that the temple was demolished and the mosque was built come about? It is as clear as day that the Sangh Parivar has the exact secret tactics behind this. Even though historians have proven with historical records that the construction of Babri was not above the temple, the Supreme Court's 2019 verdict in favor of the Sangh Parivar, which did not pay any attention to it, can also be added to this.

As happened in Ayodhya, the "shadow government" at the Center is rushing to implement the Sangh Parivar's agenda by digging up history and covering it up. There is no truth in the fact that the Babri Masjid was built by demolishing the Ram Temple. But we need to understand the truth that the Ram Temple was built today on the land where five prayers were offered and prayers were offered. In India, it is the nature of totalitarianism to remove the contributions made by a community from the public sphere and install the achievements of vested interests in its place. This is another version of the blind faith in tradition, one of the signs of global fascism that Umberto Iaco enumerated. That is why Milan Kundera wrote in his "BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING" that "the struggle against the powers that be is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Let us pray that no more Babris will happen.