BanglaBhoot
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2007
- Messages
- 8,839
- Reaction score
- 5
- Country
- Location
(Bloomberg) -- Under a rusty metal roof in one of India’s oldest cities, Amrat Lal and a dozen other craftsmen carefully engrave thousands of slabs of sandstone. When finally put together, they threaten to reignite religious violence.
The stone pillars and ceiling tiles are the building blocks of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which took power in May, has championed a decades-long fight to build the temple on the same site where Hindu groups razed a 16th century mosque in 1992.
“We must re-build for god the home taken from him by Muslims,” said Lal, adding that about 75 percent of the Ram temple’s pieces are complete. “This is our opportunity to take back what is rightfully ours.”
Similar to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site in Ayodhya has become a flashpoint for religious divisions that have defined politics in India since its founding in 1947. While Modi has focused so far on overhauling the economy, a clash looms with Hindu nationalists who backed his rise to power and want him to rectify their centuries-old grievances.
“While Modi talks about his great plans and grand strategies for India, there’s another strategy moving on a parallel track aimed at fulfilling the Hindutva agenda,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington. “There is bound to be conflict” between Modi’s goals and those of Hindu groups, he said.
Ground Zero
Religion has been an explosive topic in India for centuries, and remains so today. While the 2001 census showed that 81 percent of Indians were Hindus and 13 percent Muslim, the 2011 data on religion hasn’t been released due to fears of violence. Sectarian murders grew more than four-fold to 71 in 2013 from a year earlier, according to the Home Ministry.
The holy place in Ayodhya, about two-thirds the size of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, is now guarded by thousands of commandos. On any given day, hundreds of people will line up to pray at a makeshift temple in the enclosed area. To access it, they must clear seven security posts surrounded by meshed fencing, CCTV cameras and watchtowers.
“It will always be ground zero of India’s religious conflict,” said RPN Singh, a former deputy home minister. “As long as Hindus are trying to build that temple, Muslims will be fighting them for it, tooth and nail.”
‘Hindu Awakening’
Tensions may rise again next month when an organization linked to Modi’s party kicks off a nationwide “Hindu Awakening” in Ayodhya. The Vishva Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, advocates an agenda known as “Hindutva,” which includes winning converts and scrapping legal privileges for religious minorities in addition to erecting the Ram temple.
Inflammatory moves by Hindu groups give Modi’s opponents an excuse to delay his economic proposals in a parliamentary session that began this week, from passing a national sales tax to making it easier to buy land. Last year, opposition lawmakers in the upper house -- the one house of parliament Modi doesn’t control -- delayed a bill to allow more foreign investment in insurance to debate forced religious conversions.
A crushing defeat in a local Delhi election this month prompted Modi to break his silence on concerns that India was shifting from its secular roots. Before the loss, his Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, had seen gains in four state elections since the national vote in May, when it became the first party in 30 years to win a majority in India’s lower house.
Fringe Factions
“My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence,” Modi told Christian leaders on Feb. 17. Churches in New Delhi had been attacked ahead of the election.
Modi’s comments signaled a recognition that fringe factions of his support base threaten his goals both to stay in power and improve the lives of the roughly 700 million Indians who live on less than $2 per day. Further obstacles in the coming months to economic bills in parliament would question Modi’s ability to implement real reform.
The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group where Modi started his career, provided fodder for potential parliamentary delays after its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, said this month that Nobel laureate Mother Teresa had “ulterior motives” to convert India’s poor. The comments were condemned on the floor of the upper house by opposition lawmaker Derek O’Brien, who called them “an insult to the nation.”
Modi Plea
In an hour-long speech in parliament on Friday, Modi said he’s working for all of India’s 1.2 billion people.
“Hindus and Muslims have fought enough,” Modi told lawmakers. “Now Hindus and Muslims need to join together in the fight against hunger and poverty.”
While India’s stocks and currency have been among the world’s best performers over the past year on optimism that Asia’s third-biggest economy will take off, more disappointment could lead to outflows, according to Manik Narain, a currency strategist at UBS Group AG in London.
“If something as important as GST can’t be passed, that will go to show the political constraints the BJP is under,” Narain said, referring to the goods and services tax, which was first proposed in 2006. “It doesn’t take too many shocks and more developments to pour some cold water on the enthusiasm.”
According to Hindu nationalists aligned with Modi, the entire subcontinent practiced Hinduism before Muslim invaders started converting people and building mosques starting from the 11th century. Those accounts say the mosque in Ayodhya, known as the Babri Masjid, was built in the 1500s on a Hindu temple marking Ram’s birthplace -- a claim disputed by Muslim groups.
Thousands Killed
Legal possession of the land has been contested in courts for the last 125 years, resulting in rulings that have been challenged, overturned, appealed and outright ignored.
In 1990, BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani went on a month-long journey across the country to rally support for the Ram temple. Two years later, hundreds of Hindu protesters broke through police barriers and destroyed the Babri Masjid in a day. That led to riots that killed at least 2,000 people.
Although Modi has recently burnished his credentials as an economic reformer, his early years endeared him to the faithful. Before joining the BJP, Modi served as a worker in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which has ties to both the party and the World Hindu Council, the group paying Lal to help construct the Ram temple.
Toilets Before Temples
Days before the mosque’s destruction, Modi gave one of his first public addresses to a crowd of Hindu followers in Ayodhya. Ten years later, when he served as chief minister of Gujarat state, an arson attack against Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya triggered riots that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Modi denied any wrongdoing.
On the campaign trail before his win last year, Modi kept the message firmly on economic development. While acknowledging his identity as a Hindutva proponent, he told a rally he would prioritize “first toilets, then temples.”
Some Hindus and Muslims are trying to resolve the temple dispute amicably with a settlement to divide the site with a 100 foot-long wall. The World Hindu Council, however, opposes any moves to share the grounds.
“Just like you can’t ask a mother to divide her two children, we can’t ask Hindus to divide this land,” Champat Rai, the group’s secretary general, said on Feb. 25. “We want the Muslims to withdraw their cases and hand over the entire property to the Hindu community.”
‘Smear Campaign’
Rai said Modi’s comments this month on religious tolerance were aimed at Christian missionaries who were converting Hindus. The World Hindu Council won’t delay its “Hindu Awakening,” which will start on March 18 in Ayodhya and run until a holiday celebrating Ram’s birthday 10 days later.
Throughout the period, the group’s members and their children will sing hymns, hold nightlong prayer services and convert minorities “if we find any who want to return home,” said Rajendra Singh Pankaj, the World Hindu Council chief in Ayodhya. Youth will also learn about the importance of the Ram temple, which is known formally as the Ram Janmabhoomi.
GVL Narasimha Rao, a spokesman for the BJP, distanced the party from the planned “Hindu Awakening” and called Modi’s statement on religious tolerance “unambiguous.”
“There’s no way this behavior can halt the government’s reform agenda, because it’s not part of our agenda at all,” Rao said by phone. He blasted the opposition for holding up legislation in parliament over religious conversions, calling it “a smear campaign against the government.”
Final Verdict
Six miles from Ayodhya in the town of Faizabad, which has a large Muslim population, residents say religious tensions swell when nationalist groups assert their Hindu pride. Muslim leaders including Imam Maulana Mohammad Zamir are ready to fight back.
“When they tore down our mosque in 1992, they tore down our freedom to practice freely in this country,” said Zamir, the head imam of about 30,000 Sunni Muslims in Ayodhya and Faizabad. “If they force the temple on us, we will legally express our opposition, even with our last, dying breath.”
For now, the World Hindu Council can’t start building if it wanted to. The Supreme Court in 2012 suspended a ruling that divided the land between three groups -- two Hindu and one Muslim. All parties have been waiting for a final verdict since then, and it’s unclear when the decision will come.
BJP President Amit Shah said in October he agreed with calls from Hindu nationalist groups to complete construction of the Ram temple by 2019, when Modi’s term ends. Lal, the stone mason who has been engraving the pieces for the Ram temple in Ayodhya for the past two decades, says it would take five years to complete if the court gives the green light.
“If we can’t build a temple where our god was born, then where else in the world can we build a temple?” Lal said while polishing the edges of his latest sandstone carving. “This right must be protected at any cost.”
A 500-Year-Old Dispute Threatens Modi’s Plan to Remake India - Bloomberg Business
The stone pillars and ceiling tiles are the building blocks of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which took power in May, has championed a decades-long fight to build the temple on the same site where Hindu groups razed a 16th century mosque in 1992.
“We must re-build for god the home taken from him by Muslims,” said Lal, adding that about 75 percent of the Ram temple’s pieces are complete. “This is our opportunity to take back what is rightfully ours.”
Similar to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site in Ayodhya has become a flashpoint for religious divisions that have defined politics in India since its founding in 1947. While Modi has focused so far on overhauling the economy, a clash looms with Hindu nationalists who backed his rise to power and want him to rectify their centuries-old grievances.
“While Modi talks about his great plans and grand strategies for India, there’s another strategy moving on a parallel track aimed at fulfilling the Hindutva agenda,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington. “There is bound to be conflict” between Modi’s goals and those of Hindu groups, he said.
Ground Zero
Religion has been an explosive topic in India for centuries, and remains so today. While the 2001 census showed that 81 percent of Indians were Hindus and 13 percent Muslim, the 2011 data on religion hasn’t been released due to fears of violence. Sectarian murders grew more than four-fold to 71 in 2013 from a year earlier, according to the Home Ministry.
The holy place in Ayodhya, about two-thirds the size of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, is now guarded by thousands of commandos. On any given day, hundreds of people will line up to pray at a makeshift temple in the enclosed area. To access it, they must clear seven security posts surrounded by meshed fencing, CCTV cameras and watchtowers.
“It will always be ground zero of India’s religious conflict,” said RPN Singh, a former deputy home minister. “As long as Hindus are trying to build that temple, Muslims will be fighting them for it, tooth and nail.”
‘Hindu Awakening’
Tensions may rise again next month when an organization linked to Modi’s party kicks off a nationwide “Hindu Awakening” in Ayodhya. The Vishva Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, advocates an agenda known as “Hindutva,” which includes winning converts and scrapping legal privileges for religious minorities in addition to erecting the Ram temple.
Inflammatory moves by Hindu groups give Modi’s opponents an excuse to delay his economic proposals in a parliamentary session that began this week, from passing a national sales tax to making it easier to buy land. Last year, opposition lawmakers in the upper house -- the one house of parliament Modi doesn’t control -- delayed a bill to allow more foreign investment in insurance to debate forced religious conversions.
A crushing defeat in a local Delhi election this month prompted Modi to break his silence on concerns that India was shifting from its secular roots. Before the loss, his Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, had seen gains in four state elections since the national vote in May, when it became the first party in 30 years to win a majority in India’s lower house.
Fringe Factions
“My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence,” Modi told Christian leaders on Feb. 17. Churches in New Delhi had been attacked ahead of the election.
Modi’s comments signaled a recognition that fringe factions of his support base threaten his goals both to stay in power and improve the lives of the roughly 700 million Indians who live on less than $2 per day. Further obstacles in the coming months to economic bills in parliament would question Modi’s ability to implement real reform.
The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group where Modi started his career, provided fodder for potential parliamentary delays after its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, said this month that Nobel laureate Mother Teresa had “ulterior motives” to convert India’s poor. The comments were condemned on the floor of the upper house by opposition lawmaker Derek O’Brien, who called them “an insult to the nation.”
Modi Plea
In an hour-long speech in parliament on Friday, Modi said he’s working for all of India’s 1.2 billion people.
“Hindus and Muslims have fought enough,” Modi told lawmakers. “Now Hindus and Muslims need to join together in the fight against hunger and poverty.”
While India’s stocks and currency have been among the world’s best performers over the past year on optimism that Asia’s third-biggest economy will take off, more disappointment could lead to outflows, according to Manik Narain, a currency strategist at UBS Group AG in London.
“If something as important as GST can’t be passed, that will go to show the political constraints the BJP is under,” Narain said, referring to the goods and services tax, which was first proposed in 2006. “It doesn’t take too many shocks and more developments to pour some cold water on the enthusiasm.”
According to Hindu nationalists aligned with Modi, the entire subcontinent practiced Hinduism before Muslim invaders started converting people and building mosques starting from the 11th century. Those accounts say the mosque in Ayodhya, known as the Babri Masjid, was built in the 1500s on a Hindu temple marking Ram’s birthplace -- a claim disputed by Muslim groups.
Thousands Killed
Legal possession of the land has been contested in courts for the last 125 years, resulting in rulings that have been challenged, overturned, appealed and outright ignored.
In 1990, BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani went on a month-long journey across the country to rally support for the Ram temple. Two years later, hundreds of Hindu protesters broke through police barriers and destroyed the Babri Masjid in a day. That led to riots that killed at least 2,000 people.
Although Modi has recently burnished his credentials as an economic reformer, his early years endeared him to the faithful. Before joining the BJP, Modi served as a worker in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which has ties to both the party and the World Hindu Council, the group paying Lal to help construct the Ram temple.
Toilets Before Temples
Days before the mosque’s destruction, Modi gave one of his first public addresses to a crowd of Hindu followers in Ayodhya. Ten years later, when he served as chief minister of Gujarat state, an arson attack against Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya triggered riots that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Modi denied any wrongdoing.
On the campaign trail before his win last year, Modi kept the message firmly on economic development. While acknowledging his identity as a Hindutva proponent, he told a rally he would prioritize “first toilets, then temples.”
Some Hindus and Muslims are trying to resolve the temple dispute amicably with a settlement to divide the site with a 100 foot-long wall. The World Hindu Council, however, opposes any moves to share the grounds.
“Just like you can’t ask a mother to divide her two children, we can’t ask Hindus to divide this land,” Champat Rai, the group’s secretary general, said on Feb. 25. “We want the Muslims to withdraw their cases and hand over the entire property to the Hindu community.”
‘Smear Campaign’
Rai said Modi’s comments this month on religious tolerance were aimed at Christian missionaries who were converting Hindus. The World Hindu Council won’t delay its “Hindu Awakening,” which will start on March 18 in Ayodhya and run until a holiday celebrating Ram’s birthday 10 days later.
Throughout the period, the group’s members and their children will sing hymns, hold nightlong prayer services and convert minorities “if we find any who want to return home,” said Rajendra Singh Pankaj, the World Hindu Council chief in Ayodhya. Youth will also learn about the importance of the Ram temple, which is known formally as the Ram Janmabhoomi.
GVL Narasimha Rao, a spokesman for the BJP, distanced the party from the planned “Hindu Awakening” and called Modi’s statement on religious tolerance “unambiguous.”
“There’s no way this behavior can halt the government’s reform agenda, because it’s not part of our agenda at all,” Rao said by phone. He blasted the opposition for holding up legislation in parliament over religious conversions, calling it “a smear campaign against the government.”
Final Verdict
Six miles from Ayodhya in the town of Faizabad, which has a large Muslim population, residents say religious tensions swell when nationalist groups assert their Hindu pride. Muslim leaders including Imam Maulana Mohammad Zamir are ready to fight back.
“When they tore down our mosque in 1992, they tore down our freedom to practice freely in this country,” said Zamir, the head imam of about 30,000 Sunni Muslims in Ayodhya and Faizabad. “If they force the temple on us, we will legally express our opposition, even with our last, dying breath.”
For now, the World Hindu Council can’t start building if it wanted to. The Supreme Court in 2012 suspended a ruling that divided the land between three groups -- two Hindu and one Muslim. All parties have been waiting for a final verdict since then, and it’s unclear when the decision will come.
BJP President Amit Shah said in October he agreed with calls from Hindu nationalist groups to complete construction of the Ram temple by 2019, when Modi’s term ends. Lal, the stone mason who has been engraving the pieces for the Ram temple in Ayodhya for the past two decades, says it would take five years to complete if the court gives the green light.
“If we can’t build a temple where our god was born, then where else in the world can we build a temple?” Lal said while polishing the edges of his latest sandstone carving. “This right must be protected at any cost.”
A 500-Year-Old Dispute Threatens Modi’s Plan to Remake India - Bloomberg Business
