December 2014 10 December 2019 The Ayodhya Dispute Resolution Dr Auriol Weigold FDI Senior Visiting Fellow Key Points The commitment to a growing Hinduisation of India on the part of Prime Minister Modi’s government is illustrated in his party allegiances and his Election Manifesto programmes. The ownership of the site of a mosque at Ayodhya has been disputed periodically since it was built in the sixteenth century. In its judgement, framed by Article 142 of the Indian Constitution, the Supreme Court found that there was extensive worship by Hindus in the then mosque’s outer courtyard, prior to the annexation of the area by the British in 1857. The judgement set out ‘on the balance of probabilities’ that the Hindu claim was justified, but compensated Muslims with a grant of land at Ayodhya for a new mosque to be built. Summary In examining the resolution of the lengthy dispute at Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, over the Hindu claim that a Ram Temple had existed on the site prior to the Moghul building of the Babri Masjid Mosque in the sixteenth century, any analysis is governed by the right of the Indian Supreme Court to make and impose a finding backed by the authority of Article 142 of the Indian Constitution. Its finding on 9 November 2019 was not disputed by either party. While disputes by right-wing Hindu parties and their supporters occurred from time to time over some 450 years with varying results, the ramping up of the dispute in the late 1980s that led to the unlawful demolition of the mosque in 1992 by religious “volunteers” – kar sevaks – was the event that led to an unsuccessful law suit case in 2011 and, after months of hearings by the Supreme Court this year, culminated in a verdict in favour of the Hindu plaintiff, “Ram Lalla”, the infant form of the god Lord Ram, considered a “juristic person” in Indian law. While the arguments ‘on a preponderance of probabilities’ won the day, Muslims were granted five acres, almost double the size of the original mosque site, to build a new one. As background to the dispute, this paper examines the BJP’s commitments to the religious right and Prime Minister Modi’s links with it across his political career. The long-disputed ownership of the site is also examined and includes the British decision in 1857 which held in place until 1949, post-Indian independence. Page 2 of 8 Analysis The Modi Government’s Commitment to an Increasingly Hindu India There are many ways to commence an account of the more recent history of what became known as the Ayodhya dispute in December 1992, or the more colloquial Ram Temple issue. Another is the disturbing image published in late October this year before the Supreme Court verdict handed down on 9 November 2019, of a joyful photograph of Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, Sakshi Maharaj, under the heading ‘Ram temple construction will start by December 6’. His photograph epitomises the long-held philosophy of the BJP, supported by Prime Minister Modi and the Shiv Sena, the party’s coalition partner since 1998, that a “Hindu India”, or Hindutva, is their objective. Both Ayodhya and Sakshi Maharaj’s electorate are in Uttar Pradesh (UP), in India’s north. While purely speculative, its capital, Lucknow, has Muslim memorial sites, and the Taj Mahal at Agra, which was the second capital of Moghul Emperor, Shah Jahan, is also in UP. There have been several unsubstantiated claims in recent years that the Emperor had destroyed a Hindu temple to build his monument, claims rejected by the Archaeological Survey of India. Nonetheless, the ‘web of Hindu nationalist groups’ that support the BJP have established that ‘religious mobilisation around Mughal-era disputes’ resonates with many Hindu electors. Along with other Hindu nationalist objectives, the BJP’s 2019 Election Manifesto stated that ‘We reiterate our stand on Ram Mandir. We will explore all possibilities … to facilitate the expeditious construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya’ (Cultural Heritage Section, № 01, p. 36). Beyond the Supreme Court’s verdict and its finding in favour of the prior existence of the Ram Mandir, a question remains. What is next? Potentially discriminatory provisions cited in the 2019 Election Manifesto have already been acted on: the Assam National Register of Page 3 of 8 Citizens, Amendments to the Citizenship Act, the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill that repealed Articles 370 and 35(a) of the Constitution removing the region’s special status, the recent abolition of triple talaq divorce and, arguably, the starting point after Modi’s 2014 election, the build-up of “cow protection” violence. Prime Minister Modi has a long history of involvement with organisations committed to nationalist, religious and traditionalist views of India’s future. As a child, he attended Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) drill meetings and, as a young adult, became a full-time RSS activist. Before the RSS was banned, which occurred after the destruction of the mosque on the contested Ayodhya site, Modi had joined the BJP, which also advocates Hindutva. The party came to national notice in the late 1980s, when it led a movement to build a temple on the Ayodhya site, demolishing the sixteenth century mosque in December 1992, and starting religious riots that left many deaths and an unhealed division in Hindu-Muslim relations. The BJP were briefly in power in 1996 under Prime Minister Vajpayee, but won the general election in 1998. His government collapsed again but came back to power as part of a coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1999. The Congress Party, with its United Progressive Alliance (UPA), won government in 2004 and retained it until Modi led the BJP to a landslide victory in 2014 and again in 2019. In the intervening years, Modi had pursued his own political career and was a controversial Chief Minister of Gujarat State for more than a dozen years before winning government with a popular and moderate Election Manifesto in 2014. Modi’s track record on Hindutva- oriented domestic reforms belies his business-friendly, globalised foreign policy message which can appear at odds with his established nationalistic base. ‘The RSS did not take it well … when Modi suggested that India needed to build toilets before temples’. The question awaiting an answer is how far, if at all, has Modi moved from his base? India has seen deepening societal and communal divisions before and after independence, but the Ayodhya verdict, which awarded Muslims adjacent land while giving the disputed site to Hindus, is, arguably exceptional and perhaps indicative of future Supreme Court decisions on religious disputes. The Ayodhya Site’s Provenance Long Disputed The Ayodhya dispute, which stretches back over centuries, has been one of India’s ‘thorniest’ court cases. Ayodhya today is dotted with small Hindu temples and one significant site without a building. Historical accounts point out that for centuries a mosque, the Babri Masjid, stood on this site. The first emperor of Moghul India had ordered it built and it was completed in 1529. Moghul entitlement to the site had been disputed more or less forcibly over time by a nationalistic Hindu wing that claims it as the birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram. In a brief reprise of Hindu ownership claims, clashes over the temple-mosque site were noted in the late 1850s by the British, over the period that encompassed the Indian Uprising and British Crown control of India. The clashes then were dealt with by permitting Muslims Page 4 of 8 to worship within the mosque, which was built in the inner courtyard, while the Hindus were allowed to worship in the outer courtyard. The British ruling appears to have persisted, and has been occasionally recognised, but, some nine decades later, when India became independent, hardline Hindus were again active and, in 1949, placed idols of Ram and Sita within the mosque. Prime Minister Nehru demanded to no avail that they be removed and, after a lawsuit, the gates were locked, with the idols left inside. Out of bounds, as it remained for quarter of a century, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) again raised it as a Hindutva campaign in 1984, gathering right-wing religious vigour, the year Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. History fuelled legend and, as indicated, there are many accounts of the slow-moving escalation of the dispute over the centuries to the eventual destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 by kar sevaks. Kar sevaks volunteer their services freely for a religious cause. In a very different example from their action at Ayodhya, kar seva, or voluntary work, was done by Sikhs to repair the Golden Temple at Amritsar following military operations against Sikh separatists within the temple complex in 1984. In 1992, however, kar sevaks were organised by the VHP to plan to construct a Ram temple on the site. The VHP is a right- wing Hindu organisation, its beliefs based in Hindu nationalism. Still active, it has been classified by the CIA as a militant religious organisation, taking part locally in today’s cow protection issues and forced religious conversions. Ayodhya was the destination of a rath yatra, or procession, which embarked on a 10,000- kilometre journey from the south towards Ayodhya. Organised by L.K. Advani, a BJP leader, BJP, VHP and RSS senior delegates met at the site to offer prayers and announced a kar seva, its purpose clear, but the location of the new Ram temple to be built, undisclosed. When the kar sevaks’ intention to demolish the mosque became clear, despite official protests, a large crowd gathered, accompanied by media.