"Ayodhya Issue" In: the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race
Ayodhya Issue around this cause. The situation was different five years later. During the 1989 election cam- CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT paign, RSS activists, VHP religious figures, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS Paris, France and BJP candidates canvassed thousands of towns and villages to consecrate bricks Ayodhya, in today’s Uttar Pradesh, is known stamped with Ram’s name and destined in Hinduism as the capital of a kingdom to be used to “rebuild” the Ram temple in whose famous king was Lord Ram, one of the Ayodhya. The bricks were carried in proces- mostpopulargodsofNorthIndia.According sions imitating those organized for religious to Hindu nationalist ideologues, a temple celebrations in which idols are carried along hadbeenbuiltonthebirthplaceofGod a precise itinerary. In several places, these Ram (Ramjanmabhoomi); but in 1528 Babur, processions resulted in riots that followed an the first Moghol emperor, had this temple identical scenario in each case: a procession replaced by a mosque, the Babri Masjid. in the form of a show of strength (some- Although there is no definite archaeological times involving over ten thousand people) evidence for the existence of a temple on stretched along several kilometers; despite that site, Hindus continued to worship Ram the local authorities’ recommendations or there and, after independence in 1949, Hindu interdictions, they entered the Muslim neigh- nationalists placed the statues of Ram and his borhoods, where they chanted slogans such wife Sita in the mosque, by way of reclaiming as Pakistan aur Kabristan (there are only the place (Jha and Jha 2012). Prime Minis- two places for Muslims: Pakistan and the ter Nehru had the building sealed, and the cemetery); these provocations prompted the issue died out for years.
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