Victory for bigotry in India

This video from India says about itself:

The Babri Masjid, named after the founder of the Mughal Empire, Babur, was demolished by a mob of 150,000 Hindutva fascists in 1992. Thousands of people, mainly Muslims were killed following the demolition.

This is an interesting and rare video recorded in 1991, a year before the demolition, it digs into the background of the dispute and its origins.

By Sarath Kumara and Keith Jones:

Indian High Court abets Hindu supremacists with Babri Masjid ruling

2 October 2010

In a shameful decision that legitimizes Hindu supremacist ideology and violence, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court ruled Thursday that the site of the razed Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya should be divided three ways, with two-thirds of the land, including the most hotly contested portion, awarded to Hindu communalist and fundamentalist organizations. Under the ruling, the Sunni (Muslim) Central Board of Waqfs will be given title to a third of the land.

In December 1992, thousands of right-wing Hindu activists mobilized by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then as now India’s Official Opposition, the VHP (World Hindu Council), and other members of the so-call sangh parivar (RSS network) tore down the 450 year-old mosque, triggering the most deadly wave of communal violence in India since the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent. At least 2,000 and possibly as many as 3,000 people, most of them poor Muslims, were killed.

The destruction of the mosque was the culmination of a foul nationwide campaign led by BJP leader Lal Advani in which it was claimed that replacing the Babri Masjid with a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram was necessary to demonstrate the dominance of Hindus and Hindu culture in India.

The destruction of the mosque took place in plain view of thousands of security personnel who had effectively been ordered to stand down by the BJP state government of Uttar Pradesh, although it had been expressly ordered by India’s Supreme Court to protect the Babri Masjid. The Congress Party, which formed India’s national government in 1992, also failed to take action to prevent the razing of the Babri Masjid, using the excuse that under ordinary circumstances the states are constitutionally responsible for public order.

The BJP subsequently came to power in 1998 at the head of a multi-party coalition and for six years led the pro-business and pro-US National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. But due to the opposition of many of its NDA allies—regional- and caste-based parties who claim to be votaries of secularism and opponents of the BJP’s chauvinist Ramjanmabhoomi campaign—the BJP was unable to act on its electoral pledge to build a Ram temple on the ashes of the Babri Masjid.

Nevertheless, the BJP and the Hindu right have continued to proclaim the building of a Hindu temple at Ayodhya a major national cause.

Cobrapost, an Indian investigative news website and television production house, has provided new evidence that demonstrates the 1992 razing of the historic Babri Masjid was a carefully planned act of vandalism organized by Hindu communalist organizations with the knowledge and approval of top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): here.

The Commonwealth Games, scheduled to begin on October 3 in Delhi, pose a major crisis for the Indian elite: here.

Indian army general praises instigator of 2002 Gujarat pogrom: here.

An American informant had a high-level role in the preparation of the December 2008 [Mumbai] assault, in which 166 people were killed by bullets and grenades: here.

Mayaben Kodnani, a sitting state legislator and former minister in Gujarat’s BJP government, and thirty others have been convicted by a so-called “fast track” court for the brutal massacre of 97 Muslims more than ten years ago in the Naroda-Patiya locality of Gujarat’s capital, Amhedabad: here.

New York is not the only city divided over the building of a mosque. In the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, a large mosque is under construction. Even though the cornerstone has already been laid, the project is far from being accepted by everyone: here.

With ruling on razed mosque. India’s Supreme Court validates Hindu supremacist violence: here.

Related articles

• Controversy dogs Sambhal’s Babri mosque
• INDIA – India, Babri Masjid demolition “planned by Hindu party”
• Not just 1992, Babri Masjid was focus of conspiracy in 1949 too
• India Ink: Twenty Years Ago: Riots Sweep India After Babri Masjid Destruction
• Letter from India: Secularism in Search of a Nation
• The demolition that rebuilt a community