#Ayodhya mosque

[snekdood]

i just kinda feel like if you asked ram he'd tell you he doesnt rly give a huge fuck about all this like yall do lmao

[fattesingh]

In its 2019 judgement, the Supreme Court paved the way for the construction of Ram Temple at the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site. The top court also ordered the allocation of a five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for a new mosque. The Ram temple construction has been progressing as per the schedule and is likely to meet its December 2023 deadline. However, three years after the top court settled the dispute, construction for the proposed mosque complex at Dhannipur village near Ayodhya was yet to begin.

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

Genuinely curious, because you seem to hate the Ram Mandir... or how you think one party/ruling government is using it for political gain/votes or how it's wasting money etc.

What do you have to say about the Waqf board act? Or the infamous Shah Bano case and the way the Rajiv Gandhi government went against the decision of the Supreme Court to favour Muslim patriarchy. Or the fact that the Congress government banned books like the Satanic Verses to please a certain community. Is this not politics of appeasement?

You say that the ruling party is playing politics over religion, but hasn't every party done it? It's not like BJP was even hiding it, they've been campaigning for the Ram Mandir rebuilding for decades. It doesn't make it automatically a bad move.

Besides, Ram Mandir is built through devotee donations, so why so much vitriol against it? If Hindus are giving money to construct a temple, it's solely their own decision. I genuinely don't understand why there's so much hatred for it. If a community is reclaiming their holy land, which had been forcibly ruined and rebuilt into another type of building, it's not a bad thing. Plus, a big chunk of land was given to the Sunny Waqf board to build a beautiful mosque in Ayodhya itself, which has begun construction this year (iirc). Both communities will have their interests restored.

Why can't we move on and celebrate the Ram Mandir rebuilding and inauguration? Is decolonization and reclaiming of a place of cultural significance not important?

(I know that some people are being too aggressive about it, but the majority isn't. They're simply celebrating and praying. And some of them actually got attacked for it.)

Okay. Since you're genuinely curious, I'll answer this.

"Why am I criticising the current ruling party for playing politics of appeasement and not any of the other parties?" I'm criticizing them BECAUSE they're the ruling party. They have been in power for close to 10 years now. That's more than 1/3rd of my whole life. This is a hilarious question because I would've been criticizing the same action if it would've been taken by any other political party. I don't have a problem with the party, I have a problem with what they're doing. All citizens are SUPPOSED to do this, my friend. Criticizing your government on what they're doing wrong is a fundamental part of a democracy.

"Politics of appeasement." I hope you understand the difference between appeasement and religious nationalism. The ruling party isn't appeasing anyone. Their acts are guided by their political ideology of Hindutva. I fundamentally disagree with their ideology. I do not agree with them when they say being Hindu is integral to being an Indian. I do not believe in maintaining a Hindu hegemony in India. I simply refuse to accept an ideology that was LITERALLY INSPIRED BY FASCISM AND THE IDEAS OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY.

"What do you have to say about so-and-so?" You know, I would've criticised things I believe are harming our country and power when the governments you speak of were in power. Unfortunately, in certain cases I was not alive then to criticize them and in a few cases, I was a child and I did not know how to form complex sentences. I do not believe in essentialism, you understand? I do not believe that any religion or political party is essentially good or bad. I believe in judging them for what they do.

"They've been campaigning for the Ram Mandir for decades. It doesn't make it automatically a bad move." It's imperative for you to understand this, it is politically a good move and in all other ways a HORRIBLE move. They get the support of all the Hindus who make up the majority of the population? Decent political move. Who could begrudge them for using DIVIDE AND CONQUER as a strategy? But in doing so, what kind of monster have they created? Have they created a billion people who think religious-nationalism is an okay direction for the country's future? Is that a good move, I ask you.

"Ram mandir is built through devotee donations so it's okay." That's close to ₹1,800 crores. (Estimated amount because of course, there's no transparency in the donation system so that we know who donated what amount.) Do you seriously believe all that money came out of the pockets of average working class Indians? Or did the ultra wealthy businessmen fund this religious project and get massive tax breaks in the process? But yes, I'm sure there's no fuckery going on with the money because it's out of DEVOTION. That makes it okay, I guess.

Now we come to the part that is the worst part of this anon message, according to me.

"Reclamation and decolonization." You use these words so lightly and I find that offensive. These words are HIGHLY tied to power structures. Who has the power right now? Is it the mythic evil Islamic conquerors of 400 years ago? Or is it a political party that believes in hindu nationalism and is funded by the ultra wealthy billionaires because said party helps them get even richer? Who is reclaiming what here? I want you to ask yourself this. Can a powerful majority claim reclamation when they tear down a building to build another building there?

"They tore down the temple and built a mosque there" And now you've torn down the mosque and built a temple there. Congratulations, you've won the game. Where do we go from here? Will everyone be happy now? Has peace been restored? A great evil destroyed? What story are we telling ourselves here? Will the religious fanaticism go away now? Will the hatred that has been cultivated in the hearts of Hindus against Muslims be sated? Or will it find more avenues to spread itself?

Decolonizing the mind, right? I wonder why we're only focused on decolonizing against the islamic past and not anything else. But it's okay that India is currently colonising Kashmir. We don't believe in decolonisation when it comes to Kashmir. We don't believe in decolonizing from the system of capitalism that is choking the lives out of us. HELL, WE DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN RECLAMATION SEEING HOW WE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GIVING THE BARE MINIMUM RESERVATION TO CERTAIN COMMUNITIES AS A REPARATION FOR THE HARM THEY'VE HISTORICALLY AND CURRENTLY SUFFERED AND ARE STILL SUFFERING.

I don't want people to talk to me about reclamation, reparation and decolonisation before they accept their own hypocrisy.

Anon, you say have so much vitriol and hate towards a mandir. I should let people celebrate. Did I stop you personally from celebrating? Did I beat up somebody for trying to shove their religious agenda on me? All I did was talk about how sad I am that this is what we've decided to do with our country's resources. Why is one voice of dissent such a big deal to you? Do you want me to shut up and fall in line? Will that be acceptable?

- Mod S

[latent-thoughts]

The wait is over...

Shree Ram is coming home...

500 years of oppression, suppression, struggle, agitation, tears, mourning, resilience, and most importantly, hope and faith.

I've only seen about 35 years of it, but I've seen enough to know how important this day is for us Hindus. Here's why my mutuals are seeing this on their dash.

Today, Shree Ram, who's the 7th Avatar of our God Vishnu, will finally return to his birthplace in the ancient city of Ayodhya--the place where the original temple dedicated to him had stood for millennia. That temple had been demolished and desecrated on command of an Islamic invader called Babar in 1528, and a mosque was built atop its ruins. Hence the 500 year struggle to reclaim it, which reached a critical point when the mosque was finally demolished in 1992.

The process to reclaim this sacred place and rebuild the temple was no walk in the park. The issue went up to the Supreme Court of India, the highest court in the country, and finally, after the favourable verdict, the construction of the temple started in May 2020.

Today, Shree Ram Chandra, the righteous, just and kind king who ruled Ayodhya thousands of years ago, returns home. It's not just an event of religious importance, it's a day of civilizational and cultural importance.

We're reclaiming our heritage.

Jai Shree Ram!

Happy Dwitiya Diwali!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by C H A R A N (@charannn7x__)

[bfpnola]

definitely a longer piece so these excerpts are far from showcasing everything this piece has to offer! read the whole thing on your own time, and in general, just check out jewish currents, an educational, leftist, anti-zionist jewish magazine!

Every August, the township of Edison, New Jersey—where one in five residents is of Indian origin—holds a parade to celebrate India’s Independence Day. In 2022, a long line of floats rolled through the streets, decked out in images of Hindu deities and colorful advertisements for local businesses. People cheered from the sidelines or joined the cavalcade, dancing to pulsing Bollywood music. In the middle of the procession came another kind of vehicle: A wheel loader, which looks like a small bulldozer, rumbled along the route bearing an image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi aloft in its bucket. For South Asian Muslims, the meaning of the addition was hard to miss. A few months earlier, during the month of Ramadan, Indian government officials had sent bulldozers into Delhi’s Muslim neighborhoods, where they damaged a mosque and leveled homes and storefronts. The Washington Post called the bulldozer “a polarizing symbol of state power under Narendra Modi,” whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is increasingly enacting a program of Hindu supremacy and Muslim subjugation. In the weeks after the parade, one Muslim resident of Edison, who is of Indian origin, told The New York Times that he understood the bulldozer much as Jews would a swastika or Black Americans would a Klansman’s hood. Its inclusion underscored the parade’s other nods to the ideology known as Hindutva, which seeks to transform India into an ethnonationalist Hindu state. The event’s grand marshal was the BJP’s national spokesperson, Sambit Patra, who flew in from India. Other invitees were affiliated with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international arm of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary force Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of which Modi is a longtime member.

...

On December 6th, 1992, a mob of 150,000 Hindus, many of whom were affiliated with the paramilitary group the RSS, gathered at the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old mosque that is one of the most contested sacred sites in the world. Over the preceding century, far-right Hindus had claimed that the mosque, located in the North Indian city of Ayodhya, was built not only upon the site where the Hindu deity Ram was born but atop the foundations of a demolished Hindu temple. The RSS and its affiliates had been campaigning to, in the words of a BJP minister, correct the “historical mistake” of the mosque’s existence, a task the mob completed that December afternoon. “They climbed on top of the domes and tombs,” one witness told NPR. “They were carrying hammers and these three-pronged spears from Hindu scripture. They started hacking at the mosque. By night, it was destroyed.” The demolition sparked riots that lasted months and killed an estimated 2,000 people across the country.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid was arguably Hindu nationalism’s greatest triumph to date. Since its establishment in 1925, the RSS—whose founders sought what one of them called a “military regeneration of the Hindus,” inspired by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Nazi “race pride”—had been a marginal presence in India: Its members held no elected office, and it was temporarily designated a terrorist organization after one of its affiliates shot and killed Mohandas Gandhi in 1948. But the leveling of the Babri Masjid activated a virulently ethnonationalist base and paved the way for three decades of Hindutva ascendance. In 1998, the BJP formed a government for the first time; in 2014, it returned to power, winning a staggering 282 out of 543 seats in parliament and propelling Modi into India’s highest office. Since then, journalist Samanth Subramanian notes, all of the country’s governmental and civil society institutions “have been pressured to fall in line” with a Hindutva agenda—a phenomenon on full display in 2019, when the Supreme Court of India awarded the land where the Babri Masjid once stood to a government run by the very Hindu nationalists who illegally destroyed it. (Modi has since laid a foundation stone for a new Ram temple in Ayodhya, an event that a prominent RSS activist celebrated with a billboard in Times Square.) The Ayodhya verdict came in the same year that Modi stripped constitutional protections from residents of the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir and passed a law that creates a fast track to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants, laying the groundwork for a religious test for Indian nationality. Under Modi, “the Hinduization of India is almost complete,” as journalist Yasmeen Serhan has written in The Atlantic.

To achieve its goals, the RSS has worked via a dense network of organizations that call themselves the “Sangh Parivar” (“joint family”) of Hindu nationalism. The BJP, which holds more seats in the Indian parliament than every other party combined, is the Sangh’s electoral face. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is the movement’s cultural wing, responsible for “Hinduizing” Indian society at the grassroots level. The Bajrang Dal is the project’s militant arm, which enforces Hindu supremacy through violence. Dozens of other organizations contribute money and platforms to the Sangh. The sheer number of groups affords the Sangh what human rights activist Pranay Somayajula has referred to as a “tactical politics of plausible deniability,” in which the many degrees of separation between the governing elements and their vigilante partners shields the former from backlash. This explains how, until 2018, the CIA could describe the VHP and Bajrang Dal as “militant religious organizations”—a designation that applies to non-electoral groups exerting political pressure—even as successive US governments have maintained a warm relationship with their parliamentary counterpart, the BJP.

...

The most extreme figures in the Hindu nationalist and Zionist movements were especially frank about the nature of their partnership: “Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans, or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam,” Bajrang Dal affiliate Rohit Vyasmaan told The New York Times of his friendly relationship with Mike Guzofsky, a member of a violent militant group connected to the infamous Jewish supremacist Meir Kahane’s Kach Party.

...

In 2003, Gary Ackerman—a Jewish former congressman who was awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor for helping to found the Congressional Caucus on India—told a gathering of AJC and AIPAC representatives and their Indian counterparts that “Israel [is] surrounded by 120 million Muslims,” while “India has 120 million [within].” Tom Lantos, another Jewish member of the caucus, likewise enjoined the two communities to collaborate: “We are drawn together by mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism.”

[sudamaniparva]

i wasn't originally going to post about the indian elections (after tht ram mandir mess i'm trying to avoid that shit), but faizabad+ayodhya is too fucking funny not to post about.

gotta love how all of the ayodhya residents despite the insane bjp efforts to rebuild the ram mandir over a demolished mosque and run up their crazy nationalist agenda, went, "you bjp pricks are intolerable. goodbye." and fucking showed it.

good for you guys.

[mahoutoons]

i'm sure my non indian followers are confused about why i'm suddenly reblogging stuff about a temple. so let me explain.

on 22nd january, 2024, the ram mandir in ayodhya was inaugrated. it was believed to be built on the birthplace of the lord ram, a hindu god. celebrations were everywhere. not just in india, but abroad, the indian hindu diaspora also celebrated the opening of the temple. saffron flags and chants of "jai shri ram" were everywhere.

so, what's the problem?

the first is that this temple was built on the side of a 500 year old mosque, which was demolished by hindu extremists in 1992. you're probably going to hear that this mosque was built on the site of a demolished temple originally, and they're just reclaiming it. but that is a lie. in fact, the supreme court claims that there was no evidence of a temple under the babri masjid. in fact, that is one of the longest run s@nghi misinformation campaigns. once upon a time, the demolition of the babri masjid was seen as a national shame, the actions of a few fringe hindu nationalists. but now, its a celebrated almost mainstream event, which does not hold promise for where this country is headed.

oh, but hindus are just celebrating a place of worship being opened on what they believe to be a holy site, right? wrong. its not just about the celebrations, but how the treatment of religious minorities in india would get worse. it was already pretty bad, especially under our current fascist government, but now we're seeing churches and mosques being vandalized with saffron flags and chants of "jai shri ram", muslim owned shops being burned, crowds calling for the demilition of more mosques, muslim owned properties being subject to more violence than ever, and honestly many more that could be happening as we speak.

india has always been a hellhole for religious minorities and it has been more so ever since m0di gained power. but the building of this temple is just going to make things so much worse, especially for indian muslims. remember that when you see someone celebrating the ram mandir, this is what they're celebrating. this is what they're turning a blind eye to and even encouraging.

with all this in mind, i encourage non indians to steer clear of anyone celebrating the ram mandir. i don't care if its their religion, i don't care if they're "just celebrating", what they're celebrating is a temple built on the site of a demolished mosque and with the blood of many. don't buy their "500 years of struggle" bs, its a lie.

[shehzadi]

hindutva are celebrating the construction of a temple today (22.01.24) in ayodhya, uttar pradesh on the ruins of babri masjid, a mosque they destroyed in 1992. one of the common disputes around it is the existence of a temple before the masjid. the most extreme hindu nationalists don’t care either way because they just want mosques destroyed. the more liberal types dig up ‘proof’ of temple remains as if that justifies the violence muslims are facing centuries later.

[mariacallous]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram temple in Ayodhya in the key northern state of Uttar Pradesh in January in hopes it would earn him a massive victory in the national election that concluded in June. That didn’t happen—at least not to the extent that Modi, his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and their ideological fountainhead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) expected.

In what has widely been described as a shock result, the BJP won merely 240 seats in the 543-seat parliament, after setting a target of 400 seats. Modi has formed a government but only with support from other parties.

Like any election result, the outcome had multiple causes that will take time to fully sort out. But one thing is already clear: Modi failed in his long-running bid to homogenize India’s Hindus across castes and cultures and consolidate their vote for his political benefit.

In 2014, Modi came to power on the back of religious nationalism and security issues, and he continued that trend in 2019. This year, in the absence of any urgent security threat from regional rival Pakistan and rising concerns over unemployment, inflation, and authoritarianism, Modi banked on the RSS’s homogenization strategy.

The Ram temple was built on a site long disputed with Muslims, where a 16th-century mosque stood until December 1992, when a group of Hindu nationalists razed it to the ground allegedly on the BJP’s provocation. Experts said the BJP had envisaged the temple would instill pride in Hindus, feed their Muslim animosity, and bring them under the Hindu umbrella to choose Modi.

Even though, by and large, the Hindu community seemed to have been pleased with the inauguration of the temple, that didn’t translate into votes for Modi across the Hindu hierarchy. Instead, the results exposed the weaknesses of the homogenization exercise.

Hartosh Singh Bal, an Indian journalist and the executive editor of the Caravan, said there is “diversity in Hinduism” and the election results prove that it can’t be “papered over by directing attention and hatred outwards” toward Muslims. This election proves that “Hindus are not a monolith” and that “various segments of Hinduism have a successful chance of taking on the BJP,” he added in reference to tactical voting by lower castes in Uttar Pradesh against the BJP.

Karthick Ram Manoharan, a political scientist at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, said that in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India with the second-biggest economy in the country, the BJP did not win a single seat out of a total of 39.

“Hindus are the absolute majority in Tamil Nadu, but they still mostly vote for the secular Dravidian parties,” Manoharan said in reference to local parties that have emerged out of social movements opposed to an upper-caste Hindu order that the BJP and RSS have been long accused of nurturing and propagating.

In March, just a month before voting began, I witnessed saffron-colored flags expressing support for Modi’s party jutting out from rooftops and windows in tightly packed homes in western Uttar Pradesh. Some people I spoke to said that BJP workers had decided to adorn the neighborhoods as they pleased, but underneath the flag-waving, a large-scale discontent was brewing over a lack of employment opportunities.

The upper-caste youth seemed confused, if not yet disenchanted, with Modi and in the absence of industry and strong local economies once again mourned the loss of government jobs to affirmative action. (The Indian Constitution reserves almost half of all state jobs for people from lower castes and others who confront a generational disadvantage and historical discrimination.)

Meanwhile, Dalits, who sit at the bottom of India’s Hindu hierarchy, in hamlets nearby who depend on the quota for their dignity and livelihood were quietly recalibrating their options. The mood was starkly different from 2014 and 2019 when I visited some of the Dalit-dominated parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh. Back then, Dalits I met were upbeat and decisively pro-Modi. They said they supported him since they believed that he might raise their stature in the Hindu hierarchy.

But 10 years later, they suspected the BJP was plotting to weaken the constitution, the only assurance of rights for marginalized communities in a country where upper-caste Hindus continue to hold social capital and economic power.

Recent comments by BJP leaders that if Modi won 400 seats, he would change the constitution spread anxiety among lower castes that the party intended to scrap the reservation system. The BJP repeatedly denied this, but the suspicion that it is first a party for upper-caste Hindus is deep-rooted among lower castes, and experts believe the comments were part of the BJP’s political strategy.

“They were testing the waters to see what would be the reaction,” said Sushil Kumar Pandey, an assistant professor of history at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow and the author of Caste and Politics in Democracy.

“The opposition picked it up and campaigned on it, telling people a change in the constitution could mean losing your livelihood, your jobs,” Pandey added. “That worked at a time [when] people were also scared of privatization” and in government-run sectors.

For Dalits, it was about more than jobs. The Indian Constitution is nearly worshipped by the community and celebrated en masse on the birth anniversary of the Indian intellectual who wrote it. B.R. Ambedkar was no fan of Ram and advocated against the caste discrimination inherent in Hinduism all his life, even converting to Buddhism when he felt there was no escaping caste-based prejudice. While he couldn’t annihilate the caste system, he ensured that the constitution offered lower castes a quota in government jobs to gradually uplift them.

In his honor, and as an ode to the progressive document, Dalits sing songs in praise of the constitution and hail it as the upholder of their dignity in a society where they continue to be belittled. Any change to the text was unacceptable. “Their cultural identity is linked to this book,” said Ravish Kumar, a journalist and the host of a popular YouTube news show.

In the south, too, there was a fear of culturally being subsumed by a Hindi-speaking upper-caste elite. Indian federal units, or states, were defined in the 1950s on the basis of language, and to this day south Indians identify themselves on the basis of the language they speak. The Ram temple had no resonance in the southern states, particularly in electorally significant Tamil Nadu, with the highest number of seats regionally. Tamils were wary that the RSS’s homogenization agenda would drown out their cultural ethos and impose a secondary status on the Tamil language.

Manoharan, the political scientist, said that in Tamil Nadu, it was “not so much religious but fear of cultural homogeneity” and “a language policy which will give importance to Hindi speakers over Tamil speakers and upper-caste Tamils over other backward castes.”

In a state where “88 percent people come from so-called lower castes” and “69 percent have jobs under affirmative action through a special act,” people were also extremely worried that the BJP may “water down” the employment quota promised in the constitution, Manoharan added.

The southern Indian states have a longer history of resistance to upper-caste domination, a higher literacy rate, better economies, and a tradition of secular politics. While the BJP maintained its tally of 29 seats from the last election, it is being seen as a poor result considering the inroads the RSS has made in the south.

For instance, in the southwestern state of Kerala, the RSS has more than 5,000 shakhas, or branches, second in number only to Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state—yet “despite the fact that the RSS has thousands of training grounds in Kerala, they are unable to get influence,” said K.M. Sajad Ibrahim, a professor of political science at University of Kerala. “That’s because while religion is important, communal harmony is more important to people here. BJP tries to create tensions, and that doesn’t work here.”

The BJP managed to gain one seat for the first time in Kerala, but that isn’t being attributed to its ideological success or expansion of homogenization project but to the winning candidate’s personal appeal. Suresh Gopi, the winning candidate, is a popular movie star.

In many states in the Hindi belt and even in the south, the BJP did well. The upper castes and urban voters are standing firmly behind Modi. Kumar, the journalist, said it would be foolhardy to dismiss Modi—and the bigger Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, forces backing him—just yet. He said Hindutva hasn’t lost and only faced a setback. “The BJP was trying to dominate caste politics with Hindutva,” he said, “but the election result shows that dominance has cracked.” However, he added, “it has only cracked—the ideology still has wide-scale acceptance.”

Everyone else Foreign Policy spoke to concurred but added that Hindus are far too diverse to be homogenized. Manoharan said the results exposed the weakness of the homogenization agenda and its faulty premise. “Hindutva’s aim for homogeneity is confounded precisely by a structural feature of the religion-culture it seeks to defend—caste,” he said.

[krsnaradhika]

so many posts abt supposed hinduphobia not a single word about all the incidents this week of people playing bhajans and dancing right in front of masjids do you really think we are oppressed when such things happen without consequences?

I was gonna post, did not possess the ideal temper for it until now but I'm gonna answer that.

That's wrong. Hindus who are doing this are wrong. No matter what anybody says, it's always gonna be wrong to impose your belief upon others. And so is disrespecting others' faith in any way. Not cool, definitely not what Sanātana teaches us. Live and let live, peacefully. The world is one family.

"Supposed Hinduphobia", huh? Y'all really like crying so do it off anon. I have posts about it, as you pointed out already, questioned all these incidents when you can see it dancing naked and yet you want to live in denial. Islamophobia is very real, so is Hinduphobia. You cannot deny the wounds and blood of others. Kashmiri Hindus? I am gonna ask this again and again and again till nobody answers me. That wasn't Hinduphobia? What about the forced conversion and rape of Hindu girls in Pakistan? Sexualizing vigrahas of goddesses, putting meat on them, vandalizing them? What are all these people denying the existence of the temple beneath the Babri mosque despite all these evidences and trying to speak on the behalf of Shri Rama that he wouldn't have wanted it? Pakistan very recently has disrespected a Hindu temple despite it being named a global heritage site. Nobody fucking questioned the one peeing on the Shiva temple very recently. "Do you think we are being oppressed when such things happen without consequences?" No religion is devoid of shitheads, anon. We have many in our community, there are plenty in the others. As I said, you cannot deny anybody's suffering. Not Hindus', not Muslims'. I've stepped into this mire only when I saw supposed liberals and leftists speaking ill of Rama Lalaa and the Ayodhya temple. It's irritating seeing people like you. And do not dare put words in my mouth. I've never denied Islamophobia.

[onetimetwotimesthreetimess]

There will never be anything more despicable than building and celebrating, and forcing a nation to celebrate on the taxpayers money, a temple build on the mass graves of Muslims. The Hindu nationalist state, has proved again that this nation belongs to only Hindus.

Babri Masjid, 1992

Ram Temple, 2024

A bit of context for those who don’t know about the issue:

Babri Masjid, was a mosque in Ayodhya, India. It was built in the 16th century by the Mughal Empire. Babri Masjid was a holy place for the Muslims in the country. There’s a history of communalism (created by the British Empire) between Hindus (the majority religion) and Muslims (the minority) in the country.

In 1992, Babri Masjid was attacked and demolished by Hindu extremists who believed that the mosque was built on the site of birthplace of Ram (Hindu god). Thousands of people lost their lives. Thousands of Muslims were killed in cold blood by a hyper-nationalist state.

In 2010, after decades of Muslims fighting for justice, the Allahabad High Court upheld the claim that the mosque was built on Ram’s birth place. Muslims were also awarded one-third area of the site for the construction of a mosque. However, thr decision was subsequently appealed by all parties to the Indian Supreme Court, wherein a five judge bench heard a title suit from August to October 2019. On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court quashed the lower court's judgement and ordered the entire site to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple.

Today, 22nd January, 2024, marks the inaugural of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. On a site that is so deeply entrenched within a community’s blood, pain and trauma. While these Hindu nationalists celebrate, every Muslim in the country feels more scared. Muslims in India have always been unlawfully detained, persecuted, punished and killed throughout the past seven decades but it has only worsened ever since BJP, the ruling party came in power. Celebrities, sportsperson, politicians and millions of people travelled to Ayodhya to celebrate this tremendous failure of the state.

Today, the Indian constitution lies under those thousands grave.

If any one of you celebrated, I hope you understand the gravity of your actions. I hope you understand what you all set in motion. I hope that one day, you understand and that there is no redemption for you after that.

I hope you all rot in hell.

Here’s a short poem by Rabindranath Tagore about an old god, a new temple, an arrogant king and many hungry and homeless ordinary people.

[metamatar]

Hi, I'd like to point out that hindu kings used to destroy temples too.

http://scroll.in/article/767065/war-trophies-when-hindu-kings-raided-temples-and-abducted-idols

I've had arguments with people who're always like "muslims destroyed our temples", but whenever I bring up this fact, they either completely ignore it and keep going or make some weak excuses. Also I remember back in school our history teacher used to say there were instances of muslim rulers looting not just temples but mosques as well. I don't know much about that though. I guess the thing about ancient temples is that they were mostly a king's symbol of power and store of wealth, which is why invaders attacked them first. But hindu nationalists like to paint this as "hindus being oppressed by barbaric muslims" to suit their agendas.

yeah! i think part of the problem is. after the bjp rss sangh etc tore down the mosque in ayodhya in 1992, there became no other way for anyone in the country to understand the history of temple and mosque destruction. it is imagined back into the past that those kind of assumptions and ideological motivations animated everyone. but arguing with fascists does not actually work when you want to situate context and they're allergic to any scholarship not from the ingroup of those validating them.

the desire to exterminate muslims from everyday life is so intense now – they target muslim children for violence in school and bar muslim vegetable cart vendors from communities. it is beyond questions of what really happened in history. bc nothing in the past justifies what is happening now, it is about how history will judge us, who knew better and failed.

[shut-up-rabert]

You know what makes me angry? People who shamelessly hide information for the sake of their propaganda.

The Ny times articles regarding Ayodhya verdict (which were conviniently written by american leftist muslims) wrote about how it was islamophobic and BJP oriented of the Supreme Court to decide on giving the land to us.

No mention of the Sikh memoirs proving that the temple was demolished to make the mosque. No mention of the ASI report that proved that a non islamic structure complete with statues was found underneath. No mention of how important the temple is to the hindus or how many went away without getting to see the day they worship their beloved Ram Lalla. No mention of how their was no muslim prayers being offered there from since 50 years before and how the structure was being used as a makeshift temple.

An article regarding the Ayodhya verdict can water down all the crucial information about a religious temple that is nothing short of Mecca or Bethlehem to me to focus on the side they favour losing just another (abandoned) mosque.

But it is islamophobia, yes.

[beardedmrbean]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated a grand temple to Hindu god Ram in the flashpoint city of Ayodhya.

He said it heralded "a new era" for India - the temple replaces a 16th-Century mosque torn down by Hindu mobs in 1992, sparking riots in which nearly 2,000 people died.

Top film stars and cricketers were among guests at the event in Ayodhya.

But some Hindu seers and most of the opposition boycotted it, saying Mr Modi was using it for political gain.

General elections are due in India in the next few months and Mr Modi's political rivals say the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be seeking votes in the temple's name in a country where 80% of the population is Hindu.

Critics have also accused the government of exploiting a religious celebration in a country which - according to its constitution - is secular. For Muslims, India's biggest minority, the event evoked fear and painful memories, members of the community in Ayodhya told the BBC in the run-up to Monday's ceremony.

Televised live, it showed Mr Modi performing religious rituals inside the temple's sanctum along with priests and Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - the ideological fountainhead of Hindu nationalist parties.

The complex history of India's Ayodhya holy site

Transforming a flashpoint holy city into the ‘Hindu Vatican’

"Today's date will go down in history," Mr Modi said after the event. "After years of struggle and countless sacrifices, Lord Ram has arrived [home]. I want to congratulate every citizen of the country on this historic occasion."

The temple has been constructed at a cost of $217m (£170m), funded from private donations. Only the ground floor was opened - the rest is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The construction work is part of a revamp for the city, estimated to cost more than $3bn.

The building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya fulfils a decades-long Hindu nationalist pledge. Many Hindus believe the Babri mosque was built by Muslim invaders on the ruins of a temple where the Hindu god was born.

The movement to build the temple helped propel the BJP into political prominence in the 1990s.

There was a festive atmosphere as tens of thousands of chanting Hindu devotees waved flags and beat drums - military helicopters showered flower petals on the temple. Saffron flags with pictures of Lord Ram line streets in the city festooned with marigolds, as do banners with the faces of Mr Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Some of India's biggest celebrities, including Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, attended.

Temple rises from ruins of one of India’s darkest days

Listen: The temple at the heart of Modi's India re-election bid

Transforming a flashpoint holy city into the ‘Hindu Vatican’

In many other northern cities Hindus lit lamps, and saffron flags carrying images of Ram are fluttering on rooftops, including in several parts of Delhi. Cinemas screened the event, and big screens relayed pictures from Ayodhya to town squares and residential neighbourhoods.

The ceremony, called Pran Pratishtha, which loosely translates from Sanskrit into "establishment of life force", lasted about an hour. Hindus believe that chanting mantras and performing rituals around a fire will infuse sacred life in an idol or a photograph of a deity.

Several domestic TV stations built huge sets by the side of the river Saryu, a tributary of the Ganges, just behind the temple, and provided wall-to-wall coverage of the event, some proclaiming the moment of consecration as the start of "Ram Rajya" (Lord Ram's rule) in India.

Hindus celebrated the inauguration in other countries too. Massive billboards of Lord Ram graced Times Square in New York, where a group of devotees braved the freezing weather to gather in the middle of the night.

Temples all across the United Kingdom - where Indians are one of the largest diaspora groups - marked the event. Colourful posters had been shared inviting devotees to honour the occasion and celebrations involved flowers, sweets and music. There were also some celebrations in Muslim-majority Dubai - where Indians are a significant population - but from Indian news reports these appeared more muted than elsewhere.

In 2019, the Supreme Court gave the disputed land to Hindus after a protracted legal battle followed the mosque's demolition. Muslims were given a plot outside the city for a mosque but have yet to build one.

One member of the community the BBC spoke to in Ayodhya ahead of Monday's inauguration agreed that Hindus have the right to build the temple after the Supreme Court gave them the site.

"We did not accept that decision happily, but what can we do," he said. Another man said he was happy Hindus are building the temple - "but we are also sad because it was built after destroying a mosque".

The new three-storey temple - made with pink sandstone and anchored by black granite - stretches across 7.2 acres in a 70-acre complex. A 51-inch (4.25-ft) statue of the deity, specially commissioned for the temple, was unveiled last week. The idol has been placed on a marble pedestal in the sanctum sanctorum.

Thousands of police were deployed for Monday's event, despite Mr Modi having appealed to pilgrims not to turn up and to watch the ceremony on television. In many states a full or half day holiday was called, with schools and colleges closed and stock markets shut.

The build-up to a demolition that shook India

The man who helped Lord Ram win the Ayodhya case

But a sour note was struck with some top religious seers saying that as the temple was not yet complete, it was against Hinduism to perform the rituals there, and many opposition leaders deciding to stay away.

Some opposition-ruled states also announced their own plans for the day - West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she would pray at the iconic temple to goddess Kali in Kolkata and then lead an all-faith rally. The eastern state of Odisha (Orissa) unveiled huge plans to bring pilgrims to the Jagannath temple in Puri, one of the holiest sites for Hindus.

Authorities say they expect more than 150,000 visitors per day once the temple in Ayodhya is fully ready.

To accommodate this expected rush, new hotels are being built and existing ones spruced up as part of a major makeover and in recent weeks, a new airport and railway station have opened.

Officials say they are building a "world-class city where people come as pilgrims and tourists", but many local people have told the BBC that their homes, shops and "structures of religious nature" have been either completely or partially demolished to expand roads and set up other facilities.

[jobaaj]

The 500-year wait is over! Lord Ram is home!! Check out the full timeline:🔽🔽 - 1528: According to the history books, Babur's general Mir Baq was in charge of constructing the Babri masjid at the place where Lord Ram was born. The old temple was destroyed to construct the mosque.

- 1530-65: Unverified reports suggest communal violence over the Mandir-Masjid debate and Akbar, the then Mughal ruler, set up a common platform for worship. - 1853-85: After almost 330 years, communal violence erupts again. The British Empire sets up partitions and Mahant Das’s plea to build a canopy above the platform is denied. - 1949: The turning point comes when the idol of Lord Ram appears from inside the mosque. According to Muslims, the idol was placed inside the mosque by a radical Hindu outfit. As both parties file multiple lawsuits, the situation gets more complicated.

- 1950-61: Multiple lawsuits are filed and other parties join the fray with both sides claiming the land as theirs. - 1983-1989: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) starts a nationwide move to build a temple and legal tensions flare up. Muslims set up the Babri Masjid Committee and the former VP of the VHP files a suit on behalf of Lord Ram to get possession and the first stone for the temple is laid. - 1990: BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani’s Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya saw thousands of volunteers march as they partially damaged the mosque in a scuffle that left scores dead. - 1992: The bloodiest event in the Mandir-Masjid dispute as Hindu volunteers demolish the mosque and a bloody battle erupts throughout the nation. Over 2,000 were reported dead. A small tent is set up where the idol is placed for worship. - 2002: PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee sets up an Ayodhya cell and the Allahabad HC judges begin determining ownership of the site. - 2003: The Archaeological Survey of India begins surveying the area and a survey reveals the existence of a temple’s remains beneath the mosque. Muslims challenge the findings as tensions continue. - 2010: The disputed land is split into 3 parts where one went to the Hindus, another to the Muslims, and the final one to the Nirmohi Akhara. - 2011: All 3 parties approach the Supreme Court to challenge the Allahabad HC’s judgment and the SC issues a stay on the order. - 2015-18: The SC removes all irrelevant parties from the lawsuit as the matter gets more sensitive during that time. - 2019: After a failed mediation attempt, a five-judge bench announces a judgment in favor of the Hindus, and the Muslims are allotted 5 acres for the construction of another mosque. - 2020: PM Narendra Modi lays the foundation stone for the construction alongside a commemorative plaque and a special postage stamp. - 22nd January 2024: The temple is officially consecrated and Lord Ram, who has been in a tent since 1992, is unveiled for worship in a state-of-the-art temple. Follow Jobaaj Stories (the Media arm of Jobaaj.com Group) for more.