Muslim Academics Propose Concessions in Indian Land Dispute

Vijayraghav Mandir is a Hindu (Thenkalai Sri Vaishnava) temple in Ayodhya. (Wikimedia Commons)

A group of Muslim intellectuals has proposed handing a victory to Hindus in the controversial Ayodhya temple case, as a Supreme Court hearing continues over the nearly 30-year-long land dispute.

“In our collective wisdom, the disputed land owned by Muslims of India may be handed over to the Supreme Court of India to the government of India as a goodwill gesture for attaining communal harmony and long-lasting peace in the country,” said Indian Muslims for Peace, a group of Muslim academics from various universities across India, in a statement on October 10. The group also made sure to underline that they had “no stake in the matter” but rather were simply suggesting a solution for the Muslim litigants in the Ayodhya case.

The city of Ayodhya in northern India has historical and religious significance for Hindus, as they see it as the birthplace of Rama, one of the most important Hindu deities who, according to legend, lived on Earth in human form. Hindus say that a temple used to be located on the site of his birthplace before it was demolished in the 16th century by the Muslim Mughal rulers of India. In its place they built a mosque, the Babri Masjid, named after the first Mughal emperor.

In the 1980s, Hindu nationalist groups, including India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), began to campaign for the construction of a new Rama temple in place of the mosque. On December 6, 1992, a group closely linked to the BJP, the Vishnu Hindu Parishad (VHP), organized a rally at the site with more than 150,000 people. The rally quickly turned violent, with demonstrators overwhelming security forces and completely demolishing the Babri Masjid in only a few hours with axes and hammers. Its destruction triggered sectarian violence all across India, leading to the deaths of more than 2,000 people. 

Currently the land sits unused, a grim reminder of the tensions that still exist between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority, which makes up almost 15 percent of the population.

In 2010, the High Court of Allahabad, the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh in which Ayodhya is located, ruled that the land should be divided up into Muslim and Hindu sections. But both the Hindu and Muslim disputants in the case contested the decision, moving the case up to India’s Supreme Court, where it has languished for the past decade. 

On September 18, the Supreme Court said they would be willing to hear further arguments in the Babri Masjid case in preparation for closing arguments on October 17, marking the end of an arduous process that has taken almost 30 years to resolve. 

But despite the proposal from the Muslim intellectuals, the Muslim litigants show no signs of conceding the land. 

“AIMPLB remains unfazed by any such demands. Those giving suggestions of surrender of claim have no locus standi in the case,” said Zafaryab Jalani, spokesperson for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), an NGO dedicated to arguing on behalf of Indian Muslims from the perspective of Islamic sharia law. “We are confident about our arguments before the honorable Supreme Court and look forward to the much awaited verdict.”

With both sides unwilling to give up, observers of the case still struggle to predict the ultimate verdict, and there remains the potential for a further flaring of tensions. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was critical toward both parties in the case, saying, “You will not let this country live in peace… somebody always has to poke.”