The Ayodhya - Babri Masjid tangle

The Babri Masjid (translation: Mosque of Babur) was a mosque in Ayodhya, India. Located in Faizabad district, it was one of the largest mosques in the Uttar Pradesh state. Before the 1940s, the masjid was officially known as Masjid-i-Janmasthan ("the mosque of the birthplace").^] According to the mosque's inscriptions, it was built in 1528–29 (935 AH) by Mir Baqi, on orders of the Mughal emperor Babur (after whom it is named).

The mosque was located on a hill known as Ramkot ("Rama's fort"^]). According to hearsay, Mir Baqi destroyed a pre-existing temple of Rama at the site. 

Limited historical evidence exists to support this theory and the existence of the temple itself is a matter of controversy. A report by the Archaeological Survey of India suggested that a temple existed at the site. The political, historical and socio-religious debate over the history of the site and whether a previous temple was demolished or modified to create the mosque, is known as the Ayodhya dispute.

Starting in the 19th century, there were several conflicts and court disputes between Hindus and Muslims over the mosque. On 6 December 1992, the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu nationalist groups triggered riots all over India, killing around 2,000 people, many of them Muslim.

Importance of Ram Janmabhoomi to Hindus.

In Hinduism the birthplace of the deity Rama, known as "Ram Janmabhoomi", is considered a holy site. This site is often believed to be at the place where the Babri Masjid stood in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh: historical evidence to support this belief is scarce. In 1528, following the Mughal conquest of the region, a mosque was built at the site by the Mughal general Mir Baqi, and named the "Babri Masjid" after the Mughal emperor Babur. 

Popular belief holds that Mir Baqi demolished a temple of Rama to build the mosque: limited historical evidence exists to support this theory. Archaeological evidence has been found of a structure pre-dating the mosque. This structure has been variously identified as a Hindu temple.

For at least four centuries, the site was used for religious purposes by both Hindus and Muslims. The claim that the mosque stood on the site of a temple was first made in 1822, by an official of the Faizabad court. The Nirmohi Akhara sect cited this statement in laying claim to the site in later in the 19th century, leading to the first recorded incidents of religious violence at the site, between 1853 and 1855.  

In 1859 the British colonial administration set up a railing to separate the outer courtyard of the mosque to avoid disputes. The status quo remained in place until 1949, when idols of Rama emerged inside the mosque, allegedly by volunteers of the Hindu Mahasabha. This led to an uproar, with both parties filing civil suits laying claim to the land. The placement of the idol was seen as a desecration by the users of the Masjid. The site was declared to be in dispute, and the gates to the Masjid were locked.

In the 1980s, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

The movement was bolstered by the decision of a district judge, who ruled in 1986 that the gates would be reopened and Hindus permitted to worship there. This decision was endorsed by Indian National Congress and Rajiv Gandhi, then the Prime Minister of India, who sought to regain support from Hindus he had lost over the Shah Bano controversy. 

In September 1990, BJP leader L. K. Advani began a Rath Yatra, a political rally travelling across much of north India to Ayodhya. The yatra sought to generate support for the proposed temple, and also sought to unite Hindu votes by mobilizing anti-Muslim sentiment.

Advani was arrested by the government of Bihar before he could reach Ayodhya. Despite this, a large body of kar sevaks or Sangh Parivar activists reached Ayodhya and attempted to attack the mosque. This resulted in a pitched battle with the paramilitary forces that ended with the death of several kar sevaks. The BJP withdrew its support to the V. P. Singh ministry, necessitating fresh elections. The BJP substantially increased its tally in the parliament, as well as winning a majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

Demolition of the Babri Structure.

On 6 December 1992, the RSS and its affiliates organised a rally involving 150,000 VHP and BJP kar sevaks at the site of the disputed structure. 

The ceremonies included speeches by BJP leaders such as Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti.  During the first few hours of the rally, the crowd grew gradually more restless, and began raising slogans. A police cordon had been placed around the structure in preparation for attack. However, around noon, a young man managed to slip past the cordon and climb the structure itself, brandishing a saffron flag. This was seen as a signal by the mob, who then stormed the structure. The police cordon, vastly outnumbered and unprepared for the size of the attack, fled. The mob set upon the building with axes, hammers, and grappling hooks, and within a few hours, the entire structure made from mud and chalk was leveled.

A 2009 report, authored by Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, found 68 people to be responsible for the demolition of the Masjid, mostly leaders from the BJP. Among those named were Vajpayee, Advani, Joshi and Vijay Raje Scindia. Kalyan Singh, who was then the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, also faced severe criticism in the report. 

Liberhan wrote that he posted bureaucrats and police officers to Ayodhya, whose record indicated that they would stay silent during the mosque's demolition. Anju Gupta, a police officer who had been in charge of Advani's security on that day, stated that Advani and Joshi made speeches that contributed to provoking the behaviour of the mob. The report notes that at this time several BJP leaders made "feeble requests to the kar sevaks to come down... either in earnest or for the media's benefit". No appeal was made to the Kar Sevaks not to enter the sanctum sanctorum or not to demolish the structure. 

History of Ayodhya:

An ancient town, Ayodhya is regarded as one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus, revered because of its association in the great Indian epic poem Ramayana with the birth of Rama and with the rule of his father, Dasharatha. According to this source, the town was prosperous and well fortified and had a large population.

In traditional history, Ayodhya was the early capital of the kingdom of Kaushalya, though in Buddhist times (6th–5th century BCE) Shravasti became the kingdom’s chief city. Scholars generally agree that Ayodhya is identical with the town of Saketa, where the Buddha is said to have resided for a time. Its later importance as a Buddhist centre can be gauged from the statement of the Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian in the 5th century CE that there were 100 monasteries there (although he cited 100, Faxian probably did not mean that exact number, just that there were many monasteries). There were also a number of other monuments, including a stupa (shrine) reputed to have been founded by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (3rd century BC).

The Kanauj kingdom arose in Ayodhya, then called Oudh, during the 11th and 12th centuries CE. The region was later included in the Delhi sultanate, the Jaunpur kingdom, and, in the 16th century, the Mughal Empire. 

Oudh gained a measure of independence early in the 18th century but became subordinate to the British East India Company in 1764. In 1856 it was annexed by the British; the annexation and subsequent loss of rights by the hereditary land revenue receivers provided one of the causes of the first uprising against the British in 1857. Oudh was joined with the Agra Presidency in 1877 to form the North-Western Provinces and later the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, now Uttar Pradesh state.

Despite the town’s great age, there are few surviving monuments of any antiquity. The Babri Masjid(“Mosque of Bābur”) was built in the early 16th century by the Mughal emperor Bābur on a site traditionally identified as Rama’s birthplace and as the location of an ancient Hindu temple, the Ram Janmabhoomi. Because of its significance to Hindus, the site was often a matter of contention. 

In 1990, riots in northern India followed the storming of the mosque by Hindu nationalists intent on erecting a temple on the site; the ensuing crisis brought down the Indian government. Two years later, on December 6, 1992, the three-story mosque was demolished in a few hours by a crowd of Hindu nationalists. It was estimated that more than 2,000 people died in the rioting that swept through India following the mosque’s destruction. An investigative commission led by Manmohan Singh Liberhan, a retired judge, was formed in 1992 but did not issue a report until 2009. The report, when it finally appeared, caused an uproar because it blamed several leading figures from the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party for the mosque’s destruction. The case is still sub judice.