Hindu extremists claim that Gyanvapi mosque was built on the rubble of a Hindu temple
2010/10/12 OnIslam
A new campaign by Hindu extremists to reclaim two more mosques in northern India is infuriating Muslim community leaders and sparking fears of communal tensions.
"The Hindu campaign involves the danger of unleashing new communal tension across the country," Zafarul Islam Khan, a prominent Muslim community leader told the Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper on Tuesday, October 12.
Hindu extremists have launched a campaign to claim two mosques in Varanasi and Mathura cities.
They say the Gyanvapi and Shahi Idgah mosques were built on the rubble of Hindu temples.
The campaign is spearheaded by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, one of India's largest Hindu fundamentalist organizations.
"Muslims would now also have to be ready to return to us the land beneath the two mosques where we used to have our temples in Mathura and Varanasi," Acharya Giriraj Kishore, the international vice-president of the organization, said last week.
The campaigners are emboldened by a recent court ruling giving Hindus two-thirds of the 460-year-old Babri mosque site in Ayodhya.
"The Allahabad High Court has taken cognizance of the faith of millions of Hindus while deciding the Ayodhya case,” Kishore said.
“The same way we shall be victorious in the cases in Mathura and Varanasi."
Politically Motivated
Muslim community leaders insist the new campaign is politically motivated to help the nationalist Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gain more Hindu votes.
"The idea behind the latest Hindu campaign is targeted to … polarize the majority Hindu voters in favor of the BJP," insists Khan, a former president of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, the umbrella body of Indian Muslim organizations.
BJP, expected to sweep local elections in six corporations in Gujarat on Tuesday, is already jumping into the fray.
"Our cadres are upbeat following the Ayodhya verdict,” said Ravi Kant Garg, a BJP member of the Uttar Pradesh state assembly from Mathura.
Many Muslims worry that if the BJP throws its weight behind the new campaign, its support could trigger anti-Muslim violence.
"Communal riots broke out and many lives of mostly Muslims were lost when the BJP launched the country-wide movement for the Ram temple,” warned Shabbir Husain, a Muslim community leader in Aligarh.
The 16th century Babri mosque was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992.
More than 2,000 people were killed in ensuing ethnic violence between Hindus and Muslims over the mosque demolition.
Ram Puniyani, the secretary of the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, warned against a resurgence of violent Hindu fundamentalist politics.
"The communal forces are trying to hijack the national agenda on important bread and butter issues ... and whip up emotive issues like those in Mathura and Varanasi."
India Muslims, who make up 13 percent of the country’s 1.1 billion population, have long suffered sectarian violence.
In 2002, hundreds of Muslims were hacked and burned to death in communal violence that broke after a fire accidentally flared up at a train.
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