Exclusive-India Hindu group toughens stance on mosque-temple disputes

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a powerful Hindu group, claimed that several mosques in India were constructed over demolished Hindu temples, showing a hardened stance in a long-standing sectarian dispute just days after a large temple was unveiled on the site of a razed mosque.

These sentiments from the RSS, the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party, surfaced after Modi and the RSS chief led Monday’s dedication of the temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992.

The dispute over claims to holy sites has divided India, a Hindu-majority country with the world’s third-largest Muslim population, since gaining independence from British rule in 1947.

Just four days after the temple was inaugurated in the northern city of Ayodhya, a lawyer for Hindu petitioners mentioned that the Archaeological Survey of India had found that a 17th-century mosque in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, in Modi’s parliamentary constituency, was constructed over a destroyed Hindu temple.

The Archaeological Survey did not respond to a request for comment.

Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, late on Friday, questioned whether Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque and three others, including the razed one in Ayodhya, were mosques at all.

Raising doubts about the mosques does not mean Hindu groups are involved in “an anti-mosque movement”, he said. He emphasized, “This is not an anti-Islam movement. This is a movement to seek the truth that should be welcomed by the world.”

Muslim groups are disputing the assertions of Hindu groups in court.

Zufar Ahmad Faruqi, chairman of the Sunni Central Waqf Board in Uttar Pradesh, said the group “have confidence in the judiciary that it will do what is correct.”

The Modi-led opening of the Ayodhya temple fulfilled a 35-year-old pledge of his Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of a general election due by May. He is expected to win a third straight term, the longest stretch since India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The razing of the Ayodhya mosque sparked riots across India that authorities say killed at least 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. Hindu groups have for decades said that Muslim Mughal rulers built monuments and places of worship after destroying ancient Hindu structures.

Indian law bars the conversion of any place of worship and provides for the maintenance of the religious character of places of worship as they existed at the time of independence – except for the Ayodhya shrine. The Supreme Court is hearing challenges to the law.

The court this month halted plans for a survey of another centuries-old mosque in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous and politically important state, to determine if it contained Hindu relics and symbols.

The RSS’s Kumar, who is also the chief patron of the group’s Muslim wing, said Islamic law requires mosques to be constructed on undisputed land, or the land should be donated by someone who has bought it or the people building the mosque should buy it.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in New Delhi)