One year after the Ram temple in Ayodhya was consecrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the mosque-temple disputes in the country show no signs of ending. The success of the campaign to build the temple on the ruins of Babri Mosque has fuelled calls for more mosques across the country to be demolished to make way for Hindu temples. Hindutva groups have since demanded surveys of mosques, arguing they were built on demolished temples in the medieval period.
On November 24, 2024, violence erupted in Uttar Pradesh라이브 바카라 Sambhal during a court-ordered second archaeological survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid. Five young men were killed in police firing. Hindu nationalist groups had raised complaints, claiming that the 16th-century mosque was built after demolishing an ancient Hindu temple.
Archaeology has become a key buzzword in all these debates. One often hears of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) being ordered by various courts to survey mosques. The ASI, a government body under the Ministry of Culture, was established in the latter half of the 19th century by the British government to oversee the archaeological heritage of the colony.
The continued institutionalisation of archaeology in India and across the world has now led to a merger of science and politics, domains that were once seen as separate. 바카라라이브 바카라 February 11 issue, What Lies Beneath, looks at the politics of archaeology and the role of state agencies.
In the Supreme Court verdict that paved the way for the building of the Ram Mandir, an ASI report from 2003 played a key role. The Court referred to the report to observe that the Babri Masjid, which stood on the disputed site until its demolition in 1992, was not built on vacant land. The report indicated evidence of a temple-like structure existing on the land before the mosque. However, the Supreme Court also noted that the ASI had not established whether a temple had been demolished to build the mosque.
Last February, we dedicated an entire issue to Ayodhya, In The Name of Ram. Sundar Sarukkai wrote an Op-Ed, Men In The Guise of Gods, in which he argued that Rama faces the greatest challenge to his legacy today, one caused by humans who consider themselves gods, accountable to no one. He writes, “Rama라이브 바카라 temples are sacred to his followers because the temples represent the qualities of their god. But this new temple in Ayodhya stands for everything that goes against the essential qualities of Rama. So every time devotees go to this temple in the name of Rama, are they tacitly supporting these new qualities of Rama that have been imposed on him by a few men?”
To read more stories from this issue, click here.
