The BJP, Ayodhya, Supreme Court, and Ram Mandir are the keywords that have agitated many. The significant Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha celebration in Ayodhya has rattled the Islamist-left liberal cabal, and Arfa Khanum Sherwani, senior editor of The Wire, appears to be the most rattled. The India International Centre hosted a book launch event on January 23. Earlier in the day, TNG Times described Arfa Khanum Sherwani’s displeasure with the way members of her community celebrated Ram Lalla’s return by raising saffron flags.
She also used the opportunity to express her anger at the ruling class for enabling the construction of the Ram Mandir and made every effort to foment hatred towards Hindus and their beliefs.
But Arfa’s misinformation against Modi didn’t stop there. In order to manipulate her audience against the current BJP government, the Muslim “journalist” skillfully made up some flagrant lies during the same speech. Arfa Khanum Sherwani continued, “The BJP government, at both the state and central levels, moved quickly to construct the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya but ignored to lay even a brick on the five acres of land that they anyways provided as a ‘charity’ for the construction of a mosque in Ayodhya by Supreme Court orders,” in yet another attempt to paint the Modi-led government as intolerable and biassed towards Muslims in the country.
Arfa makes the following hateful assertion in her speech: “The Supreme Court’s ruling made it very evident that in addition to building the Ram Mandir, the state and federal government had to construct a mosque on the five acres of alternate land that the party running for the Babri Masjid was given.”
Arfa continues to fabricate, in an attempt to incite her audience against the ruling regime, that the Muslims received this small plot of land as a gift from the regime, which dedicated all of its resources and labour to constructing the Ram Mandir but neglected to lay a single brick for the building of the mosque. The fact that Arfa uses the Supreme Court’s ruling to support her falsehoods is particularly concerning.
The order made no mention of the state or federal governments building the mosque on this other property. The Sunni Waqf Board and the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, respectively, built the Ram Mandir and the mosque on the five acres of alternate land.
“Having weighed the nature of the relief that should be granted to the Muslims, we direct that land measuring 5 acres be allotted to the Sunni Central Waqf Board either by the Central Government out of the acquired land or by the Government of Uttar Pradesh within the city of Ayodhya,” the Supreme Court’s 1045-page ruling states unequivocally on page 923. This procedure and the ensuing land transfer to the Sunni Central Waqf Board will take place concurrently with the transfer of the contested site, which consists of the inner and outer courtyards, as a result of the ruling in Suit 5. The decree in Suit 4 will be in the aforementioned words.
First things first: It is necessary to notify The Wire’s senior editor that the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya did not include the use of public cash. In February 2020, the Centre declared that the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust would be established, with the responsibility of building and overseeing the Ayodhya temple. Since its founding, the trust has raised money through contributions, which have been used to build the Ram Mandir.
It further said that committees investigating the building of the mosque and Ram Mandir should be formed by both parties.
In August 2020, over a year after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Ram Janmabhoomi case and the awarding of five acres of separate land to the Babri Masjid contenders, work on the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya got underway. The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF) was established in order to carry out the mosque’s construction.
Second, in a landmark ruling, the Indian Supreme Court gave Hindus 2.77 acres of property for the construction of a Ram Temple while granting Muslim litigants 5 acres of land for the construction of a mosque at a different location. In the Ram Janmabhoomi case, the Supreme Court made it quite plain that the Central government, either from the acquired land or from the Uttar Pradesh government, should give the Sunni Waqf Board five acres of alternative land in Ayodhya, or else they should grant it to them at another location within Ayodhya.
The central government had requested that the UP government grant the Sunni Waqf Board five acres of property in response to the SC ruling. Following the February 5 meeting of the UP cabinet, the allocation was made. A site at Dhannipur village, in the Sohawal area of Ayodhya, on the Ayodhya-Lucknow highway, approximately 20 km from the district headquarters, has been allotted to the Board, as per the assignment letter.
Following this, there were months of drama during which the Board refused to accept the court’s offer, despite several people urging it to reject the top court’s offer. Asaduddin Owaisi, the head of AIMIM, had also asked the board to turn down the offer, arguing that they were defending their rights and didn’t require any land as a charitable donation.
But after languishing for months without making a judgement, the Sunni Waqf Board has “graciously” accepted the 5-acre plot of property that the court had offered. The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board declared that it will construct a mosque, an Indo-Islamic research centre, a hospital, and a library on the five acres that had been given to them, citing the rejection of the site as “out of option.”
The question therefore arises: Given that the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has completed construction of the temple’s ground floor and that the first and second floors are anticipated to be completed by December 2024, how can the central government or the state government be held accountable if the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board has not yet begun construction on the mosque despite having agreed to build it on the five acres of land in February 2020?
