India’s Supreme Court docket halted on Tuesday plans for a survey of a centuries-old mosque to find out if it contained Hindu relics and symbols, simply days earlier than one other key temple, constructed on a razed mosque, is about to be inaugurated.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will preside at Monday’s occasion centred on a temple within the city of Ayodhya devoted to Lord Ram, a deity worshipped by hundreds of thousands of Hindus, throughout his marketing campaign to win a 3rd time period generally elections due by Might. The Supreme Court docket stayed a decrease courtroom order permitting the organising of a fee to survey the Shahi Eidgah mosque within the metropolis of Mathura within the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, stated information company ANI, by which Reuters has a minority stake.
Its panel of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta stated the applying filed for appointment of the native fee was very imprecise, the Bar and Bench information web site reported. Final December, the state’s Allahabad excessive courtroom had permitted a survey of the 17th century mosque, the place Muslims nonetheless pray, to find out if there have been any relics or Hindu symbols within the advanced.
Members of hardline Hindu teams linked to Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) imagine that Islamic invaders and rulers destroyed Hindu temples over a number of centuries. Final 12 months, one other courtroom allowed an analogous survey of the centuries-old Gyanvyapi mosque in Modi’s constituency of Varanasi, to find out if it had been constructed atop a Hindu temple. Nationwide riots that killed 2,000 folks, most of them minority Muslims, broke out in 1992 after a Hindu mob razed a mosque on the Ayodhya web site they believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, saying there had earlier been a temple there.
In 2019, the Supreme Court docket handed over the land to Hindus, and building of the temple started in 2020.