Mohammad Bilal was on his solution to his clothes store in Sambhal, a small metropolis in Uttar Pradesh, when violence erupted close to the town’s centuries-old Shahi Jama Masjid. He referred to as his brother to inform him he had been shot.
That day – 24 November final yr – was the final time his older brother, Mohammad Salman, 24, heard from him. “My brother informed me, ‘I used to be coming residence when individuals began pelting stones. The police had been firing blindly on the crowd. They shot me, too,’” Salman tells The Impartial in an interview in Sambhal.
Hours later, Bilal was lifeless at a hospital in Moradabad – certainly one of 5 males killed in clashes that left at the very least 20 law enforcement officials injured and a number of other automobiles torched in a number of the worst violence the realm has seen in current occasions final yr.
In Sambhal, the violence marked an alarming shift. On the centre of the unrest was a court-ordered archaeological survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid – a Sixteenth-century mosque now claimed by Hindu petitioners to have been constructed on the ruins of a temple.
The dispute in Sambhal isn’t remoted. It’s a part of a broader wave of authorized challenges to Muslim locations of worship throughout India – a motion some see as a deliberate try and rewrite historical past and alter the spiritual character of public areas in favour of the Hindu majority.
A rising variety of Hindu teams are submitting petitions alleging that historic mosques stand on prime of desecrated Hindu temples. These claims typically hinge on obscure native lore or unverified archaeology, however they’re discovering extra traction in courts than ever earlier than.
Many of those authorized instances cite an exception throughout the Locations of Worship (Particular Provisions) Act of 1991, which was meant to freeze the spiritual standing of all locations of worship as they existed on the time of India’s independence – with one notable exception: Ayodhya.
On 19 November, a civil court docket in Sambhal ordered a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid, following a petition that alleged the mosque was constructed within the yr 1526 on a destroyed Hindu temple.
“That is one thing the entire of Sambhal is aware of — that there was a Hari Har temple beneath the mosque,” says Mahant Rishi Raj Giri, the principle petitioner searching for an Archaeological Survey of India probe. Giri, who heads the right-wing Worldwide Hari Har Sena, claims: “Each Hindus and Muslims right here know it.”
Members of Muslim teams within the space have expressed anger, claiming they weren’t notified concerning the survey and questioning the urgency with which it was carried out, whereas many contest the declare of a temple below the mosque.
“We’re solely listening to about this Hari-Har temple now,” says Sanjay, a fabric service provider who works close to the mosque. “The murmur began solely after the BJP got here to energy.”
That was in 2014, when Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP) received a historic mandate.
For a lot of Indian Muslims, the Sambhal mosque dispute echoes a darkish second within the nation’s current historical past – the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
The Sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya was razed to the bottom by Hindu mobs, spurred by a long time of political and non secular mobilisation. The violence that adopted killed over 2,000 individuals. It was a blood-soaked turning level in India’s secular material.
In 2019, the Supreme Courtroom of India delivered a remaining judgment on the Ayodhya case. The court docket acknowledged the unlawful demolition of the mosque however nonetheless handed over the land to Hindu petitioners to construct a grand temple to Lord Ram, inaugurated by Mr Modi in January 2024.
The decision created shockwaves.
“The Ayodhya judgment was a really low level within the historical past of the Supreme Courtroom,” says Colin Gonsalves, a senior advocate and founding father of the Human Rights Legislation Community. “It betrayed the minority neighborhood and allowed hooliganism to prevail.”
But the court docket additionally tried to attract a line, he explains: “The judges tried to manage the harm by saying ‘up to now and no additional.’ They mentioned the Locations of Worship Act stays in place – and no different mosque could be focused.”
“And that any try after that to establish some other mosque, to say that this has a Hindu origin, and to hunt aid from court docket to interrupt to tear down that mosque and so forth – these can be unlawful and unconstitutional. They upheld the Act. All the things else obtained frozen.”
The violence in Sambhal is simply the most recent in a sequence of incidents displaying that line is being crossed.
In Could 2022, a Supreme Courtroom bench led by then-Chief Justice DY Chandrachud allowed an archaeological survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, regardless of issues it violated the Locations of Worship Act.
The decide clarified that the 1991 legislation didn’t bar investigations right into a web site’s standing as of 15 August 1947, as long as they didn’t search to alter its character. This emboldened Hindu nationalist teams, who declare the mosque was constructed over a temple in 1678.
A later survey reportedly uncovered a shivaling – a symbolic illustration of the Hindu deity Shiva – contained in the mosque, although mosque officers insist it’s a part of a fountain.
Then on 19 November 2024, a civil court docket ordered a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid primarily based on Mahant Rishi Raj Giri’s petition. He claimed the mosque, inbuilt 1526, stood atop a demolished Hari Har temple. On 24 November, in the course of the second court docket ordered survey, clashes broke out.
Advocate Gonsalves blames the “complacency of the Indian judiciary” for the spiralling scenario as he questions its “independence”.
“The judiciary was itself liable for this type of introduction of the loophole,” which far-right wing teams within the nation promptly took as an invite to create bother once more in respect of different [religious] constructions.
Muslims within the Sambhal say they weren’t even notified of the survey. “It felt like a sudden ambush on our id,” says an area youth chief, who requested to not be named.
The clashes in Sambhal have reignited fears of additional violence, elevating questions concerning the judiciary’s function in exacerbating communal tensions, now supported by the state authorities.
Bilal’s brother, Salman, alleges police harassment after they accused officers of capturing his brother of their First Data Report (FIR). “They pressured us to take away the police’s names, threatening arrest,” Salman says. “They warned us it will price us closely if we didn’t retract.”
“The concern was insufferable—we couldn’t sit, eat, or sleep. The police barged into our residence, harassing us,” he provides. His mom, Shahana Begum, 45, recollects, “Sooner or later, they got here inside, threatening to name the ladies’s police. This went on for days. I used to be terrified, worrying that my son had already been killed and now they had been harassing us.” She breaks down, “Once we eliminated the police names from the FIR, the harassment stopped.”
Nafeesa Begum, 65, claims her 18-year-old son Mohammad Ayan died from police gunfire. Describing the day, she says, “Ayan’s resort was close to the mosque. I don’t know what occurred, however at 9am, individuals got here shouting that Ayan had been shot.”
“I ran outdoors and noticed him on a charpoy, blood pouring from his physique. I might barely stand. I requested, ‘What occurred?’ He mentioned, ‘Ammi, I used to be operating with the group, fell, and realized I used to be shot. The police had been firing.’”
Ayan later died from his accidents, reportedly a bullet wound in his stomach. Nafeesa says, “Since then, individuals, together with the police, pressured me to not point out the bullet damage. They informed me to say we didn’t know what occurred within the crowd, however I couldn’t. My son informed me he was shot by the police, and he was a Quran reader. What ought to I inform him within the afterlife?”
Post-mortem studies recommend the victims died from bullets fired from country-made pistols, in accordance with nationwide media. Sambhal’s divisional commissioner, Aunjaneya Singh, acknowledged, “Most deaths had been attributable to firearm accidents, probably from 315 bore bullets—fired from country-made pistols. Police primarily used pellet weapons to disperse the group. Whether or not different protesters’ bullets brought on the deaths is below investigation.”
Throughout India, a number of high-profile mosques and Islamic shrines are actually below scrutiny. Amongst them:
- Gyanvapi Mosque (Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh): Claimed to be constructed over a demolished temple to Lord Shiva. Ongoing litigation since 2021.
- Shahi Idgah Mosque (Mathura, Uttar Pradesh): Constructed within the seventeenth century, now contested by teams who say it encroaches on Lord Krishna’s birthplace.
- Ajmer Sharif Dargah (Rajasthan): A Sixteenth-century Sufi shrine that lately confronted calls for for a survey by right-wing teams.
On 27 November, a court docket in Ajmer admitted a petition by Vishnu Gupta, nationwide president of the Hindu Sena, searching for a survey of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, claiming proof of an historic Hindu temple to Lord Shiva on the web site. The court docket issued notices to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and the Dargah Committee.
Gupta’s counsel cited a 1911 e-book, Ajmer: Historic and Descriptive, claiming particles from a Hindu temple was used within the dargah’s development, together with a shivalinga beforehand worshiped by a Brahmin household. Gupta tells The Impartial, “A tomb can’t be a spot of worship in Islam. We demand nobody ought to supply namaz there.”
The Hindu Sena, a far-right group with a historical past of legal instances, claims to oppose “Islamisation” and combat for “Sanatana Dharma”. Gupta denies accusations of fueling division, asserting, “How has searching for justice develop into a supply of social disharmony?” He provides, “Hindus have been exploited for 300 years. We would like our land again.”
The escalation of such disputes has additionally drawn criticism from historians and authorized consultants who argue that these instances distort India’s advanced historic legacy.
“Desecration of such temples [royal] was the conventional technique of detaching a defeated enemy from essentially the most distinguished manifestation of his former sovereign authority, thereby rendering him politically impotent,” Richard M Eaton, professor of historical past on the College of Arizona and creator of India within the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 informed The Diplomat.
Referring to the quote, historian Rana Safvi tells The Impartial : “One can not proper ‘perceived’ or actual historic wrongs on the premise of oral tales, in style narratives and even historic sources.
“At the moment because the world’s largest democracy our challenges are completely different and our responses must be in accordance with that. It’s as much as the courts to uphold the structure and the rights of minorities.”
The Allahabad Excessive Courtroom, whereas ordering ASI survey of Gyanvapi mosque, dominated: “Scientific survey is critical within the curiosity of justice.” But critics contend that these surveys serve much less to uncover historic truths and extra to stoke communal divisions.
In Sambhal, the aftermath of the violence has left a neighborhood grappling with grief and uncertainty. Mohammad Salman mourns his brother’s demise and questions the motives behind the survey that triggered the clashes.
“Why was it essential to conduct this survey in secret, with out informing us?” he asks. “My brother died for nothing – merely due to politics.”
