Thirty-two years ago, on December 6, 1992, mobs descended on the Babri Masjid in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, destroyed the 600-year-old structure brick by brick, and provoking riots in which more than 2,000 people, predominantly Muslims, were killed. The mob was driven by a Hindu nationalist campaign to reclaim the mosque for Hindus.
Their wish was ultimately fulfilled in 2023, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated an enormous Hindu temple built directly on top of the destroyed mosque, in effect sanctifying the site of an anti-Muslim pogrom.
The Supreme Court of India’s 2019 ruling permitting the construction of the temple blatantly disregarded India’s Places of Worship Act, which prohibits changing the character of religious structures as they have existed since August 15, 1947. The ruling opened a can of worms in which the state-backed mob violence, lawfare, and Hindu nationalist furor that marked the Babri Masjid saga have become India’s norm.
To understand India today, one must understand the destruction of the Babri Masjid.
The recent November 22 police killing of at least six Muslims in Uttar Pradesh state illustrates the Ayodhya legacy. Following the Babri Masjid model, two Hindu nationalist lawyers advanced the claim that the 800-year-old Shamsi Jama Masjid was originally a Hindu temple. Despite the fact that their evidence is threadbare – they pointed to a non-existent lotus flower on the walls and a “hidden locked room filled with Hindu idols,” which was, in fact, a janitor’s closet – the court agreed to conduct an investigation in response to the lawyers’ demands.
Knowing that the reclassification of a mosque as a Hindu temple can lead to the destruction of mosques, as in Ayodhya, thousands of Muslims protested the investigation. In response, police attacked and shot at the protesters, in the process killing at least six Muslim men.
This is just one incident. In May 2022, a senior leader within Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed that the Mughal empire had destroyed 36,000 Hindu temples and his party would “reclaim all those temples one by one.” The campaign is grounded by a common Hindu supremacist myth that every mosque was built over a destroyed temple, even though scholars of South Asia broadly reject this idea. Any small quirk of a mosque’s architecture can be pointed at as a sign of Hindu origins.
Debates rage over the legality of the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, whose ablution fountain has been called a “shivling” by Hindu nationalist groups. Debates also rage over the legality of the Mathura Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, the 13th-century Bhojshala-Kamal Maula complex in Madhya Pradesh, and the Qutub Minar, a 13th-century minaret and UNESCO World Heritage Site in New Delhi.
In each of these cases, Hindu nationalists are seeking to use state-sponsored archaeological investigations to undermine active mosques used by Muslims for hundreds of years. The destruction of the Babri Masjid has emboldened others attempting to destroy mosques, providing them with a game plan. According to a report by India Hate Lab, of the 668 anti-hate speech events recorded in 2023, 169 (25 percent) involved speeches calling for the targeting of Muslim places of worship.
The Modi regime has also routinely deployed bulldozers to destroy tens of thousands of Muslim-owned properties, including homes, mosques, and businesses, all the while claiming these properties occupy government lands. One close Modi ally, the notorious anti-Muslim hate monger and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, is so profligate in his use of bulldozers that he is referred to by his followers as “bulldozer baba.”
The Indian government’s decision to rename historically Muslim cities and eliminate Muslim contributions from Indian textbooks form counterparts to this broader campaign of dispossession and subjugation.
A controversial new amendment proposed by Modi could dangerously accelerate this destruction. The so-called “waqf amendment” would modify existing legislation that governs Muslim-owned properties, such as mosques, madrassas, orphanages, and graveyards. Currently governed by state-level waqf boards, these lands are supposed to remain for non-commercial, religious use in perpetuity. Modi’s amendment to the waqf bill would mandate the appointment of non-Muslims to waqf boards, which could allow the government to eventually gain control of these properties, to sell or destroy them.
The proposed amendment also omits the “waqf by user provision” from the 1954 Waqf Act, which recognizes waqf properties as legitimate so long as they are actively used by Muslims. Recognizing the fact that some Muslim properties lack formal titles, but have nonetheless been used by Muslims for decades or even centuries, the provision enables Muslims to continue to legally occupy historic lands.
Mosques, madrassas, graveyards, and other holy sites are today threatened on all sides, having to fend off legal threats, spurious archaeological investigations, and, in many cases, armed, angry rioters intent on destroying them.
Indian Muslims cannot stand by while the tragedy of Ayodhya plays out again and again across the country. Nor can the world. The fate of India’s Muslims and our historic lands is a preview of the broader campaign of Modi’s authoritarian desire to attack anyone not aligned with the Hindu nationalist agenda. Though it has often begun with mosques, the properties of minorities, regime critics, and journalists are all now targets for state violence.
On this year’s anniversary of the Babri Masjid destruction, Indians and non-Indians alike must remember this history to avoid it playing out again and again in the future. The Indian Supreme Court must act quickly to uphold the Places of Worship Act and protect India’s religious heritage.