Ayodhya – a dumping ground before Modi? Pandey’s frustrations with the state of affairs
It is believed that tourists wont see a slum because their homes are out of sight. Pandey shrugs. “No,” she says with a smile. “It looks nice and now we have flowers near our home.”
A new bridge that connects to the new airport is nearby a railway station that has been refurbished. “Ayodhya was a dumping ground before Modi,” she says.
But she says all this development hasn’t benefited residents like her. She says she struggles to earn $10 a day as a laborer for hire, digging roads and bricklaying. She hopes Modi will now turn his attention to creating reliable jobs with steady pay for workers like her.
Source: India’s Modi to inaugurate Hindu temple in Ayodhya, where rioters destroyed a mosque
A Hindu temple in Ayodhya, India, isn’t the place where Modi’s visit to the temple is going
Analysts say that goodwill for the Indian prime minister and the way he is seen as upholding the Hindu faith and identity of so many Indians are what will likely carry his party to victory in upcoming elections.
Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and co-author of a recent essay about India’s Hindu nationalism and its resemblance to Jim Crow, argues that Modi’s presence at the temple means a political declaration in favor of Hindu supremacy
“Hindu primacy and peripheralization of Muslims are both aspects of the same coin,” Varshney says. Without reduction of Muslims to second-class citizens, you can’t have Hindu primacy.
“It’s all been peaceful so far,” says Azam Qadri, a Muslim community leader. Some families have left Ayodhya because of something that could happen. I’m sure nothing will. The communal riots in 1992 were witnessed by a majority of these people.
There are a lot of Muslims around the new Hindu temple. Down the road from a crumbling mosque lies a group of people, some of them wearing winter gear, warming themselves by a fire.
He refers to the 5 acres of land that the Indian Supreme Court ordered the government to give the Muslim community to build another mosque after rioters destroyed the Babri Masjid. That land was meant to be near the site of the new Hindu temple or in a “suitable prominent place in Ayodhya.” The court did not explain why, but it was presumably to offer the Muslim community a new focal religious site after the iconic three-domed mosque was destroyed.
But local media report that the land the Muslim community was allocated is 13 miles from the center of town. The community hasn’t been able to raise enough money to start construction. The government hasn’t stepped in to help, although a Muslim BJP official is now heading up fundraising. The organization established to construct the mosque says it hopes to break ground in May.
Qadri and his friends aren’t likely to ever go there. They’re going to stick with their small mosques that are tucked between homes and shops in Muslim-dominated areas.
The BJP’s Hindu Temple Consecration in Mumbai is a National Event: A Story of Two Goddesses and One Miscellaneous Shroud
Pandey and her family are admiring a new, temporary barrier made of billowing orange fabric and marigold garlands that appears to have been erected to conceal the view of the slum where Pandey and her family live.
The BJP has turned the temple consecration into a national event. Around 8,000 dignitaries are invited and are expected to arrive on dozens of chartered planes. The government has a half-day holiday for employees, which will be broadcast on the ceremony. In Mumbai and New Delhi, orange flags and bunting are for sale.
Singh says it is a big launch pad for the upcoming elections. That is the reason why they seem to be rushing to make the temple complete even though it is not.
Valay Singh is an independent journalist and author of the book, “Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Disaster.” He says that the opening of this in January is crucial for the victory of the saffron party in the upcoming elections.
The critics of the Indian prime minister say the real reason for the rushed ceremony is to allow Modi to be involved in the consecration of this year’s parliamentary elections.
The consecration of a controversial Hindu temple in this north Indian town on Monday was led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The ceremony was capped by the unveiling of a 51-inch black stone idol of the Hindu god Ram.
The monkeys were swinging off the scaffolding when foreign journalists were invited to the site. The building is built to inspire awe with dozens of columns and cascading arches. Large cranes hefted heavy stones, including intricately carved sandstone, into place.
The BJP briefly came to power in the years after the mosque’s destruction. In 2014, led by Modi, the party came to power again, winning a majority of seats. A temple will be built on the spot where the Babri Masjid once stood.
India has had its worst communal violence since independence since the mosque’s destruction. Thousands of people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
As they entered, the workers chanted, “Jai Shri Ram!” or “Victory to Lord Ram,” one of the most revered deities of the Hindu pantheon. The chant has become a staple in the speeches of Hindu nationalists, who want India to serve its Hindu majority instead of being a secular democracy that guarantees equal rights to all.
Lawsuits against the demolishment of a Hindu temple in Mathura and Ayodhya: A Hindu pilgrimage site in northern India
On a late December day, on a tour of the compound for foreign journalists, a group of workers wearing bright yellow hard hats walked past police in green fatigues with assault rifles. They passed by a police checkpoint that was guarded by high walls of corrugated tin, and a watchtower that was surrounded by high walls of corrugated tin. The men ducked through the metal detectors after being registered by the facial recognition cameras.
Now, two more legal cases are under way in two other Hindu pilgrimage sites in northern India where Hindu nationalists hope to take ownership of land on which mosques currently sit. Ranjana Agnihotri, a Modi supporter and lawyer contesting one such site in Mathura, says Hindu nationalists are focusing on a mosque there that they believe is built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna, and another in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, which they claim was home to a temple demolished by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Everyone else was forbidden to enter the temple on Monday. Thousands of security forces kept devotees behind barricades as they came and went.
On Monday morning, the streets of Ayodhya were filled with saffron flags and devotional songs. The local administration had put up hundreds of billboards bearing images of Modi to welcome over 8,000 dignitaries, including film actors, cricket players, industrialists and Hindu seers.
Civil servants working in the central government and some states received a half day off on Monday as many Indian public schools and colleges declared a holiday. People were encouraged to illuminate lamps in celebration, and volunteers gave rice in the name of Lord Ram.
“Lord Ram is our god, our ancestor, our king,” says Pooja Kashyap, a 28-year-old from Ayodhya, who spoke with NPR before performing Hindu rituals at Ayodhya’s Sarayu river. It’s important that he stays in his temple.
The temple where the Supreme Court’s verdict occurred was the spot where an idol of Lord Ram had been kept in a tent.