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The National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), India’s premier civil rights network, has termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ayodhya-Ram Mandir inauguration a frontal attack on India’s Constitutional democracy. Calling the proposed Ram temple a monument of violations”, it demanded the perpetrators of the “criminal demolition” of Babri Masjid should be held legally accountable.
Insisting on the need to resist the Hindu Rashtra project, which is allegedly based on “lies, hatred and violence”, an NAPM statement said, the bhoomi pujan at Ayodhya “marks the culmination of a violent process through which a mosque has been forcibly converted into a temple through a combination of street violence, mass mobilization and manufactured histories, with the complicity of the police and courts, as well as so-called secular political parties.”
Signed by tens of activists led by top anti-dam activist Medha Patkar, the statement said, “Last year’s judgement by the Apex Court awarded the entire disputed structure to the ‘Hindu party’ based on dubious logic. The civil case was abstracted from the criminal case and the violence and disruption that lay behind the “Hindu” claim were completely overlooked, rather legitimized.”
The Supreme Court, it said, admitted that namaz was offered at the ‘disputed site’ until 1949, accepting that idols of Ram were sneaked into the masjid that year, that the masjid was unlawfully demolished in 1992, and that it was not built by razing down any temple. Yet, it “did not hold the violators accountable and rather rewarded them by offering ‘disputed land’.
Criticizing the “mass gathering” on August 5 despite the Covid-19 pandemic conditions “in the presence of a sexagenarian PM”, NAPM regretted, it is being “hailed as an act of ‘national pride’, while gatherings like the one organized by the Tablighi Jamaat are selectively called out by Hindutva politicians and their crony media for perpetuating ‘corona-jihad’!”
Declaring that it “observes” August 5 as a “day of national protest, of unforgivable breach of democratic and constitutional principles and rights by the highest offices and institutions that are mandated to uphold these values”, NAPM said, “We will continue to democratically resist, challenge and question the powers that be on all forms of biases, legal distortions, normalization of Hindutva hate, violence and toxic efforts to erase the historical memory of fascist politics.”
Insisting on the need to resist the Hindu Rashtra project, which is allegedly based on “lies, hatred and violence”, an NAPM statement said, the bhoomi pujan at Ayodhya “marks the culmination of a violent process through which a mosque has been forcibly converted into a temple through a combination of street violence, mass mobilization and manufactured histories, with the complicity of the police and courts, as well as so-called secular political parties.”
Signed by tens of activists led by top anti-dam activist Medha Patkar, the statement said, “Last year’s judgement by the Apex Court awarded the entire disputed structure to the ‘Hindu party’ based on dubious logic. The civil case was abstracted from the criminal case and the violence and disruption that lay behind the “Hindu” claim were completely overlooked, rather legitimized.”
The Supreme Court, it said, admitted that namaz was offered at the ‘disputed site’ until 1949, accepting that idols of Ram were sneaked into the masjid that year, that the masjid was unlawfully demolished in 1992, and that it was not built by razing down any temple. Yet, it “did not hold the violators accountable and rather rewarded them by offering ‘disputed land’.
Criticizing the “mass gathering” on August 5 despite the Covid-19 pandemic conditions “in the presence of a sexagenarian PM”, NAPM regretted, it is being “hailed as an act of ‘national pride’, while gatherings like the one organized by the Tablighi Jamaat are selectively called out by Hindutva politicians and their crony media for perpetuating ‘corona-jihad’!”
Declaring that it “observes” August 5 as a “day of national protest, of unforgivable breach of democratic and constitutional principles and rights by the highest offices and institutions that are mandated to uphold these values”, NAPM said, “We will continue to democratically resist, challenge and question the powers that be on all forms of biases, legal distortions, normalization of Hindutva hate, violence and toxic efforts to erase the historical memory of fascist politics.”
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