Tag: Religion

Why is Amnesty urging India to halt bulldozing of Muslim properties? | Religion News

Amnesty International has called on Indian authorities to immediately halt the “unlawful” demolitions of Muslim properties, as it released two new reports describing the targeting of homes, businesses and places of worship across several states belonging to the minority community.

Calling the demolitions a form of extra-judicial punishment, the rights group demanded adequate compensation to all those affected by the demolitions that have rendered hundreds of people, most of them Muslims, homeless and their livelihoods destroyed.

The London-based rights group also called on the JCB construction-equipment company, whose bulldozers have been widely used in the “punitive” demolitions, to “publicly condemn the use of its machinery to commit human rights violations”.

Here are the main points of the reports.

What do the reports say about bulldozer politics in India?

The two reports, titled ‘Bulldozer Injustice in India’ and ‘JCB’s Role and Responsibility in Bulldozer Injustice in India’, document demolitions of at least 128 properties between April and June 2022. Amnesty International says the demolitions carried out by bulldozers have rendered at least 617 people either homeless or destroyed their livelihoods.

It says authorities in five states – Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi – carried out demolitions as a “punishment” following episodes of religious violence or protest by Muslims against discriminatory government policies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been accused of running anti-Muslim rhetoric, rules in four out of the five states.

“The unlawful demolition of Muslim properties by the Indian authorities, peddled as ‘bulldozer justice’ by political leaders and media, is cruel and appalling … They are destroying families – and must stop immediately,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, in a statement on Wednesday.

“The authorities have repeatedly undermined the rule of law, destroying homes, businesses or places of worship, through targeted campaigns of hate, harassment, violence and the weaponisation of JCB bulldozers. These human rights abuses must be urgently addressed.”

Last month, Muslim homes and properties were demolished by bulldozers in the financial hub of Mumbai after communal violence flared in the wake of the inauguration of the Ram temple by Modi in Ayodhya city in northern Uttar Pradesh. The temple was built on the place where the 16th-century Babri mosque stood until 1992, when Hindu mobs demolished it.

Last year, more than 300 Muslim properties were demolished after communal violence on the outskirts of the Indian capital, New Delhi. In 2021, a 100-year-old mosque was demolished in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, while in 2023, a 16th-century mosque was razed in Prayagraj city, also in Uttar Pradesh, under a road widening project.

Analysts say bulldozers have come to symbolise the oppression of Muslims in India, particularly after Yogi Adityanath – the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, known for his anti-Muslim bigotry – started the policy of destroying properties of those accused of crimes to dispense instant justice. But legal experts say due process is the biggest casualty of this new phenomenon popular among the Hindu far right.

Since Modi took over as prime minister in 2014, attacks against Muslims and their livelihood have increased, with dozens of Muslims lynched over cow smuggling allegations.

What has the BJP government said?

BJP leaders widely celebrate the demolitions – so much so that bulldozers have featured in election campaigning of the ruling party candidates. They claim that the demolition exercises are against encroachment and target buildings owned by criminals or gangsters.

Authorities have denied that the Muslim community was being targeted.

BJP spokesperson Raman Malik told Al Jazeera in the wake of demolitions in August that bulldozing is only done to remove illegal encroachments. But rights groups pointed out that overwhelmingly, Muslim properties were the target.

Civil society members, activists, and opposition politicians believe that destroying buildings is a deliberate form of targeted violence against minority communities such as Muslims.

Brinda Karat from the Communist Party of India opposed the demolitions in Delhi, saying the bulldozers are used to deliberately target Muslims under the guise of removing encroachments.

Amnesty in its report said that the demolitions were carried out without following due process. Occupants of buildings were not warned prior to demolitions or given enough time to leave their properties and salvage their belongings. Amnesty interviewed 75 demolition survivors. Among them, only six received any form of prior notice from the authorities.

“The issue also arises whether the buildings belonging to a particular community are being brought down under the guise of [a] law and order problem and an exercise of ethnic cleansing is being conducted by the state,” the Punjab and Haryana High Court had said in the wake of demolition in Nuh on the outskirts of New Delhi.

The court also established that due legal processes were not carried out before the demolition drive. Prior notices were also not issued to the people who lost their property.

The Amnesty report said that India is a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), under which it is obliged to respect and fulfil the right to adequate living, “which includes the right to adequate housing, the right to work, and the right to social security”.

Is the bulldozer company, JCB, responsible?

Bulldozers manufactured by the United Kingdom-based Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators (JCB) are commonly used to carry out these demolitions, Amnesty found.

The report added that JCB bulldozers are such a conspicuous part of demolitions in India that “JCB” and “bulldozer” are used interchangeably. The punitive bulldozing using JCB’s machinery is lauded among BJP leaders. BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao called JCB “Jihadi Control Board” in April 2022 in a now-deleted X post.

“Under international standards, JCB is responsible for addressing what third-party buyers do with its equipment. The company must stop looking away as JCB machines are used to target and punish the Muslim community… JCB cannot continue to evade responsibility while its machines are repeatedly used to inflict human rights abuses,” said Amnesty’s Callamard. “The company must publicly condemn the use of its machinery to commit human rights violations.”

Amnesty cited the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which state businesses are responsible for respecting human rights and should avoid contributing to human rights violations. The report said that JCB is responsible for determining whether its machinery was used for punitive demolitions and adding clauses to its sales contracts that mitigate human rights violations.

In response to Amnesty’s message to JCB, a legal firm acting on behalf of the company presented several arguments to distance JCB from the human rights violations in India.

The firm said that there is no direct link between JCB and the alleged human rights violations, adding that most of its machinery is sold by JCB India through independent third-party dealers.

The legal firm also said that JCB can not control the use of its products once sold to customers and that JCB does not have any leverage over those who use its products or its dealership network.

This is not the first time Amnesty has called out JCB’s complicity in human rights violations. In November 2021, another Amnesty report showed dozens of specific incidents during which Israeli authorities used JCB machinery to demolish residential and farm buildings belonging to Palestinians. JCB denied selling any machinery to the Israeli government or the contractors carrying out demolitions in Palestine.

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In Modi’s constituency Varanasi, India’s next temple-mosque spat explodes | Religion News

Varanasi/Bengaluru, India – A festive atmosphere engulfed Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities situated on the banks of the river Ganga.

It was the week Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the new temple to the Hindu deity Ram where the 16th century Babri Masjid once stood in the city of Ayodhya, 200km (124 miles) to the north.

In Varanasi, the streets and boats on the river were decked up with saffron flags bearing illustrations of Ram. Outside Varanasi’s famous and historic Kashi Vishwanath temple, the smell of burning camphor and the sound of Indian classical music drifted through the air as pilgrims flocked in large numbers to the temple to offer their prayers.

But next door, towards the west of the temple, the carnival-like spirit was replaced with a strict and sombre atmosphere, with barricades and police officers greeting crowds.

The officers were guarding the Gyanvapi Mosque – which is widely believed to have been built on the ruins of a 16th-century Kashi Vishwanath temple demolished by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669.

While the partially ruined Kashi temple has been reconstructed and stands adjacent to the Gyanvapi Mosque, Hindu supremacist groups have been trying to reclaim the mosque for decades.

Security personnel stand guard near the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi [File: Niharika Kulkarni/AFP]

In May 2022, some Hindu patrons went to the Varanasi local court asking for permission to worship within the mosque’s complex after a court-ordered video survey found that a ‘Shivling’ – a symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva – was found near the wuzukhana, a well used by Muslim devotees at the mosque.

This case gained momentum in January this year when a survey from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), among other things, stated that a large Hindu temple existed on the site before the mosque and that sculptures of Hindu deities were also present in the cellars of the mosque.

Within a few days, on January 31, Judge Ajaya Krishna Vishvesha from Varanasi’s local court passed an order ruling that Hindus would be allowed to pray in the mosque’s basement – a section which had been sealed due to security concerns.

“District court Varanasi has created history today,” Vishnu Jain, a Supreme Court lawyer representing the Hindu side said in a post on X.

A day later, videos and images began appearing on social media of a priest offering prayers to the Hindu deities inside the mosque cellar.

 

The Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, the committee managing the Gyanvapi Mosque, rejected the local court’s order and is scheduled to challenge the case at the Allahabad High Court in the city of Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad, on February 6.

“It seems like the judicial system is against Muslims,” Rais Ahmad Ansari, an advocate in Varanasi representing the Muslim side, told Al Jazeera.

Even amid a heightened momentum among India’s Hindu supremacist movement to target mosques, often facilitated by government authorities – a centuries-old mosque was razed in New Delhi last week – the case involving the Gyanyavi structure holds deep political significance. Varanasi is the electoral constituency of Modi, who leads the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that rules the country, yet has built strong relations with the presidents and ministers of Western liberal democracies.

India will vote in general elections expected to be held between March and May.

‘You can feel a Hindu vibe all around you’

While the court order hasn’t stirred any violence or communal riots, a sense of anxiety is prevalent in the Muslim neighbourhoods of the city, according to advocate Ansari.

“Muslim-owned shops closed after the [January 31] hearing fearing a dispute. Friday’s namaz [prayers] was also greeted with tight security presence as hundreds gathered outside the Gynavapi Mosque to offer prayers. There is a sense of anxiety in every Muslim’s mind,” he said.

“It is still peaceful in Varanasi. But this peace feels uneasy,” he added.

Meanwhile, some news channels in the country hailed the local court order and the onset of prayers in the mosque as “a big win for Hindus” – a sentiment shared by several Hindus in Varanasi.

“We plan to go visit the site and see the priest performing rituals at the mosque as soon as our exams end,” Ayush Akash and Harshit Sharma, two 21-year-old political science students at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), told Al Jazeera.

Nita*, a Hindu devotee at the Kashi Vishwanath temple, was also keen to pray at the temple.

“We feel great about it [court ruling]. If we are let to visit and pray, we will go. When Hindus pray in Varanasi, they have their own places of worship. My brother is a priest and can only worship in his temple. But if the priest allows us into Gyanvapi, we will surely go,” she told Al Jazeera.

“People here have been going crazy since the inauguration of the Ayodhya temple,” Nita said.

“You can feel a Hindu vibe all around you on the streets. It was never like this before, but everybody is happy about things that are happening and that the Gyanvapi is a Hindu temple,” she added.

Spectators gather to watch the nightly Ganga Aarti prayer, in which several Hindu priests twirl flaming lanterns and censers over the Ganges, in Varanasi, India [Joseph Campbell/Reuters]

BHU’s Akash pointed out that people from all religions in Varanasi have coexisted peacefully for years and are mature enough not to riot over the temple-mosque dispute.

“It might look like Hindus are in power, and yes, some Muslim people might be unhappy about the local court’s decision on the Gyanvapi Mosque. But in this city, while ideologies do differ, it doesn’t stop Hindu-Muslim friendship. That’s how the real Varanasi is,” he said.

‘All about politics’

Since Modi came to power in 2014, critics and rights groups have accused his government of encouraging or facilitating a rise in Hindu supremacy, while instances of discrimination and violence against Muslims – who represent the largest religious minority in the country – have grown.

Hindu nationalist groups have also increasingly launched or intensified legal campaigns against several centuries-old mosques, claiming they are built on the remains of Hindu shrines.

“There is a slogan which Hindu nationalists have been using which says ‘Ayodhya Jhaki hain, Kashi-Mathura Baki Hain,’” said BHU’s Akash. Translated, the slogan says ‘Ayodhya is just a preview, Kashi [Varanasi] and Mathura are left’. It’s a reference to how the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 in Ayodhya has been used by Hindu majoritarian groups to seek similar actions with the Mughal-era mosques in Varanasi and Mathura.

“But right now, in Varanasi, the Gyanvapi case is all about politics. It seems like the local court gave its ruling in time for the upcoming general elections. I feel the ruling is to unite Hindus before the elections,” he said.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, secretary of the Indian History Congress and professor of medieval history at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) shared a similar view but highlighted that this case is not like Ayodhya.

“Nobody has ever said that where the Gyanvapi Mosque stands today, there had been no temple. It is clear there was a temple and it was demolished. One can even see that with the naked eye,” Rezawi said.

“The reason behind why the temple was broken is where the contention arises since the manner in which the history of temple demolitions is currently being presented is a false narrative.”

Rezawi highlighted how the book, Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India, written by American scholar Richard Eaton, explains that in pre-colonial India, every dynasty had a deity they prayed to. If the ruler of the dynasty was defeated and the kingdom was taken over, then the deity and everything devoted to the deity – including the temple – was destroyed by the triumphant ruler.

“This was an accepted practice among kings and is exactly what [the emperor] Aurangzeb did. But the reason behind why he demolished the Vishwanath temple and built the mosque has many theories with some historians saying it was due to religious reasons and others claiming it was Aurangzeb’s way of punishing the Hindu family who managed the mosque since they had helped the Hindu king Shivaji escape,” he added.

“What Aurangzeb did should be condemned. But he lived during an era when there was no constitution. We have an Indian constitution which guarantees certain rights to people. So I don’t understand why the courts and prime minister are ignoring this and committing a crime more heinous than Aurangzeb,” Rezwai said.

Constitutionally, India is a secular state. The country also passed a law in 1991 called the Places of Worship Act, which prohibits the conversion of places of worship and stresses that their religious nature should be maintained.

But the final say about the future of the mosque lies with the country’s courts.

Abhishek Sharma, a Kashi temple devotee and coordinator at the Swagatam Kashi Foundation, told Al Jazeera that “people in Varanasi believe in ‘Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb’,” a metaphor for social harmony that references the mingling of the waters of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers.

“We have always believed in living together in sanctity.  We pray that this peace is not be disturbed in any way,” he said.

*Some names have been changed to protect identities.



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Centuries-old mosque razed in Indian capital | Religion

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Worshippers from a New Delhi mosque are shocked over the destruction of the centuries-old structure. The property was left in ruins, and a case has been filed in court alleging no notice was given before the demolition.

Published On 2 Feb 2024

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Hindu prayers begin inside India’s Mughal-era mosque after court order | Religion News

Right-wing Hindu groups have been claiming the 17th-century mosque adjacent to a famous temple in Varanasi city for decades.

Hindu worshippers have begun praying inside a 17th-century mosque in the Indian city of Varanasi, hours after a court order gave them the go-ahead at the disputed site.

The Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi is one of several Muslim places of worship that right-wing Hindu groups, backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have sought for decades to reclaim.

Varanasi is Modi’s parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, also governed by the BJP.

On Wednesday, a local court ruled that Hindu worshippers could pray in the building’s basement and ordered the authorities to “make proper arrangements” for worshippers within a week.

Indian media reports said the family members of Hindu priests started praying in the mosque’s basement in the early hours of Thursday.

Akhlaq Ahmad, the lawyer representing Muslim petitioners, said the court order would be appealed.

The Gyanvapi Mosque was built during the Mughal Empire in a city where Hindus from across the country cremate relatives by the Ganges river. Hindu worshippers claim the mosque replaced a temple to the Hindu deity Shiva.

Last month, the Archaeological Survey of India said a survey of the site appeared to corroborate the belief that it was originally home to a temple.

Emboldened right-wing Hindu groups have laid claim to several Muslim sites of worship they say were built atop ancient temples during Mughal rule.

Centuries-old mosque razed in Indian capital

Meanwhile, bulldozers have knocked down a centuries-old mosque in India’s capital, a member of the building’s managing committee said.

The Masjid Akhonji in New Delhi, which its caretakers say is about 600 years old, was home to 22 students enrolled in an Islamic boarding school.

It was torn down on Tuesday in a forest of Mehrauli, an affluent neighbourhood dotted with centuries-old ruins from settlements predating modern Delhi.

Mohammad Zaffar, a member of the mosque’s managing committee, told the Agence France-Presse news agency it did not receive any prior notice before a demolition was carried out “in the dark of the night”.

He said many graves in the mosque compound were also desecrated and no one was allowed to take out copies of the Quran or other materials from inside the mosque before it was razed.

“Many of our revered figures and my own ancestors were buried there. There is no trace of the graves now,” Zaffar told AFP. “The rubble from the mosque and the graves has been removed and dumped somewhere else.”

The officials said the demolition was part of a drive to remove “illegal” structures from a forest reserve.

Calls for India to enshrine Hindu supremacy have grown rapidly louder since Modi took office in 2014, making its roughly 200-million-strong Muslim minority – the world’s third-largest Muslim population – increasingly anxious about its future.

Last week, Modi presided over a grand inauguration ceremony in the nearby city of Ayodhya for a Hindu temple built on the former grounds of another Mughal-era mosque.

Hindu zealots had torn down the Babri Mosque in 1992 in a campaign spearheaded by members of Modi’s party, sparking sectarian riots that killed 2,000 people nationwide, most of them Muslims.

A decades-long court battle that ensued over the future of the Babri site ended in 2019 when India’s top court permitted the construction of a temple to the deity Ram, who, according to Hindu scripture, was born in the city.

The consecration of the Ram temple by Modi fulfilled a 35-year-old pledge of the BJP and has been portrayed by the party and its affiliates as a Hindu reawakening. It also came months ahead of national elections due by May and is expected to boost Modi’s chances of winning a third term.

Critics accuse Modi of pushing a pro-Hindu agenda and promoting discrimination against Muslims, but he says his government does not do so.



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India’s Ayodhya wakes up to harsh realities after Modi’s Ram temple event | Religion News

Ayodhya, India – As half a million people converged on the gates of the new temple to the Hindu deity Ram, Brijesh Pathak looked on.

It was the day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had consecrated the shrine amid a national frenzy that had turned the attention of a country of 1.4 billion people to the temple town of Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where Hindu scriptures say Ram was born.

The devotees had turned up to catch a glimpse of Ram’s idol installed at the grand structure built on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque demolished by a right-wing mob in 1992.

But as the crowd swelled, Pathak, the 32-year-old manager of a guesthouse, said, a stampede-like situation was created outside the temple premises. Buses and rickshaws were ordered off the streets, police barricades were put up and more security personnel were rushed to the small town, incapable of handling such a huge number of visitors.

“It was a flood of people. You could only see endless heads,” Pathak told Al Jazeera.

Only a day ago, the city was India’s most sought-after destination after Modi, along with a large number of Hindu saints, film stars and business leaders landed there to inaugurate the controversial temple.

But as the PM and the celebrities moved on, Ayodhya was left to deal with a new reality: it’s a city that is now expected to receive millions of tourists and pilgrims every year, yet is ill-prepared to handle such volumes of visitors, local businesspeople and traders said.

Like the incomplete temple that was consecrated ahead of national elections – due between March and May – the city has been rushed into its new role.

On January 23, after Modi and other celebrities flew out, several pilgrims were injured, and some had fractures, as throngs of devotees broke police barriers to enter the complex. In response, the state’s Hindu nationalist chief minister returned to Ayodhya with top officials to manage the crisis. In New Delhi, Modi barred his ministers from visiting the temple for some weeks.

“It would take at least till 2027 for the temple to be complete,” an engineer working inside the temple told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Outside, in the city, a similar sense of unpreparedness prevails.

‘We can’t handle half a million people’

Amid freezing cold at a roadside eatery, some workers wearing T-shirts stood behind clay ovens, flipping dough and juggling plates. It’s a joint recommended by the locals for having comparatively better food” in Ayodhya.

As orders piled up, the workers lost their ease. Waiters began to turn a deaf ear to streaming customers. A cup of tea could take forever to arrive.

“Ayodhya is not equipped to host so many tourists,” Nand Kumar Gupta, president of a local traders’ union, told Al Jazeera. “We are a very small town and we cannot handle half a million people. Nobody has trained us to take and manage 50 orders at the same time.”

Before the Ram Mandir, as the temple is known, was inaugurated, Ayodhya largely saw only tourists for religious fairs hosted during Hindu festivals. Many of the visitors were from nearby villages.

“Our restaurants are conditioned to cater to the villagers’ needs and living standards, not for people who need air conditioners in their eateries,” said Gupta, 52. “We just do not have a system in place to do this.”

The entire town in the east of Uttar Pradesh was given a multimillion-dollar facelift as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls both the federal and state governments, projected Ayodhya as the Vatican of the Hindus.

But Ayodhya’s revamp for the Ram Mandir project has also put local businesses under considerable stress, Gupta said.

“Nearly 4,000 shops were partly demolished [during the facelift] and 1,600 shops were completely wiped off,” he said. “The upcoming economic prosperity in Ayodhya is for the big corporates, not us.”

‘We will be pushed out of the city’

Indeed, the town, being developed as the main Hindu pilgrimage in future, is already attracting big money, with projects worth 8,500 million Indian rupees (about $10bn) sanctioned for the uplift.

Leading hotel companies, including Marriott, Radisson and Wyndham, have signed deals to build star hotels. Advertisements – one featuring Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan – are calling on India’s rich to invest in homes and resorts on the banks of the Saryu River.

The town’s railway station has been revamped. A new airport has come up, though it was not equipped enough to park nearly a dozen chartered planes carrying dignitaries that landed in Ayodhya on January 22.

“The government has combined religious sentiments, politics and economics here and the local administration is just full of themselves to see this reality,” Gupta told Al Jazeera. “Eventually, it looks like all of us will be pushed out of the city as they convert this city into a mega pilgrimage.”

But some smaller businesses are still trying to adjust to a new reality. Guesthouse manager Pathak renovated his property recently, adding 11 more rooms to his modest three-room business. Mosquitoes buzz in the rooms, which have little ventilation.

As Pathak stood outside his guesthouse and looked over the swelling crowd, he said he was beyond excited. His guesthouse, along the main street named Ram Path, is booked for the next three days, a first for him. “And we are charging threefold prices,” he said, bursting out in laughter.

Shivam Puri, a 36-year-old pilgrim, had travelled for two nights from India’s south with his family to reach Ayodhya and have a glimpse of his deity. He was among the crowd that broke through the temple’s barriers.

As he rushed inside the temple, Puri said he felt “something that he had never felt before”.

But he will not be staying in Ayodhya for the night. “I am leaving for Lucknow,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the state capital, about 136km (84 miles) away.

“Here, you cannot even find a decent dinner that is anything but spices in water.”

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The Indian ‘lost tribe’ that wants to move to Israel, even ‘fight Hamas’ | Religion

Aizawl, India – Joseph Haokip, an undergraduate student in Manipur, is excited at the thought of going to Israel. He is ready to join the Israeli army to fight Hamas in a war in which Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza has killed more than 26,000 people, mostly women and children.

The 20-year-old and his family have recently returned to their home in the Kangpokpi district of Manipur after five months in the neighbouring state of Mizoram where they had fled when an ethnic conflict broke out in Manipur last year.

“I stayed in a makeshift camp with the other members of the Bnei Menashe community since August last year and have just returned a few days ago. But I want to go to Israel and connect with my lost tribe. I also want to join the [Israeli army] and help them in fighting against Hamas because I belong from that land,” Haokip told Al Jazeera.

Rafael Khiangte, 37, a taxi driver in Aizawl, Mizoram’s capital, wants to move to Israel along with his wife and toddler to connect with his ancestral roots and reunite with his mother.

Khiangte’s mother Sarah Pachuau, 58, relocated to Israel along with her brother in 1993. “I belong from the lost tribe and want to stay with my mother and also provide a better future to my daughter … I want to reunite with the land from where we got separated over 2,700 years ago,” Khiangte said.

The lost tribe

Rafael Khiangte, a taxi driver in Aizawl, says his roots are in Israel [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Khiangte and Haokip are among about 5,000 people living in the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram who believe they are the descendants of the Manasseh, one of the biblical lost tribes of Israel exiled in 722 BC by Assyrian conquerors and commonly referred to as the Bnei Menashe community, or Hebrew for the children of Manasseh, the first son of Joseph.

PC Biaksiama, a Christian researcher based in Aizawl, told Al Jazeera that several members from the Chin, Kuki and Mizo ethnic groups believe themselves to be the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

During the ancient times, Israel was divided into two kingdoms. The southern one was known as the Kingdom of Judah and mostly comprised the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while the northern part was made up of the so-called 10 tribes, he said.

The Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom and exiled the tribes living there. Several of them fled and settled in different parts of the world. According to the Bnei Menashe, they were dispersed to China from where they ended up in northeast India.

Israel’s 1950 Law of Return allowed Jews, people with one or more Jewish grandparent and their spouses the right to relocate to Israel and acquire citizenship there. It also opened the doors to bring the lost tribes back.

In India, claims of being a descendant of the lost tribes began in 1951 when a tribal leader, Mela Chala, had a dream that his ancient homeland was Israel. Since then, many people in northeast India, mostly in the states of Manipur and Mizoram, have embraced Judaism and its customs and traditions.

Relocating to Israel

Ngaikhochin Kipgen with her teenage granddaughter Naokim and one-year-old grandson Shaior Kipgen [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Professor Shalva Weil, a senior researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera that she had introduced Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail to the Bnai Menashe tribe for the first time during their visit to India in 1980.

“I had introduced him with the community though I was not very much convinced of their claims of the lost tribe as they had no documentary evidence to support it apart from their religious rituals like maintaining Sabbath and legends that they had crossed the Red Sea and originated from the 10 lost tribes,” Weil said.

But the Bnei Menashe started coming to Israel in the 1980s. In 1991, when Weil opened an exhibition on the legend of the 10 lost tribes at the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora – today called the Anu Museum – in Tel Aviv, 12 people from the community turned up, she recalled.

“Slowly, the numbers started swelling, which rose further after the chief rabbinate of Israel accepted them as Jews in 2005. Around 3,500 have already arrived from India in the past three decades,” she added.

For those hoping to “return” to Israel, they have to first make the aliyah – Hebrew for “ascent” or “rise”, but used to mean “a move to Israel”. The first aliyah – which mainly involves Israeli authorities checking documents including a conversion to Judaism certificate issued by a rabbi and interviews before qualifying to shift to Israel – took place in India in 2006. In the last aliyah in 2021, 150 people went to Israel.

While all Jews are eligible to make aliyah, the final decision on whether to absorb them depends on the government of Israel. In September 2023, a committee of the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, debated the delays in allowing the Bnei Menashe to make aliyah. In the past five years, 1,421 members of the community have moved to Israel. And committee chair Oded Forer pressed the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu why the remaining members of the community were not being helped to make aliyah.

The government responded that it had set up an inter-ministerial committee to prepare a plan for the immigration of the Bnei Menashe to Israel, and that it was supplying humanitarian aid to the community as it tries to survive the clashes in Manipur.

But the delays haven’t dampened the enthusiasm to move to Israel for Leah Renthlei, 52, who resigned from her teacher’s job in Aizawl about 10 years ago because it required her to work on Saturdays and so, “prevented me from following my religious practices like Sabbath,” she said.

“My two sisters have already gone to Israel during the previous aliyahs,” Renthlei said. “And I have been waiting for my turn.”

Ngaikhochin Kipgen and her family fled Manipur when the ethnic conflict broke out on May 3. For the past seven months, she has been living on a college-campus-turned-refugee-camp in the Kolasib district of Mizoram, approximately 80km (50 miles) from Aizawl.

The 70-year-old is staying there with her teenage granddaughter Naokim and one-year-old grandson Shaior, while the rest of her family has gone back to Manipur.

Despite being safe in Mizoram, she said she longed to go to Israel and spend the final years of her life there, as she also claimed to be a member of the Bnei Menashe.

“I want to go to Israel and reunite with Israelites with whom we got separated several centuries ago,” she told Al Jazeera.

Conversion to Orthodox Judaism

Thansima Thawmte, the chairman of the Bnei Menashe Council, says every member of his community is praying that Israel allows them to move there soon [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Weil said that shortly after they arrive in Israel, the Bnei Menashe have to convert to Orthodox Judaism, learn the Hebrew language and follow the religious rituals of the community.

The organisations in Israel working to unite the Bnei Menashe with their country did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for information. But those from the community already in Israel have embraced the society, even the country’s mandatory military service, said Weil.

“They have shown much devotion and have got assimilated with the Israel society and are settled everywhere in the country,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that about 200 members of the community had so far joined the Israeli military. “They also enjoy better economic conditions in Israel, but the cost of living is higher than in northeast India,” she added.

PC Biaksiama, the Aizawl-based researcher, however, feels that the community is “misguided” in its approach.

“The Bnei Menashe should not try to move out from Mizoram or elsewhere as it has been their birthplace and they should be proud of it. They can settle here and can still practise their religion,” he said. “Economic benefits seem to be a major reason for going to Israel,” he added, referring to the higher income levels in Israel.

But the Bnei Menashe members assert that the sole reason for going to Israel is to connect with the land.

Thansima Thawmte, the chairman of the Bnei Menashe Council (BMC) in Mizoram, said that every individual from his community is waiting for an aliyah. “We are desperately waiting to reunite with the land of our ancestors. It all depends on Israel, when they allow us to enter their land and we can only pray that it happens soon,” he said.

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Devotees rush to India’s newly inaugurated Ram temple | Religion

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Crowds of devotees lined up outside the newly inaugurated Ram temple in Ayodhya in India, which opened to the public after being inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The temple is built on the site of a centuries-old mosque that was destroyed by far-right Hindu mobs in 1992, who say a temple originally stood there.

Published On 23 Jan 2024

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India’s Modi opens controversial Hindu temple in Ayodhya | Religion News

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has opened a controversial Hindu temple, delivering on a crucial Hindu nationalist pledge that he hopes will catapult the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a record third successive term in upcoming general elections.

Modi, dressed in a traditional kurta tunic, led the opening ceremony on Monday as Hindu priests chanted hymns inside the temple’s inner sanctum, where a 1.3-metre (4.3-foot) stone sculpture of Lord Ram was installed last week.

A conch was blown by a priest to mark the temple’s opening and Modi placed a lotus flower in front of the black stone idol, decked in intricate gold ornaments and holding a golden bow and arrow. He later prostrated before the idol.

The temple, which is still under construction atop the ruins of a historic mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya, is dedicated to Hinduism’s Lord Ram. Its consecration fulfils a longstanding demand by millions of Hindus who worship the revered deity.

The BJP and other Hindu nationalist groups have portrayed the temple as central to their vision of reclaiming Hindu pride, which they say has been overshadowed by centuries of Mughal rule and British colonialism.

Millions of Indians watched the ceremony on television, with news channels running non-stop coverage of the event, portrayed as a religious spectacle.

Nearly 7,500 people, including elite industrialists, politicians and movie stars, witnessed the ritual on a giant screen outside the temple as a military helicopter showered flower petals.

Analysts and critics see the ceremony as the start of the election campaign for Modi, an avowed Hindu nationalist and one of India’s most consequential leaders who has sought to transform the country from a secular democracy into a distinctly Hindu state in his nearly 10 years in power.

They say the pomp-filled display led by the government shows the extent to which the line between religion and state has eroded under Modi.

Built at an estimated cost of $217m and spread over nearly 3 hectares (7.4 acres), the temple lies atop the debris of the 16th-century Babri mosque, which was razed to the ground in 1992 by Hindu mobs, who believed it was built on temple ruins marking the birthplace of Lord Ram.

The site has long been a religious flashpoint for the two communities, with the demolition of the mosque triggering bloody riots across India that killed 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

The dispute ended in 2019 when, in a controversial decision, India’s Supreme Court called the mosque’s destruction “an egregious violation” of the law but granted the site to Hindus while giving Muslims a different plot of land.

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Why is India’s Ram temple in Ayodhya controversial? | Politics News

India’s stock market is shut for the day. Central government offices are only open for half the day. Neighbourhood watch parties have been organised across the country. And tens of millions of Indians are tuned into one event: the consecration of a temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya.

On Monday, just past noon local time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join priests to inaugurate the temple, whose launch in many ways also serves as the start of his campaign to be re-elected for a third term in office in national elections due to be held between March and May.

The trust in charge of the temple, whose construction is still under way, has invited an estimated 7,000 people — politicians, leading industrialists, sports stars and other public figures.

But while Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has pitched the event as a national celebration, the temple’s history is grounded in what many have dubbed one of modern India’s darkest chapters — one that has shaped the country’s politics and that cracked open deep religious fault lines in its society.

Here’s a look at the tortured history of the spot where the temple is being built — and the controversies surrounding it.

What is the controversy behind the Ram temple?

The temple is being built on a contentious piece of land in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, at a spot that many Hindus believe was the birthplace of Ram, a much-worshipped god who in the religion epitomises the victory of good over evil.

But until the morning of December 6, 1992, it was the Babri Masjid, a mosque built in 1528 and named after the Mughal king Babur, that stood at that place. A mob of Hindu nationalists pulled down the mosque, chanting religious slogans, after more than a decade of an angry, and at times violent, campaign.

After years of being closed to the public, in November 2019, India’s Supreme Court ruled that the site must be handed over to a trust that would be specially set up to oversee the construction of a Hindu temple.

A separate piece of land in Dhannipur village on the outskirts of Ayodhya, was allocated to Muslims for a mosque that may serve as a replacement for the Babri Masjid. Its construction is yet to begin.

“Through the highest court now, we have established a principle of creating an unbreakable divide between Hindus and Muslims, that they cannot live side by side,” said writer and academic Apoorvanand on the “five-acre justice,” a term Indians have penned over the size of the reallocated land.

While some segments of India’s population cheered on the judgement, others criticised it for lacking a sound legal basis and compromising on India’s secular and democratic constitutional ethics.

Locals have also pointed to the history of harmonious co-existence between the two communities in Ayodhya, even at places of worship. The ruling also sparked fears that it was emboldening right-wing Hindus across the country to launch similar efforts to raze other mosques.

Although the Ram Temple controversy goes back decades, Apoorvanand says that Monday’s event is “also a final announcement of, in a way, Hindus handing over their religion to the will of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.” The RSS is the Hindu-nationalist mothership of the BJP and its far-right partner organisations.

The temple’s inauguration seals the site as a place of Hindu worship, and comes after years of legal tussles and even violent riots over the land and its legacy.

Babri Mosque in 1990, two years before it was destroyed [File: Robert Nickelsberg/Liaison)

Major events in the divide over the Ram temple

The first recorded instance of conflict over the site was in 1853, when a Hindu sect asserted that a temple had been demolished during Babur’s era to make way for the mosque.

Tensions especially started to take a turn in 1859 when British colonial rulers partitioned the building into separate sections – the inside for Muslims, and the outer court for Hindus.

In 1949, just two years after the subcontinent won independence, the mosque turned into disputed property. Police reports show that Hindu idols were brought into the mosque and its gates were closed. No Muslim prayers were offered at the mosque after that. In 1950, several civil suits were filed with both communities laying claim to the site.

But it was outside the courts that the fate of the Babri Masjid was ultimately decided.

In the 1980s, the BJP that now dominates Indian politics was largely a fringe party. But it built political momentum around a nationwide campaign to build a temple in the place of the mosque, led by then party chief Lal Krishna Advani, who would later serve as India’s deputy prime minister (1998-2004).

Under pressure from the BJP and its Hindu majoritarian allies and the support they were galvanising, the government of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, of the Indian National Congress, allowed a court decision to open the locks of the Babri Masjid site to go unchallenged in 1986.

That, however, only emboldened the BJP-led agitation. In 1990, Advani led a long rally over more than a month through the heart of India, building support for the Ram temple. Modi, then a young and rising party worker in the western state of Gujarat, helped organise the rally.

Then, on December 6, 1992, Hindu mobs tore down the Babri Masjid. Ensuing riots across the country killed about 2,000 people.

Following years of back and forth in court, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in 2019.

The court acknowledged that both the surreptitious manner in which idols were brought into the mosque in 1949 and the demolition in 1949 were crimes. Still, by essentially ordering no consequences for those offences, the court created a scenario where Indian Muslims are “disappointed to see no remorse”, and feel there is little recourse for their concerns, says Apoorvanand.

Where exactly is the contested site?

The Ram temple is being built near the banks of the Sarayu River, which runs past Ayodhya and is mentioned in ancient Hindu scriptures. Ayodhya is in India’s northern and most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

Officially known as Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, it has been constructed in the Nagara style of architecture, which is common in northern India and features tall steeples and a stone platform with steps leading up to the temple.

When will the Ram temple consecration take place?

The consecration is scheduled for just after 12pm local time (06:30 GMT) on Monday, January 22.

Many of the wings of the temple are still under construction, and some of Hinduism’s foremost seers, the four Shankaracharyas, have objected to the opening, saying that consecrating an incomplete temple goes against Hindu scriptures.

Nonetheless, the government, and the trust in charge of the temple, have insisted that the consecration does not violate any tenets of the faith.

Monday’s event will include a grand procession of idols to be taken into the building, and a four-foot statue of a child Ram being placed in the inner sanctum. Priests will join Modi for the actual ceremony, expected to last for half an hour.

Modi’s government has also planned live screenings of the event across the country. Some Indian embassies have also invited members of the Indian diaspora to screenings.

As Hindus across Ayodhya decorate streets and join celebratory rallies, messages are circulating among Muslims to remain at home as a precaution for their safety.

The constructed portion of the temple will be open to devotees and the public starting January 23. And as the temple’s doors open to them, so does a path to an economic boost for Ayodhya.

About 100 private jets are expected to touch down in Ayodhya ahead of the inauguration and retailers say they have run out of gold and gold-plated statues of Ram.

Property prices in Ayodhya have also skyrocketed as the city is set to become a pilgrimage and tourism hotspot.

How are Modi and India’s 2024 elections linked to the Ram temple?

Building the Ram temple at the spot where the Babri Masjid once stood has been one of the BJP’s three foundational promises — the end of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, which was scrapped in 2019, and a uniform civil code for personal laws are the others.

Modi’s consecration of the temple fulfils that decades-long pledge, and comes just weeks before national elections.

The Ram temple movement has already paid rich dividends to the BJP’s political fortunes. The party won just two seats out of 543 in the lower house of parliament in 1984. A little more than a decade later, in the first national elections after the Babri Masjid’s demolition, it surged to become India’s single-largest party, winning 161 seats.

Its first stint in office lasted just 13 days — because of its association with the mosque demolition, most other parties were unwilling to form alliances that the BJP needed to get to the majority mark of 272 seats in parliament.

But as its brand of Hindu nationalism slowly gained acceptability, it came to power again in 1998, and ruled with allies until 2004. After a decade out of power, it stormed back into office under Modi, the most unapologetically Hindu nationalist leader the party has had.

On Monday, Modi will look to cement that legacy still further.

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‘Might get worse’: As Modi unveils Ram temple, Indian Muslims fear future | Politics

Ayodhya/Lucknow, India – Wearing her hijab, Yusra Hussain stood in the queue to enter a makeshift temple to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, the northern Indian city believed to be his birthplace. What followed is etched in her mind.

“I was jeered [at] and taunted,” the 32-year-old said. “And people started chanting Jai Shree Ram [victory to Lord Ram]. I got a sense of aggressive triumphalism.”

That was eight years ago. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate an incomplete Ram temple built in place of the makeshift shrine Hussain had visited, amid a nationwide frenzy over the consecration that has brought the country of 1.4 billion people, and a nearly $4 trillion economy, to a virtual standstill.

The stock market is shut, government offices are working only half the day and movie halls are offering live screenings of the religious ceremony that Modi’s opponents say he has hijacked ahead of national elections that are expected to begin in March.

Major public hospitals announced reduced services for the day to allow staff to soak in the celebrations, though some have since retracted those announcements.

Missing from news channels and popular discourse is any reference to the fact that the temple is coming up at the very spot where the 16th-century Babri Masjid was torn down by a Hindu nationalist mob on a grey winter morning in December 1992.

Hussain, a freelance journalist based in the city of Lucknow, 120 km (75 miles) east of Ayodhya, said she fears that the “triumphalism” she witnessed on what was her first visit to the temple town “might just get worse in the coming days”.

“In fact, after Ayodhya, there might be a snowballing effect on other disputed places like Mathura and Kashi,” she said. Mathura and Varanasi – Modi’s parliamentary constituency also known locally as Kashi – are also home to historic mosques that the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu majoritarian allies say were built on demolished temples.

For many among India’s 200 million Muslims, the state-sponsored pomp and ceremony around the temple’s launch is the latest in a series of painful realisations that – especially since Modi took office in 2014 – the democracy they call home no longer appears to care about them.

Increased religious polarisation in the country affects not just their safety and security but also their political influence in the upcoming national vote. Muslims constitute more than 20 percent of the population in 101 of India’s 543 directly elected parliamentary constituencies. Indian secularism has been premised on Hindus and Muslims – the country’s two-largest communities – voting primarily on economic or non-religious issues.

That has meant that while Indian Muslims are no homogenous voting bloc, the community has had the limited but definite ability to affect electoral outcomes for the best part of independent India’s 77-year journey. This has especially been true in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh – home to Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura and Lucknow – and Bihar as well as the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam, home to some of India’s largest Muslim populations.

With religious sentiments running high and if the majority Hindu vote consolidates behind a party like the BJP, as it often has in recent elections, this equation no longer holds.

“The 2024 elections could be a one-sided affair in favour of BJP,” said Hussain Afsar, Yusra’s father and also a Lucknow-based journalist.

At the centre of Modi’s religious pitch is the Ram temple, which is being unveiled while it is still under construction, despite opposition from some of Hinduism’s senior-most seers who have accused the prime minister of timing its consecration to maximise electoral gains.

“Hindus and Muslims have coexisted with each other for hundreds of years along with mosques and temples in India. Both places of worship are culturally and historically important for all Indians,” Lucknow-based social activist Tahira Hasan said. “I don’t think any Muslim has a problem with a temple, the problem arises when religion and places of worship are used to polarise society, create animosity and use religion to create tensions.”

Since January 12, Modi has been keeping a fast and visiting a series of temples dressed in saffron robes, blurring the lines between prime minister and monk. On Monday, Modi will join priests and selected dignitaries in a 30-minute ceremony at the temple. The country’s biggest opposition party, the Congress, is skipping the event.

“Using religion in politics is what people are concerned about,” Hasan said.

The temple is being built at the estimated cost of 11.8 billion Indian rupees ($142 million). “This will be the new Vatican for the Hindus,” said Vijay Mishra, an astrologer and priest who shuttles between Ayodhya and Lucknow.

But it is only the centrepiece of a broader revival and enlargement of the city of Ayodhya, where Modi inaugurated a new airport and railway station in December. The city is increasingly extending into the neighbouring city of Faizabad, which is named after a Muslim courtier.

Also, next to Ayodhya is Dhannipur village, where India’s Supreme Court, in a 2019 judgement, asked the government to give land to the Muslim community to build a mosque. It was the same judgement that awarded 2.7 acres (1 hectare) of disputed land to a trust to build the Ram temple where the Babri Masjid mosque once stood.

Athar Hussain, who is a coordinator of the trust tasked with building a mosque in Dhannipur, said that “our plan is to build a hospital and mosque”.

“We may not have the funds yet but we will eventually collect them,” he said. Hussain, who is unrelated to Yumna and her father, conceded that the Supreme Court verdict, and the subsequent, rapid construction of the Ram temple, had left many Muslims despondent. But, he added, “There is not much we can do about it.”

That sense of resignation extends to many Muslims and some, like Yumna, also hold the community’s leaders responsible.

“We had reconciled to the construction of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya but the Muslim leadership began to raise hopes that a secular Constitution will look after the interests of the minorities and return the disputed land,” she said.

Expectations peaked, she said, when, in 2018, the Supreme Court attempted arbitration between representatives of the communities. Those efforts failed.

Still, Hussain, the coordinator of the Dhannipur mosque project, continues to hope that India’s judiciary will not allow a repeat of Ayodhya’s example in Mathura and Varanasi.

Last week, the Supreme Court put on hold a High Court judgement ordering a study of the 17th-century Shahi Idgah Mosque in Mathura to see if it was built over the remains of a temple.

“We hope it will remain that way,” Hussain said.

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