India was once believed to be the largest democracy in the world. These days, there are little signs of that. Indian authorities razed a 700-year-old mosque in the capital city of New Delhi on Tuesday, January 30, further flaming tensions with Muslim communities.
The Akhoondji Masjid and its Behrul Uloom madrasa in the Mehrauli Neighborhood of South Delhi were built during Razia Sultana’s reign, nearly 600-700 years ago. Neighborhood residents said that what Delhi Development Authority (DDA) demolished on Tuesday also included graves of revered religious figures who were buried inside the compound.
Zakir Hussain, the Imam of the mosque, said that the demolition was executed stealthily before sunrise, with debris secretly removed to hide the act.
“Accompanied by a substantial police presence, officials confiscated phones, denied access to copies of the Holy Qur’an, and vandalized the belongings of madrassa students.”
India, once a vibrant pluralist democracy, have long bid farewell to its tolerant past since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014. BJP’s leadership ranks are populated by extremist Hindu nationalist who consider the initial promulgation of secularism in India’s 1948 constitution as the country’s “original sin.”
The day before government bulldozers razed the Akhoondji mosque in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the inauguration of a grand Hindu temple in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, which has evolved into a symbol of religious tensions between Muslim and Hindus communities. The Ram Mandir Temple is constructed on the site of the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque named after the Muslim Mughal emperor Babur, which was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992. The destruction provoked country wide Hindu-Muslim riots that took the lives of over 2000 people, predominantly Muslims.
Many in the outside world have criticized Modi’s government’s destruction of Islamic historical sites that pay homage to centuries of Muslim rule over the subcontinent, which began with violence but eventually ended up as tolerant and prosperous civilizations.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned the building and inauguration of the ‘Ram Mandir’ on the location of the five-century-old Babri Masjid in India.
India’s arch-enemy, Pakistan, has also raised concerns over the treatment of Muslims in India. In the wake of religious conflicts ignited by the inauguration of the temple in India, Pakistan has called upon the United Nations to intervene and ensure the protection of Islamic sites in the country. The Pakistani permanent representative to the UN, Munir Akram, penned a plea to the organization.
“I am writing to seek your urgent intervention for the protection of religious sites in India. The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations must play a crucial role in safeguarding Islamic heritage sites and securing the rights of religious and cultural minorities in India.”
After a decade of uncontested rule, Mr. Modi and his BJP are closer than even to materializing their dream of cleaning India of its original sin and building a Hindu-first country that reflects one group’s identity at the cost of others, including the country’s centuries-old history of diversity, tolerance, and multiculturalism.
The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) said in a statement that Akhoondji Masjid was an illegal construction on a reserved forest part of Southern Ridge, a Hindu religious neighborhood. “Removal of illegal structures, religious in nature, was approved by the Religious Committee,” the DDA said in a statement.
