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| India-Pakistan |
| Indian court divides holy site |
| 2010-10-01 |
| [Al Jazeera] A disputed Indian holy site in the ancient city of Ayodhya claimed by both Mohammedans and Hindus is to be divided among three religious groups, a court has ordered on Thursday. Sounds rather Solomonic to me... The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court issued the much anticipated order on Thursday. Each of the three judges in the case - SU Khan, Sudhir Agarwal, and DV Sharma - issued their own summary of the judgement. The judges gave control of the main disputed section of the site, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus. Other parts of the site will be controlled by Mohammedans and another Hindu sect. Hope it's fundamentalist Vedics, with horse sacrifices and swilling soma and that sort of stuff... Officials urged all communities to remain calm and respect the high court's verdict. The News Agency that Dare Not be Named news agency quoted a lawyer for the Mohammedan community as saying he would appeal the ruling. A final decision could take years to emerge. Court cases in India are sometimes passed down from father to son to grandson... 'Partly disappointed' The main Mohammedan group contesting the religious site said it was "partly disappointed" by the verdict. "There's another part of us goin' 'woo-hoo!' though..." "The suit of Mohammedans were liable to be dismissed. But they are still entitled to one third of the site," Zafaryab Jilani, the lawyer for the Babri Masjid Action Committee, told news hounds. "We can say we are partly disappointed not fully because some of the stand of the Mohammedans has been vindicated." Authorities in India tightened security across the country in advance of the ruling, with the police arresting more than 7,000 people as a preventive measure. "Security measures have been enormous," Al Jazeera's Divya Gopalan reported from Lucknow. "In the financial city of Mumbai we have seen over 10,000 coppers on the streets. So far we haven't heard of any unrest yet," she said. The demolition of the mosque in the 1990s led to one of the country's worst riots since independence. India's supreme court cleared the way on Tuesday for the lower court to decide on the ownership of the Babri mosque, over which the Hindus and Mohammedans have quarrelled for more than centuries. "More than centuries" sounds like it should be eons or geological ages or something like that. I don't think they've been quarreling quite that long... Hindu groups say the mosque stood on the birthplace of their god-king Rama and was built only after the destruction of the longstanding Hindu temple by Mohammedan invaders in the 16th century. That's where they usually build their mosques, isn't it? The dispute flared up in 1992 after a Hindu mob destroyed the mosque and nearly 2,000 were killed in rioting between Hindus and Mohammedans across the country. Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, has described the 60-year-old Babri mosque-Ram temple case as one of the biggest security challenges in India - in addition to the Maoist campaign and the Kashmiri separatist uprising. In the western state of Gujarat where rioting seems to be a traditional pastime police have stepped up security at railway stations, bus terminals, shopping centres and were frisking all vehicles entering into the state. SHS Khandwawala, Gujarat's police chief, said more than 70,000 security personnel have been deployed to ensure there is no violence in the state which witnessed nearly 2,000 deaths in 2002 violence between Hindus and Mohammedans. |
| Posted by:Fred |