NEW DELHI, 13 July 2003 — Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal yesterday asked Muslims to give up three religious sites in northern India for the sake of smooth relations between the two communities.
The hard-line Hindu outfit also demanded legislation to build a temple at the site of the razed Babri mosque in Ayodhya while softening its rhetoric against Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
A day after a meeting of some 55 religious leaders comprising the Ayodhya temple panel, the VHP said if the government failed to bring such legislation, it should seek a fresh mandate on the temple issue.
“We have not asked the prime minister to resign if he cannot bring in legislation for the Ayodhya temple,” Singhal, international vice president of the VHP, told a press conference here.
“The BJP had earlier passed a resolution (that) only a negotiated settlement or parliamentary legislation could resolve the dispute. Vajpayee should try to bring the legislation and, if he cannot, then he should seek a fresh mandate. After all, many past governments have fallen on this issue.”
The VHP evidently backtracked after an admonition from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which was displeased with its aggressive demands in the past few weeks.
Singhal accused the Muslim community of adopting a “rigid attitude.”
“Having adopted such a rigid attitude, Muslims cannot live in the society,” he said.
“They should not challenge the self-respect of Hindus. They have to reach an understanding with Hindus and give up their claim on the three temples,” he said.
Singhal said the status of three places in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was “non-negotiable”: Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura. “Thirty thousand temples have been broken. We have not said anything. Now there is no question of giving up claims on these three,” he said.
The three Hindu pilgrimage towns all have shrine areas claimed by both Hindus and Muslims. The most explosive dispute is over Ayodhya, where thousands of Hindu zealots in December 1992 razed a 16th-century mosque, claiming it had been built over the ruins of a Hindu temple. In Kashi and Mathura, temples and mosques exist side by side.
Analysts view Singhal’s remarks as pointers to the rightwing extremist parties’ designs of whipping up communal frenzy in the nation and exploiting it politically to gain the Hindu votes in the coming elections.
The demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya set off nationwide riots between Hindus and Muslims that left at least 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. The fate of the site is in the hands of a court, which has ordered an archaeological dig to check the Hindus’ claim of a former temple.
An attempt by a prominent Hindu pontiff, Acharya Jayendra Saraswati, to solve the Ayodhya dispute was rejected a week ago by India’s main Muslim body the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which said it amounted to “thinly veiled threats.”
Yesterday, Saraswati said efforts were continuing to break the deadlock on Ayodhya with the Muslim board. “Talks are again on with the help of mediators on both sides and they will get back to us,” the Hindu seer told reporters in the southern city Madras.
An RSS said late yesterday that the BJP party had agreed to consider a demand of Hindu radicals for enacting legislation for the handover of the Ayodhya land to build a temple.
“BJP would consider the proposal sympathetically,” RSS joint general secretary Madan Das Devi told reporters after a meeting with top BJP leaders.
