Ayodhya dispute
[5] As a consequence of this dispute was a court case in 1885 requesting the construction of a temple to enclose the chabutra, considered to mark the birthplace of Rama, in the courtyard of the Babri Masjid, which was rejected by citing that Hindu side doesn't enjoy proprietary rights.
[16][21] On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, announced their verdict; it vacated the previous decision and ruled that the land belonged to the government based on tax records.
It also ordered the government to give an alternate 2.0 hectares (5 acres) tract of land to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board to build the mosque.
[28] The land on which the medieval mosque, Babri Masjid, stood has come to be regarded by Hindus to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity, Rama, and is at the core of the Ayodhya dispute.
[36] A later recension adds many more places in Ayodhya and the entire fortified town, labelled Ramadurga ("Rama's fort"), as pilgrimage sites.
[40] The belief has been in currency since 1813–14, when the East India Company's surveyor Francis Buchanan reported finding an inscription on the mosque walls attesting to this fact.
[43] The Baburnama, Babur's diary in which he meticulously documented his life, bears no mention of either the construction of a mosque in Ayodhya or the destruction of a temple for it (there is a known lacuna in his diary between 3 April and 17 September 1528, which period covers Babur's visit to Ayodhya[48]); neither do his grandson Akbar's court documents, the Ain-i-Akbari, nor his contemporary Hindu poet-saint Tulsidas' epic poem Ramcharitmanas, dedicated to the Hindu god Rama.
Kalidasa wrote Raghuvamsa here, and referred to Gopratara tirtha (Guptar Ghat), where Rama was believed to have entered the waters of Saryu in his ascent to heaven.
[57] According to an early 20th century text by Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar and the surrounding historical sources examined by historian Harsh Narain,[note 3] the young Babur came from Kabul to Awadh (Ayodhya) in disguise, dressed as a Qalandar (Sufi ascetic), probably as part of a fact-finding mission.
Lala Sita Ram of Ayodhya, who had access to the older edition in 1932, wrote, "The faqirs answered that they would bless him if he promised to build a mosque after demolishing the Janmasthan temple.
"[59][60] The fact that Babur came in the guise of a Qalandar is corroborated in Abdullah's Tarikh-i Dawudi, where it is detailed that he met the Sultan Sikandar Lodhi in Delhi in the same disguise.
[64] Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602), who wrote Akbarnama, completing the third volume Ain-i Akbari in 1598, described the birthday festival in Ayodhya, the "residence of Rama" and the "holiest place of antiquity", but made no mention of a mosque.
[65] William Finch, the English traveller who visited Ayodhya around 1611, and wrote about the "ruins of the Ranichand [Ramachand] castle and houses" where Hindus believed the great God "took flesh upon him to see the tamasha of the world."
He also found a letter from a gumastha Trilokchand, dated 1723, stating that, while under the Muslim administration people had been prevented from taking a ritual bath in the Saryu river, the establishment of the Jaisinghpura has removed all impediments.
[68] The Jesuit priest Joseph Tieffenthaler, who visited Awadh in 1766–1771, wrote, "Emperor Aurangzebe got the fortress called Ramcot demolished and got a Muslim temple, with triple domes, constructed at the same place.
[note 4] Tieffenthaler also wrote that Hindus worshipped a square box raised 5 inches (13 cm) above the ground, which was said to be called the "Bedi, i.e., the cradle", and "The reason for this is that once upon a time, here was a house where Beschan [Vishnu] was born in the form of Ram."
In 1949, Sant Digvijay Nath of Gorakhnath Math joined the ABRM and organised a 9-day continuous recitation of Ramcharit Manas, at the end of which the Hindu activists broke into the mosque and placed idols of Rama and Sita inside.
Both the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board and the ABRM filed civil suits in a local court staking their respective claims to the site.
The report found a number of people culpable in the demolition, including BJP leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, Pramod Mahajan, Uma Bharti and Vijayaraje Scindia, as well as VHP leaders like Giriraj Kishore and Ashok Singhal.
Since 1949, by Indian Government order, Muslims were not permitted to be closer than 200 yards (180 m) away to the site; the main gate remained locked, though Hindu pilgrims were allowed to enter through a side door.
In 2003, by the order of an Indian High Court, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was asked to conduct a more in-depth study and an excavation to ascertain whether the type of structure that was beneath the rubble indicated definite proof of a temple under the mosque.
Excavations further yielded: stone and decorated bricks as well as mutilated sculpture of a divine couple and carved architectural features, including foliage patterns, amalaka, kapota-pali ["dove-house" crown-work], doorjamb with semi-circular shrine pilaster, broken octagonal shaft of black schist pillar, lotus motif, circular shrine having pranala (water chute) in the north and 50 pillar bases in association with a huge structure[92]One of the judges of the Allahabad High Court in 2010 criticised the independent experts who had appeared on behalf of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board including Suvira Jaiswal, Supriya Verma, Shireen F. Ratnagar and Jaya Menon.
[93] Udit Raj's Buddha Education Foundation claimed that the structure excavated by ASI in 2003 was a Buddhist stupa destroyed during and after the Muslim invasion of India.
Similarly, ASI professionalism has been criticized for not tabulating the contrarian evidence like animal bones and glazed pottery in spite of explicit instructions from the courts.
ASI has also been criticized for ignoring or selecting loose group of brickbats as pillar bases to support their theory of temple beneath the mosque.
[99] In 1950, Gopal Singh Visharad filed a title suit with the Allahabad High Court seeking injunction to offer 'puja' (worship) at the disputed site.
[100] In 1959, the Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu religious institution,[101] filed a third title suit seeking direction to hand over the charge of the disputed site, claiming to be its custodian.
The Allahabad high court bench, comprising justices S. U. Khan, Sudhir Agarwal and D. V. Sharma, began hearing the case in April 2002, which it would complete by 2010.
[21] The bench reserved the final judgment and granted three days to contesting parties to file written notes on 'moulding of relief' or narrowing down the issues on which the court is required to adjudicate.
It also ordered the government to give an alternate 2.0 hectares (5 acres) of land to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque.
