{"id":23130,"date":"2018-11-25T04:22:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T04:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23130"},"modified":"2018-11-25T04:22:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T04:22:26","slug":"india-braces-for-mass-hindu-gathering-at-disputed-ayodhya-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23130","title":{"rendered":"India braces for mass Hindu gathering at disputed Ayodhya site"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Indian authorities will launch a major security operation at the ruins of a 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, where hundreds of thousands of far-right<\/a> Hindus are expected to gather on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The demonstrators aim to put pressure on the government to build a new Hindu temple on the disputed site.<\/p>\n

Constructed in 1528 by order of Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India<\/a>, the mosque was razed on December 6, 1992, by Hindus who claimed the site was where their deity, Lord Ram, was born.<\/p>\n

The incident prompted a series of massive riots which led to the deaths of about 2,000 people across the country.<\/p>\n

Local media reported<\/a> that more than 3,500 Muslims have fled the city before the gathering.<\/p>\n

Anil Pathak, the district chief of Faizabad, where the mosque is located, said: “The government will ensure that the event passes off peacefully and the local administration has put in place an elaborate security apparatus.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“No one will be allowed to disturb peace and order in the city,” he told the\u00a0Reuters news agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 900 extra police and a large number of military, including elite commandos, will be deployed at Sunday’s event, Vivek Tripathi, a spokesperson for the Uttar Pradesh police said.<\/p>\n

‘BJP committed to building Ram temple’<\/span><\/h2>\n

Hindu groups have insisted that there was a temple at the site before the mosque was built in the 16th century, an issue that has caused a permanent fissure in India’s social fabric and instilled fear among India’s Muslim minority.<\/p>\n

“More than 200,000 people will attend,” said Surendra Jain, general secretary of the far-right Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which will be holding a religious congregation at the disputed site in Ayodhya.<\/p>\n

“We assure everyone … that not even a twig will be disturbed.”<\/p>\n

In advance of a general election that must be held by May next year, leaders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a>‘s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP<\/a>) – who led the Ram temple movement – have become more vocal in their demand that a new Hindu temple be built.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday<\/a>, the BJP’s president said his party was “committed to building the Ram temple in Ayodhya,” and would not change its stand.<\/p>\n

Ruled by the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu hardliner,\u00a0Ayodhya is in the politically important northern Uttar Pradesh state, which is bigger than Brazil by population, and sends more legislators than any other state to India’s parliament.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adityanath<\/span>\u00a0has been repeatedly accused of inciting violence against the country’s Muslim minority, who make up around 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indian authorities will launch a major security operation at the ruins of a 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, where hundreds of thousands of far-right Hindus are expected to gather on Sunday. The demonstrators aim to put pressure on the government to build a new Hindu temple on the disputed site. Constructed in 1528 by order…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}