The necrotic economy of Hindu nationalism rests on making history the most important place. Muslim shrines should be damaged.
The Shahi Mosque is also not the first ancient mosque to fall victim to the road widening project. Last November, a 300-year-old mosque was demolished in the middle of a highway in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district.
One of India’s largest and oldest mosques, the 800-year-old National Heritage Jama Masjid in Budhaon, Uttar Pradesh, was discussed last year on behalf of local Hindus. The farmers – backed by the right-wing Hindu nationalist group Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) – claim the mosque is an “illegal structure” built over a destroyed 10th-century Shiva temple. Their petition states that Hindus have legal ownership of the land and should be able to pray there.
The claim of illegality is based on a far-right narrative that most mosques in India were actually temples and were forcibly converted into mosques by Muslim rulers. Most historians today reject these claims because there is little physical evidence to support them, but they enjoy tremendous public support.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule under Narendra Modi has been characterized by an increasingly disruptive urgency. The party’s efforts to culturally homogenize India began by renaming places in distinctly Hindu terms, destroying Islamic monuments, and conducting archeological excavations to find Muslims. New strategies were followed, such as finding Hindu roots in religious institutions.
In the past few years there has been a lot of controversy about the Mughal monuments. Even the Taj Mahal, a monument of world importance, was not spared. Far right Hindu groups claim without any evidence that this temple was a Hindu temple.
The fortunes of Indian Muslims have reached a turning point. Right-wing Hindu groups have sent numerous petitions against mosques across the country.
In the past few years we have also seen the rise of informal organizations of religious volunteers using religion.