The sixth of December 1992 was one of the darkest days in the history of modern India. On this fateful day, Babri Masjid, a sixteenth-century mosque reportedly built by the Mughal general Mir Baqi, was demolished by thousands of volunteers—known as kar sevaks. The kar sevaks are right- wing Hindu fundamentalists, and they believe that an ancient temple was razed to the ground to build the mosque. Demolition of the centuries-old structure breached the fragile amity between the Hindu and Muslim communities of India like few other events ever have. The circumstances leading up to this tragic event are worth a mention.
In Hindu tradition, the city of Ayodhya in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Rama, the seventh incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. Some Hindus believe that Rama was born at the same site where Mir Baqi built the mosque after demolishing a temple of Rama, though historical evidence to support this contention is scarce. For over four centuries, both Hindus and Muslims used the site for religious purposes. Then in 1822, an official of the local court at Faizabad made the claim that the mosque stood on the site of a temple. Ever since then a dispute over the title of the land has festered between claimants of Hindu and Muslim communities and has led to discord between them from time to time.
In the 1980s the dispute came to a head when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a right-wing fundamentalist organization, began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site of the mosque. On 6 December 1992 VHP organized a rally of roughly 1,50,000 kar sevaks that turned violent. The kar sevaks overwhelmed security forces and tore down the mosque. The demolition resulted in several months of communal riots between Hindus and Muslims, causing the death of at least 2000 people. Shock waves spread not only to different parts of the country but also to distant corners of the world, enraging the Muslim community and tarnishing the image of India as a secular and tolerant nation.

To be Continued ........