A controversy has erupted over BJP leader and ex-MP Vinay Katiyar’s remarks that no mosque would be allowed to be built in Ayodhya and that Muslims should leave Ayodhya and migrate to other districts “across the Saryu river” in Uttar Pradesh.
Katiyar made these comments in Ayodhya Wednesday when reporters asked him about the rejection of the Dhannipur mosque plan by the Ayodhya Development Authority apparently over pending clearances from some departments.
“Ayodhya Nagari ke andar Dhannipur iska koi matlab nahin. Is jile ke andar kyon rahen… woh log jayen nadi ke us paar chale jaeyen, Gonda, Basti chale jayen. Yahan kya kam hai unka? Yahan Ram ka mandir hai, wahi kaam karega (There is no meaning of Dhannipur in Ayodhya. Muslims in this district should leave and go across the Saryu river to districts like Gonda and Basti. What work do they have here? There is Ram Temple here, which is the only thing relevant here).”
Katiyar also said that he would not allow any mosque to be built in “Ram Nagari” Ayodhya.
Reacting to Katiyar’s remarks, Iqbal Ansari, who had been one of the main litigants in the Ayodhya dispute case, said his advice to the Dhannipur mosque trust was “to use the land provided by the government to grow crops and distribute the grains equally between Hindus and Muslims”, and to not get into arguments and counter-arguments.
Ansari told The Indian Express: “India is a country of people of different faiths, including Hindus and Muslims. Gods of different religions and sects are worshipped in Ayodhya for ages and everyone respects them all, barring a few people. All I know is that someone who truly follows any religion would never harm another religion.”
Advising the Muslim community to not react to Katiyar’s remarks, he said: “It is all about politics and we should stay away from it. It would not yield any results nor benefit anyone.”
Ayodhya (Faizabad) MP and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Awadhesh Prasad slammed Katiyar, saying the country belongs to people of all faiths. “Vinay Katiyar is a senior BJP leader but he is being sidelined and ignored in the Modi government. He has thus made these remarks out of disappointment and frustration,” Prasad said.
Within BJP circles too, Katiyar’s attempts are being seen as a bid to “return to the limelight”. BJP sources said Katiyar, a three-time Faizabad MP, has been “marginalised” in the party for several years. “By resorting to such remarks, Katiyar is trying to make a comeback in UP BJP politics,” sources said.
In its November 9, 2019, judgment in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case in the wake of Babri Masjid’s demolition, a five-judge Supreme Court Constitution Bench unanimously ruled that the 2.77 acres of disputed land in Ayodhya will be handed over to the Ram Temple trust and a 5-acre plot will be allotted to the Sunni Waqf Board in a “suitable, prominent place in Ayodhya”.
In light of the apex court’s verdict, in 2020, the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government allotted 5 acre of land to the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board in Dhannipur on the outskirts of Ayodhya town, following which the latter formed Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust to build the mosque there.
Former Bajrang Dal president Katiyar had been a prominent leader of the Ram Mandir movement. Recently, in response to an RTI question by a local journalist, the Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA) stated that the application submitted by the Dhannipur mosque trust was rejected due to lack of clearances from various departments.
ADA officials said they have an online application filing system for approval of maps and that if all the documents are not submitted in time, the application is automatically rejected. They said such applications could again be submitted with required documents.
The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust’s chief trustee Zufar Ahmad Faruqi, who is also the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board chairman, told The Indian Express they are in the process of working out a new layout of the proposed mosque in Dhannipur, which would be readied for making a fresh application in the next few months. He declined to respond to Katiyar’s remarks.