The Hindu Mahasabha on Friday argued before the Ayodhya Bench of the Supreme Court that the first Mughal emperor, Babur, was an invader and the law could not be used to “institutionalise” the rights of an invader.
Hari Shankar Jain, advocate of the Mahasabha, said the “black days of slavery are behind us, and we are living in a civilised society”.
He said the Babri Masjid was constructed after the destruction of a Hindu religious structure. This did not essentially make it a mosque.
The 16th day of arguments in the Ayodhya appeals before a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi saw the submissions of the Hindu side come to an end.
The Shia Waqf Board began its submissions by questioning the claim of the Sunni section over the disputed land.
‘Mere interloper’
In August 2017, the Shia Central Waqf Board had moved the Supreme Court claiming that the Babri Masjid was a Shia Waqf (endowment) and its Sunni counterpart, which has been at the front lines of the 70-year-old Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, was a mere interloper led by “hardliners, fanatics and non-believers” who do not want an amicable settlement with the Hindu sects involved.
‘For coexistence’
Tracing the lineage of the masjid, which was razed down by karsevaks on December 6, 1992, to Mir Baqi, believed to be a Shia noble in Babur’s court, the Shia Board had said that, unlike the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board chiefs, they wanted a peaceful coexistence with the Hindu community
The Shia Board said in the true spirit of Islamic tenets of living in peace and harmony and to bring a “quietus” to the decades-old tug-of-war between the two religious communities, they would settle for a masjid located in a “Muslim-dominated area at a reasonable distance from the most revered place of birth of Maryada Purushottam Sri Ram.”
Published - August 30, 2019 10:02 pm IST
