The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Tuesday denounced the construction and inauguration of the ‘Ram Mandir’ built on the site of the five-century-old Babri Masjid in India’s Ayodhya.
At a grand event attended by some seven thousand guests a day earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple built on the site where the Babri Masjid stood for centuries before it was demolished by a Hindutva mob in 1992.
The demolition had triggered the worst religious riots in India since independence — killing 2,000 people, most of them Muslims — and shook the foundations of the country’s officially secular political order.
But for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the opening of the Ram Mandir was a landmark moment in a decades-long campaign to align the country’s governance with its majority faith.
Pakistan condemned the grand celebrations and described the temple’s inauguration as a “symbol of growing majoritarianism and an affront to the Muslim community in India”.
The developments of the last 31 years in India, leading to the consecration ceremony, are “indicative of growing majoritarianism in India”, the Foreign Office (FO) had said in a statement.
Calling the new temple “a blot on the face of India’s democracy”, the FO had also expressed concerns over the future of other mosques in the country, including the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Eidgah Mosque in Mathura that are also facing threats of desecration and destruction.
The inauguration was also met with criticism in India, levelled by opposition parties over turning the event into a grand spectacle and the “state-sponsored assault” on the pan-India peace march headed by Congress’ Rahul Gandhi in the BJP-ruled Assam state.
In a press release issued today, the OIC — a 57-member bloc of Muslim countries — expressed “grave worry” over the construction and inauguration of the temple at the site of the razed Babri Masjid.
