Hyderabad, September 28: In a significant remark, a top leader of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has said that if the court verdict in Babri Masjid title case paves the way for the construction of a mosque and a temple side be side in Ayodhya, Muslims will not have any objection to it.
Moulana Abdul Rahim Quraishi, secretary and spokesperson of Muslim Personal Law Board, said in Hyderabad yesterday that there was nothing wrong in it because many places in India including Hyderabad has mosques and temples standing side by side.
In an interview, he said that on the basis of the evidence on the record, the Allahabad High Court can give a verdict that title on the built-up area of the Babri Masjid, including the area of three domes and the inner courtyard belong to Muslims, and the title over the outer courtyard where Ram Chabutra existed belong to Hindus. He said that the Hindu community had used Ram Chabutra for 150 years for worship and if it is given to them, Muslims will not have any objection.
When asked whether it means that a mosque and a temple could exist side by side, Quraishi said: “They can be built, they should be built. There is nothing wrong in that.” But he felt that the masjid and the mandir (temple) should have separate ways and the government should utilise the large extent of land, which it has acquired, for the purpose.
“The acquired land should be divided into different portions and it should be used to provide separate ways to the masjid and the mandir.”
Pointing out that in 1885 a Hindu monk had claimed that Ram Chabutra adjacent to Babri Masjid was the birthplace of Ram and some had taken the same position in the court, Quraishi said that Muslims had not opposed the claim.
“Their [Hindus] claim was never on Babri Masjid but on Ram Chabutra,” he said.
“If now they are claiming that Babri Masjid was Ram Janamsthan [birthplace], then [they] should prove it, not on the basis of the sources of Britishers or a footnote in English translation of Babarnama because it was all conspiracy of the Britishers,” he said.
-Agencies