A tale of two sacred spaces in Ayodhya

The unveiling of the design of the mosque which is to be built at Dhannipur, Ayodhya, has ignited a debate. This debate is not only about Muslims, but also about others and India as a civilised space. Also, about the idea of the relationship between the sacred and the worldly.

The ‘new’ mosque is located safely away from the site where Babri Masjid stood for more than 500 years till it was destroyed under the watch of the Indian state and judiciary. Twenty-eight years after that ‘crime’, its land was taken away from Muslims to be given to the aspiring masters of the ‘New India’. The Supreme Court very sagaciously thought that Muslims should not feel deprived and granted them five acres of land in lieu of what was taken away from them.

Cheated in 1949, violated in 1992 and humiliated in 2019, Muslims have been asking whether the generosity of the court should be accepted or not. There is a view that the land of a mosque cannot be bartered. The Muslims lost in the Supreme Court, justly or unjustly, and the matter ends there. There cannot be a mosque in lieu of the Babri mosque. But another view, articulated by the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board is that this is a new mosque legally allotted and acquired by the trust after paying a stamp duty of Rs 9,29,400. There is another view that the land should be taken for a mosque that should come up there with a plaque telling future visitors about the cause of its creation. That would be the story of deception and destruction. This debate shows that Muslims think in diverse ways and speak in different voices.

That apart, the design of the planned mosque has been hailed as ‘futuristic’. It has three elements. The rectangular layout of the complex at Dhannipur village includes a multispecialty hospital, community kitchen and a museum housed in a multi-storied vertical structure. These will be metres away from the mosque and a century-old Sufi shrine will be in between. The designers have claimed, “This round-shaped mosque imbibes modernity, breaking away from the past, and will mirror the future in the truest spirit of Islam. We are also laying emphasis on hospital, library and other facilities to serve society.”

That it does not have a dome, which is stereotypically attached with mosques, has also been noted. It is, however, ironical that the design of the Ram temple to be constructed on the Babri mosque land has five domes. It boasts of being the first temple in the world with five domes. So, you have a mosque without a dome and a temple with multiple domes!

Another curiosity is that is a mosque without a dome safe, by being less ‘offensive’ to the non-Muslims? I recall Atali where poor Muslims were attacked even when they were attempting to build a mosque which was not to have any dome! Only a covered space! But that was not allowed.

The design attempts to address the anxiety to shed the baggage of the past and also prove to society at large that sacredness is entwined with service to the humanity, even beyond the Ummah, for the kitchen and hospital would be available to all irrespective of their religion. But mosques in the past and even in the present have served this purpose. It was not very unusual to the Muslims to attach education or scholarship and service with their sacred spaces.

The mosque or masjid is a shared space where people get together to mingle with the unseen, unfathomable, the Supreme. The aspiration to transcend is also because of the awareness of the limits or boundaries of the individual self. Being religious entails a ceaseless striving to free oneself of narrowness and smallness. You cannot do this without sharing what you think is yours with others. If you do not attend to the needy, your rituals go waste. The Quran keeps alerting its followers of their limitation: “Man is by nature timid; when evil befalls him, he panics, but when good things come to him, he prevents them from reaching others.” So, a constant reminder to the Muslims that the main objective is to reach out to others.

Feeding the hungry and tending the sick are therefore the first religious acts. The new design is essentially following the edict of Islam by attaching a hospital and a community kitchen to the mosque. The design is cosmic, wishing to impart a feeling of the whole earth by planting flora and fauna brought from all parts of the world, including the Amazon forests. Zero carbon emission and powered by solar energy are the other features which make this design modernistic.

The design looks magnificent. There are those who ask if the authorities would disapprove of the kitchen and hospital as these might seem like ‘inducements’ to people to come closer to Islam. There are others who think that at last Muslims have been coaxed to accept modernity. One knows that there is a temptation for the majority community in India to modernise Muslims and drag them out of their ‘backwardness’.

Ignoring these cynics, one might say that the design of the new mosque is an invitation to all Indians to feel affinity to the idea of the sacred in Islam, which they think is foreign or alien to them or at the very least very different. It would not be surprising if people compare the two ‘sacred’ places: one, a temple in the name of Ram which would come up at the land of the Babri mosque which disappeared in a serial act of wanton destruction. The other, a mosque which would always be a reminder of this injustice. One which points towards the infinity and unbeknown future and one which invents a mythical past, one which has been achieved by undoing the past and present of another community. One structure which thinks about human frailties and by addressing them seeks to touch the divine and is based on the idea of openness and sharing, the other which is exclusionary.

It can be said that despite its magnificence, the design of the Ayodhya mosque is not boastful. But it should not lead us to patronisingly applaud the designers for having moved on, for de-stereotyping the Islamic practices. It must be a reminder of the inability of the majority community to be at ease with the notion of sacred among other communities, of an impoverished imagination which cannot connect with any other, of a politics which has dug a chasm between two neighbours, and therefore the need to again reach out, extend hands and transcend. Because it is doing all this that defines humanness.