Another Republic Day Goes By, But There's No Sign of the New Ayodhya Mosque

That the new mosque would be built around 20 km away from the site of the Babri Masjid meant the project had lost sentimental value from its very conception.

The plot in Dhannipur village on January 21, 2024. Photo: Special arrangement.

Omar Rashid, The Wire, 26 January 2024, New Delhi: It was a typically dull and foggy morning in Dhannipur on January 26, 2021, but there was no shortage of colour on the flat grounds of the nondescript village.

In the presence of a police force, the tricolour was unfurled, the national anthem was sung and saplings of tamarind, mango, guava, neem and other trees were planted as symbolism ranked high.

A sense of anticipation captivated the residents of this village, located around 20 km west of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, as they gathered around a makeshift pandal in an open patch of land to witness the start of a project that carried within it a deep historical and present hurt.

This was the day the formal construction of a mosque – as judicial compensation for the loss of the Babri Masjid – was launched at the five-acre plot in Dhannipur village.

The land was allotted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-run Uttar Pradesh government following a Supreme Court judgment in November 2019 in the Ayodhya title suit case.

It was a simple event, unlike the grand bhoomi pujan ceremony of the Ram Temple conducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5, 2020 with full state engagement.

Locals hoped the Dhannipur project would bring them some development and change the shape of the village, if not of the adjoining areas.

Three years later, as we mark another Republic Day, while a Ram Temple, albeit incomplete, has already been opened to devotees in Ayodhya, there is no sign of the mosque in Dhannipur.

A local shrine at the plot as seen on January 21, 2024. Photo: Special arrangement.

In fact, construction has not even started on the project, primarily because funds have been hard to come, a sign that the alternative mosque in place of the Babri Masjid, demolished in 1992 by Hindu zealots, has failed to interest the Muslim community.

That the new mosque would be built around 20 km away from the site of the Babri Masjid meant the project had lost sentimental value from its very conception.

Athar Husain, the secretary of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF), which oversees the construction of the mosque and linked projects, told The Wire that they had received only Rs 50 lakh as funds till date, but the development charge of the mosque alone would run into “a few crores”.

“We got the earlier drawing of the project approved by the Ayodhya Development Authority board, but we will have to deposit development charges that run into a few crores,” said Husain.

The five acres allotted to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for building a mosque following the apex court verdict was provided to them in Dhannipur by the state government in February 2020.

The IICF envisaged the project as having three parts.

First, the mosque would be based on a modern design and would have a solar panel roof. Second, a multi-speciality 200-bed hospital and community kitchen would also come up at the site. The third part would comprise of an Indo Islamic Cultural Research Centre, consisting of a library, underground museum and publication house.

Scenes at the 2021 event launching the construction of the mosque. Photo: Omar Rashid.

On the day of its launch in 2021, the managers of the project had estimated that it would cost around Rs 100-110 crore, which would be collected from donors on a charity model.

The IICF in June 2021 announced that the mosque would be named after freedom fighter Ahmadullah Shah Faizabadi, who had fought against the British in the Revolt of 1857.

However, the mosque remains a blueprint and its contours exist only in the imagination of those entrusted with its construction. Not a brick has been laid at the site in three years.

Since the project has failed to take off, owing to lack of funding and complications in getting procedural clearances, Zufar Faruqi, chief trustee of the IICF, recently formed a mosque development committee to accelerate the process.

Haji Arfat Shaikh, a BJP leader from Mumbai, was appointed head of the IICF’s development committee.

Shaikh recently announced that the mosque would be named “Masjid Muhammed bin Abdullah”, after Prophet Muhammad, and that a new design would take shape.

The futuristic design for the mosque that was initially planned was scrapped in favour of a more traditional and grand design.

Husain said people “were not connecting with” the original design. “Many said it doesn’t look like a masjid. It doesn’t have minarets and so on.”

The project also faced other obstacles early on after two Delhi-based sisters moved the Allahabad high court claiming ownership of the five-acre plot in Sohawal tehsil.

They claimed that their father, Gyan Chandra Punjabi, had come to India from the Punjab in 1947 during the Partition and settled in Faizabad (now Ayodhya) district, where he was allegedly allotted a 28-acre plot in Dhannipur village by the nazul department for five years, which he continued to possess beyond that period.

Later, his name was struck down from the revenue records, against which their father filed an appeal before Ayodhya’s additional commissioner, which was allowed, they claimed.

But the court dismissed their petition and the IICF trust finally got possession of the land in September 2020.

The IICF has now announced a fresh plan to collect funds and make the mosque more attractive for the Muslim community.

A local trustee of the IIC, however, remained sceptical of how the funds would be gathered in the absence of a properly run and managed fundraising campaign.

“They don’t have the RSS network for funding,” the trustee said.

Zufar Faruqi, chief trustee of the IICF, told The Wire that the fundraising campaign was “on the right track” and that “we will get sufficient funds to start the construction by the end of May 2024.”

Responding to The Wire‘s questions on what challenges the trust was facing in starting the construction of the mosque project, Faruqi said, “We have commitments from a large number of people and the only reason we have not taken substantial amount from those people is that we are in the process of developing a system to keep all transactions transparent.

“We hope to receive a substantial amount within two weeks.”

Faruqi also said that the reason why the construction could not be started even after three years was a “lack of funds”, but added that the “scenario is now changed [sic].”

Providing further details, he said the map of the mosque with a fresh design was under preparation and he hopes to submit it to the Ayodhya Development Authority by the end of February.

“We hope that it should be approved in two months time, that is by the end of April, and we hope to start construction work by May,” he said.