It’s a holy site for two religious whose adherents have been fighting for decades, sometimes with deadly results.
No, this isn’t somewhere in Israel or the Palestinian territories: it’s in Uttar Pradesh state in India, at a site just as hotly-contested as others elsewhere that get much more Western media attention.
The site is the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, a city in north-central India. The mosque dates to the 16th century, but local Hindus say there was a temple there first– and that the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the most important dieties in the Hindu religion.
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In 1992, violent clashes after a political rally left thousands dead and the mosque destroyed. Hindu and Muslim groups have been locked in a court battle ever since, and there have been other deadly clashes, as well, though not on the same scale.
Last month, as the country geared up for the international Commonwealth Games, the Allahabad court ruled that the site would be divided into three sections, two Hindu and one Muslim. Commentators called the ruling a milestone, and an uneasy peace seemed to hold, with no outbreaks of violence reported.
But what was more remarkable were the actions that the Indian government took to prevent any violence from breaking out.
The government took the extraordinary step of banning some text messaging (bulk messaging and multimedia messaging) and arresting thousands of people– pre-emptively. No threats of violence had been reported, no bombs were uncovered, no suspicious texts were found. Most remarkably, very few news reports even mentioned these actions had taken place. Information about the government’s actions was scarce in online media.
The attitude seemed to be: better that some freedoms are restricted than some lives lost– this was a perfectly natural step! We’ve seen this before, of course– notably in the U.S., for example, during World War II and much more recently during the war on terror when dozens of prisoners were kept in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some of them are still there. Presumably, the prisoners in India were shortly released– although news on this, too, was no where to be found.
So what happened to India being a democracy, with human rights to uphold and respect? As the largest democracy in the world (by population), and a leader in Asia, it should be embarrassed at the actions of its security forces. No matter what its size, actually, it should be embarrassed: democracies shouldn’t be in the business of arresting people without cause, or out of fear of what might happen. And the media shouldn’t be giving India a free pass, either. Where’s the outrage?
