Ayodhya verdict will not cause any tension in Bangladesh, foreign minister says

The Indian Supreme Court verdict in favour of building a temple on a disputed land in Ayodhya will not cause any tension in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 9 Nov 2019, 07:44 PM
Updated : 9 Nov 2019, 07:50 PM

He wishes peace will prevail in India as well.

“We won’t be in any tension for this (Ayodhya land dispute verdict),” he said after the delivery of the verdict on Saturday.

“Similarly, we expect that peace will prevail also in India”.

He was speaking to reporters after inaugurating the South Asian Karate Championship organised by Bangladesh Karate Federation in Dhaka.

India's Supreme Court ruled earlier in the day in favour of a Hindu group in a long-running battle over the centuries-old religious site also claimed by Muslims, in a verdict that could raise tension between the two communities.

The ruling paves the way for the construction of a Hindu temple on the site in the northern town of Ayodhya, a proposal long supported by Prime Minister Narenrda Modi's ruling Hindu-nationalist party.

The five-judge bench, headed by the Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, delivered a unanimous judgement, opting to hand over the plot of just 2.77 acres (1.1 hectares) of land – about the size of a football field - to one of the Hindu groups that had staked claim to it.

The judge said a temple should be built on the disputed by forming a trust under the control of the central government.

The verdict will be seen as a political victory for Modi, who won a second term in a landslide general election win this year.

For more than seven decades, right-wing Hindu campaigners have been pushing to build a temple on the site, which they believe was the birthplace of Lord Ram, a physical incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.

They say the site was holy for Hindus long before the Muslim Mughals, India's most prominent Islamic rulers, built what was known as the Babri mosque there in 1528. The mosque was razed by a Hindu mob in 1992.

The destruction of the mosque triggered religious riots in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed across the country and led to a series of court battles with various groups staking claim to the site.

The Supreme Court directed that an alternate land parcel be provided to a Muslim group that had staked claim to the disputed site.

The site has been heavily protected since the 1992 religious clashes.

Foreign Minister Momen said that he would request Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan to be alert so that no one can create any tension in Bangladesh capitalising the Ayodhya verdict.

He said the heritage of interfaith harmony in Bangladesh would help keep peace in the country where “all of us — Muslims, Christians, Hindus and (Buddhists) are living in harmony”.

“We will study the verdict but we will not be in tension,” Momen said, declining to comment further as he was yet to go through the verdict.