New Mosque At Ayodhya Speaks Less Of The Rights Of Muslims Under The Constitution And More Of Their Duties Towards The Nation
By
Fahad Zuberi
December 6,
2022
Dhannipur village in Ayodhya.
(Source: Indo Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust)
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I was five
months old when the domes fell. Following instances of violence in our neighbourhood,
my parents — with me in their arms — left our home and traversed a curfewed
town to a safer place. I am 30 years old now and after three decades of being
termed as “Vivaadit Dhancha” (disputed structure), the design for what
can now be called a mosque were revealed in December 2020. The brick-and-mortar
domes that fell 30 years ago have been compensated with a glass one. Since it
has not been named yet, let us call it the New Mosque.
Designed by
the Delhi-based architect S M Akhtar, the New Mosque, in its architectural
programme — the spatial constituents of the design — provides prayer spaces for
nearly 2,000 people, a 300-bed super specialty hospital, an archival centre or
museum, a community kitchen, and a library. The mosque is a modern building
with a pallet of glass, white cladding, and technologically complex façade
systems. Hailed for its “futuristic design” and climate change sensitivity, the
architecture of the mosque shows more than what meets the eye.
First, the
mosque goes beyond its liturgical and congregational objectives in providing a
hospital and other civic amenities across six times the area of its prayer
space. Why?
Mosques
have always been centres of mixed urban activity. The raised platforms in
medieval mosques provided space for economic activity after prayers and
generated revenue for the mosque’s maintenance. Markets around medieval mosques
are still a feature in most cities. The main structure of the mosque, however,
remained a space for worship, religious learning, and acted as a centre of
interaction (and therefore, politics) within the Muslim community.
Things
changed after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on September
11, 2001. As stories of Islamic terrorism dominated the media and attacks on
Muslims followed, the community felt the need to reach out to the society and
present itself as upholding values of civic life. Mosques started getting
converted into Islamic centres that included “community outreach” in their
objectives.
The New
Mosque in Ayodhya is a significant addition to this change. According to the
architect, the civic spaces have been included in the mosque “to serve the
society”. The architectural programme of the mosque seems to reiterate what was
offered as a “solution” at many instances in the history of the conflict — “why
don’t we build a hospital or a school?” This proposal ignored the religious
rights of a community that was defending attacks on one of its religious
buildings. Thirty years later, those attacks have not stopped but increased.
The
programme is also devoid of any memorial to the trauma that is indispensable to
the history of Ayodhya. While there is a museum planned, it has been clarified
by the architect and the curator that the complex will not have any reference
to the Babri Masjid or its past.
The civic
spaces that dominate the New Mosque speak of a community that feels under
pressure to present itself as socially conscious and patriotic, rather than one
that can comfortably create religious spaces for itself and is secure in
conducting its religious practices without being validated by civic virtues. It
deliberately suppresses its religiosity and tries too hard to render itself to
civic and nationalistic responsibilities. The mosque speaks less of the rights
of a community under the Constitution and more of their duties towards the
nation.
Second, the
mosque’s form and material pallet shy away from explicitly expressing its
identity. There are no traditional minarets or any other explicit reference to
Islamic architecture. The mosque, according to Akhtar, imbibes modernity and
breaks away from the past. Why?
In
conflicted societies, modernity promises a solution to the anxieties of
identity. In 1947, as India was dismembered in order to be liberated, the
founding members of the republic inherited a ruptured society. For them also,
modernity was the only viable way forward.
Architecture
followed this approach as well. Jawaharlal Nehru invited the likes of Le
Corbusier to design Chandigarh and Otto Konigsberger to design modernist
buildings for the new nation. Modernism was seen as aspirational and gained
prominence in the works of A P Kanvinde, Habib Rahman and Joseph Allen Stein.
Modernism became central to nation building and allowed for overt references to
identity to be ignored.
In the
formal aesthetics of the New Mosque, we see a similar effort towards
overlooking identity in the caution of stoking a conflict. In a socio-political
environment, where a particular religious identity is expressed vigorously, the
New Mosque at Ayodhya suppresses its own. It hesitates to be Islamic and
traditional and seeks recognition by being modern and futuristic.
The mosque
articulates a sad reality of contemporary India — farther a Muslim is from his
visible religiosity, the more acceptable he is in “Indian” life. The acceptable
Muslim is the one who is not too Muslim. The constructed binary of Muslim-ness
and Indian-ness is the rhetorical foundation of violent othering of the
community. The aesthetics of the New Mosque, albeit with good intentions, play
into this binary.
The truth
of history, however, is that it cannot be overlooked, hidden, reversed, or
deleted. Layers of the past can only be added to. The New Mosque in Ayodhya,
however much it tries to seek a break from the past and overlook the traumatic
history of its own conception, carries the legacy of domicide — the politically
motivated destruction of architecture.
Architecture
survives to tell the story of a civilisation. Just like Jodha Bai’s temple in
Agra’s Red Fort speaks of Akbar’s pluralistic ethos, the ruins of the Babri
Masjid have told the story of India where genocide followed domicide and at
least half a century of political propulsion was generated.
The New
Mosque, despite its efforts to do otherwise, will tell the story of a community
that — in the face of social conditions that threatened its survival — tried to
shun its own rightful religiosity, trauma, past, and identity in the hope for
harmonious existence; and failed at it.
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Fahad Zuberi is an independent scholar
and researcher of Architecture and City Studies
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/dhamipur-mosque-ayodhya-rights-muslims-nation-/d/128573
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