New Delhi: December 6, 1992. On this day 31 years ago, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished. But the Babri Masjid controversy, whatever it may be called, did not start in the 1990s. The dispute began long before that. Four years before the Sepoy Mutiny, the first dispute over the Babri Masjid is mentioned in the pages of history.
Babri Masjid was built in 1527 AD on the orders of the first Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The mosque is named after him. Although Hindus claimed that this was Ram Janmabhoomi and there was a temple of Lord Ram here.
Four years before the Sepoy Mutiny in 1853, the first religious dispute started with this mosque.
Six years later, the British government surrounded the disputed structure as religious disputes went out of control. The Muslim community was allowed to enter the inner part and the Hindu community in the outer part. Everything was that way for almost ninety years.
In 1949, three years after independence, a miraculous statue of Ram was found inside the architecture. Muslims accuse Hindus of doing this. The then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru expressed grief over the incident. Both communities went through legal proceedings over the issue. The central government closed the monument forever, labelling it as a controversial one.
