JAMEATULHIDAYA (JAIPUR): The Muslim Personal Law Board will launch a countrywide campaign from Friday, Dec.3, for the reconstruction of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya. All the 151 executive committee members of the Board regarded as the apex and most representative body of the Muslims in the country will also meet the Prime Minister, P.V.Narasimha Rao, on Dec.6 to remind him of his failure in first defending the mosque and then not fulfilling his commitment to the nation about getting the mosque rebuilt on the same site.

According to Abdul Rahim Qureshi, secretary of the Board, a public meeting will also be organized in Delhi on the evening of Dec.6 in which not only members of the minority community but all those who believed in secularism would be invited. In case no delegation of the Board is allowed to meet the Prime Minister and have its say the executive committee members and their sympathizers will also court arrest in Delhi, he said.

Prior to the Delhi public meeting which Qureshi chose to describe as an antifascist forum a campaign will be launched from Dec.3 lo generate awareness amongst the members of the minority community on the Babri mosque and the betrayal of the Government. This would be done through sending telegrams, postcards, letters and leaflets to opinion makers and leading representatives of the community in all parts of the country.

The other major demands pertaining to the Ayodhya imbroglio adopted by the Muslim Personal Law Board in a resolution at the end of their two day meeting here on Oct.10 were regarding the acquisition of land in Ayodhya by the Government. This should be immediately denotified and the reference made to the Supreme Court by the Central Government should also be withdrawn (as, according to Qureshi, the reference details made by the Government eve exceed those made by the Vishva Hindu Parishad in their claims about the mosque being the Ramjanmabhoomi temple). The Board has said that all ide cases regarding the disputed site in Ayodhya be handed over to the court’s decision should be accepted by the court.

The political message of this assertion as well as the timing of the announcement for a possible long drawn agitation against the Central Government on the issue of Babri mosque will have its own political implication. For, while the Muslim Personal Law Board to a political body and there were no political subjects (like voting pattern of the minority community in the forthcoming Assembly elections in four states and Delhi) for those reading between the lines the Congress bias and the sense of betrayal which minority community members feel vis a vis the Congress is clear.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has decided to establish Islamic courts in all states of the country and to set up mobile Islamic courts for rural areas.

According to Maulana S.Nizamuddin, general secretary of the Board, it is now expected that all Muslims will refer their disputes in family matters to those courts and abide by the decisions of such courts.

While members of the Personal Law Board like the general secretary of the All India Milli Council and a founder member of the Board Majahidul Islam Qasmi told this correspondent that the need for re~ establishing Islamic courts was being felt for a long time (and that such courts were functioning since 1921 in states like Bihar and Orissa and some other cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nasik, Belgaum and Lucknow) because of the long process that judicial process, there were others who took a different view of the Board’s decision at this juncture.

An executive member of the Board said that the timing of the announcement of setting up the chain of Islamic courts should be viewed in the context of the “threat which members of the minority community perceives regards the Government attempts to interfere in the Muslim personal law and sharijat. The Muslim Personal Law Board by taking the decision of setting up Islamic courts right up to the rural level has also chosen to give a reply to the Bharatiya Janata Party which leaves no opportunity to drum up the demand for a uniform civil code.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 15, 1993