India lifts ban on mass prayers at historic mosque
India's Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a local order banning Muslims from praying in large numbers at a historic mosque in northern India after a survey team said they had found traces of the Hindu god Shiva and other Hindu symbols there.
The Supreme Court ruled in a temporary order that the right of Muslims to pray should not be undermined, and at the same time the area where Hindu religious relics were said to be found should be protected.
The row over the mosque's worship rights follows a decades-old campaign by Hindu activists to show that major buildings built by Muslims in India are located on top of ancient holy sites.
An earlier dispute 30 years ago led to bloody riots.
The Supreme Court's order comes a day after a district court in Varanasi - Hinduism's holiest city and the site of the historic Gianvapi Mosque - ruled that Muslim gatherings there should be limited to 20 people.
The local court had ordered a survey at the mosque after five women sought permission to perform partly Hindu rituals.
The women said that a Hindu temple once stood there.
The Gyanvapi Mosque, located in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's circle, is one of several mosques in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh that Hindu hardliners believe were built over destroyed Hindu temples.
Hardline Hindu groups linked to Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have intensified their demands that some mosques be excavated and that searches be allowed at the Taj Mahal.
Supreme Court justices continue to hear petitions from both Hindus and Muslims this week, and India's Muslim leaders, who number about 200 million, view the moves as attempts to undermine their rights to freedom of worship and religious expression with the tacit approval of the BJP.
The BJP denies bias against minorities, including Muslims, and says it wants progressive change that will benefit all Indians.
And in 2019, the Supreme Court allowed Hindus to build a temple on the site of the disputed 16th-century Babri Mosque, which was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992 believing it was on the site of the Hindu god Ram's birth.
The incident caused religious riots that killed nearly two thousand people, mostly Muslims, across India.
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