TECHNICAL DETAILS:
This product depicts the mosque building as it would have looked in the early 1990s. The exterior shows signs of wear and neglect after standing abandoned for over 40 years, the interior is bare. As the real building no longer exists, I have used photographs, archival video footage and survbuvung floorplans to reconstruct it for Second Life. As most avatars in SL are oversized in comparison to real people, the building is 120% the size of the actual one. This way it scales properly in comparison with SL avatars - it is a compromise I do with all my SL buildings. The arches and interior are fully "walkable" and t6he collision should not pose any problems, though the exterior contains several mesh decor parts.
This structure has a footprint of 32x13 meters, the land impact is 23.
HISTORY:
The historic Babur's Mosque (known locally as Babri Mashid, बाबरी मस्जिद, بابری مسجد) was comissioned by the Mughal Emperor Babur and constructed by Mir Baqi in the early 16th century. It was located in what was then the Awadh district of the empire in the city that is today known as Ayodhya.
The structure was constructed out of local stone, chalk and mudbrick. It was notable for being one of the few mosques in India that was constructed without a minaret.
In the 1850s, during the period of British rule, conflicts arose between the local muslim community centered around the Babri Mosque and the local hindu community centered around the Hanumangarhi temple. Each side claimed that the other community built its religious structire on land that rightfully belonged to them. The muslim side claimed that the Hanumangarhi temple was built on the site of an earlier mosque, while the hindu side claimed that the Babri Masjid was built above a previous hindu temple located at the birthplace of the god Rama.
After a series of violent clashes and subsequent litigation, the authorities ordered each of the religious structures to be left in peace. As a compromise, the hindu side was allowed to construct and maintain a platform in the mosque's courtyard where prayers to Rama would be held.
While sporadic outbreaks of communal violence occured through the British period, the compromise over the Mosque grounds had survived intact till India achieved independence.
In December of 1949 the conflict erupted yet again, when a crowd of hindu extremists broke into the mosque in the middle of the night and placed idols of Rama inside the mosque. The mosque was subsequently closed to the public by the authorities and would remain so despite a series of lawsuits launched by the local muslims over the next 3 decades aiming to regain control of the mosque.
In the 1980s various right-wing hindu nationalist organisations and political parties have launched a mass political campaign advocating the destruction of the mosque and replacing it with a temple dedicated to Rama.
This culminated in December 1992, when several thousand hindu extremists descended on the mosque and razed it to the ground.
The destruction of the mosque triggered widespread inter-religious violence and rioting all over the country - an estimated 2 000 people had lost their lives during the violence.
A series of lawsuits followed the destruction of the mosque, in the end reaching India's Supreme Courrt. While the court declared the destruction of the mosque to be a violation of national law, none of the perpetrators was punished and the land of the former mosque was turned over to the hindu community for the purpose of constructing a temple to Rama.
FINAL NOTE:
I did not build a replica of the Babri Masjid to celebrate islamic communalism or to condemn Hinduism.
Rather, I built it so that it could act as a monument to the victims of religious violence. I also wanted to condemn the extremist view that the killing of innocents and the destruction of historical monuments is justified when done in pursuit of one's religious beliefs.
There is no good reason why the muslims, hindus, christians, jains, sikhs and all other religious communities in India should not live in peace and harmony.
