Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple in a highly anticipated ceremony at a holy site that was bitterly contested by Muslims, officials said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple in a highly anticipated ceremony at a holy site that was bitterly contested by Muslims, officials said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The temple construction had been a campaign pledge of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even before the mosque’s demolition in 1992.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court ruled in November last year that a temple could be built in Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots demolished a 460-year-old Babri Masjid in 1992.<\/p>\n
The ceremony will take place on August 5, which is also the first anniversary of India’s controversial revocation of Muslim-majority Occupied Kashmir’s semi-autonomy.<\/p>\n
Modi is expected to lay a silver brick weighing 40 kilos (88 pounds), according to local media.<\/p>\n
Holy water from the Ganges River and sacred soil taken from four main Hindu shrines will be used in the rituals.<\/p>\n
The Indian leader’s visit was confirmed by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) which led the campaign to build the temple.<\/p>\n
Giant screens near the site will beam the ceremony live for devout Hindus so “they don’t miss the golden moment”, he added.<\/p>\n
Residents of Ayodhya have been asked to light earthen lamps to celebrate the “historic” occasion.<\/p>\n
The destruction of the mosque triggered religious riots in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across the country.<\/p>\n
It also led to a series of court battles with various groups staking claim to the three-acre site, before the Supreme Court’s decision last year.<\/p>\n
The court said a trust must be set up to oversee the construction of a temple and that a separate piece of land in Ayodhya would be given to a Muslim group to build a “prominent” new mosque.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple in a highly anticipated ceremony at a holy site that was bitterly contested by Muslims, officials said on Sunday. \u00a0 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple in a highly anticipated ceremony …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_108372464460192_245495985553329":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1866,1251],"class_list":["post-9474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islam","tag-babri-masjid","tag-hindus"],"yoast_head":"\n