India PM inaugurates controversial temple while eyeing upcoming elections

Published

10 months ago

January 22, 2024

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A 19th-century dispute, which has gone through decades of court procedures, has finally culminated in the Ram Temple.

Consecrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this temple site is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the most revered gods in the Hindu pantheon.

The city of Ayodhya in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh is all decked up.

Saffron flags, cut-outs of Lord Ram, strings of marigold flowers, decorative lights shaped in Hindu symbols and new paintwork have transformed this sleepy, little rundown town.

Large LED screens display the consecration across the country, while Indian embassies carry it across the world and even on a sponsored screen at Times Square in New York.

Namit Khanna, who has come from Singapore to witness the ceremony, tells Sky News “It’s a civilisation moment that I feel for all of us in India, and it has been a struggle of so many years of our ancestors.”

Rishab Kaushal says: “This is like a different world, the 500-year gap has been completed. We are all so happy. We’ve been given a new festival… Today we’ve been given our Lord.”

Holding her 7-month-old baby, Preeti says: “Our forefathers had died waiting for such a moment. And today we are so happy. And we wish to thank Modi for this, that we can see the temple constructed in our lifetime.”

Mr Modi is omnipresent. His presence in the temple town cannot be missed and everyone credits him with the construction of the Ram Temple.

While only 8,000 people have been officially invited over 100,000 have converged on the city including Bollywood royalty, industrialists, cultural icons, sportspersons, and diplomats.

According to the Temple Trust, donations have exceeded over 4trn rupees (£38bn), pouring in from far and wide.

Conspicuous of their absence are opposition party leaders who have called the inauguration a political project by Mr Modi and his ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. They will stay away from today’s programme and come another day.

A number of senior Hindu priests and heads of four major shrines, the Shankaracharyas, have also refused to attend on the grounds that consecrating an unfinished temple undermines scripture.

For years the construction of the temple has been one of the most controversial and contentious issues in modern India.

Both Hindus and Muslims have laid claim to the 2.77-acre plot – the size of a football field – on which stood the Babri Mosque since the 16th century. Hindus believe that the Mughal Emperor Babur destroyed an original Ram temple and built the Babri mosque on the exact same spot in 1528.

In 1949, idols of Lord Ram were found in the central dome of the mosque and a large number of Hindus began to pray there. This led to protests by Muslims and the government locked the gates of the mosque, declaring it a disputed site.

In the 1980s, right-wing Hindu organisations and the BJP seized on the Ram Janam Bhoomi Ayodhya movement as a sort of Hindu renaissance. A promise to retake the land and rebuild the temple propelled them into centre stage of national politics.

On 6 December 1992, the Babri mosque was destroyed by thousands of right-wing volunteers who called themselves ‘Kar Sevaks’. The events triggered religious riots across the country in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed.

Subsequently, the site was heavily protected and a series of ongoing court cases by various groups were fought for ownership.

On 9 November 2019 in a unanimous verdict by a five-judge bench, the Supreme Court of India awarded the disputed site to the Hindus, rejecting the Muslims’ claim.

The court said “Archaeological evidence supports an underlying structure of Hindu origin. The Muslim parties failed to establish exclusive possession of the disputed land.”

The court directed the government to give an alternate piece of land to the Muslims, about 25km away in a village called Dhannipur.

Except for a broken razorwire fence, there are no signs of construction at this site.

Sitting on a charpoy on the vacant land, 72-year-old Mohammad Islam tells Sky News: “Look, it was wrong, but we have to live within the confines of the constitution. We have to adhere to it when a decision is right or when it’s not right. But we have to move on for development, let’s leave behind issues of temples and mosques now.”

Shahbaz Khan, a 33-year-old welder says: “Modi is the prime minister of the country, not just one community. We have no issues about the temple, we are happy. But there must be development for us too. The ruling BJP motto is ‘development for one and all’, but we see development is just for one.”

The Ayodhya issue has polarised the country for decades and the rift between the majority Hindus with their 182 million Muslim brethren has widened.

Hinduism is almost 4,000 years old and is the religion of almost 80% of the population. The first Islamic dynasty was established in the 13th century and Muslims constitute around 14% of the population.

Since Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has been in power since 2014 there has been a deepening of social divide and a display of muscular Hindu nationalism that has contributed to religious tensions.

Restrictions on the slaughter and sale of cows (revered by Hindus) have led to vigilantism and the killing of a number of Muslim traders transporting cattle.

Today’s ceremony will be seen as a political victory for Mr Modi and his party and will further consolidate his popularity with the majority.

It will also help him garner more votes for the upcoming general elections due in the summer, which he is widely believed to win.

One hopes that now with the construction of the Ram Temple the country’s deepening religious fissures and animosity between the two communities finally ends.

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

6 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.

Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.

The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.

The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.

All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.

Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.

It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.

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COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures

Published

8 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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COP29: UN climate summits 'no longer fit for purpose', warn leading figures

UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.

An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.

The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.

“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.

It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.

Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

COP29 Analysis:
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.

Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.

While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.

COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.

Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.

“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.

Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.

“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.

“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”

Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.

Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.

“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.

“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.

“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”

COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners

Published

24 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to 'smoke out' thousands of illegal miners

A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.

The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.

Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.

It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.

The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.

Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.

A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.

Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.

In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.

Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.