AYODHYA, Uttar Pradesh: Less than a kilometer away from the disputed site, popularly known as Janmsthan or birth place of Ram, a group of policemen are guarding a lane in Paanji Tola.
A police barricade stops and screens all vehicles entering the lane which is home to Muslim residents and the most popular petitioner in Babri Masjid-Ram temple dispute.
A day after Supreme Court ordered to hand over the disputed 2.77 acres of land to Hindus and asked the government to allot a five-acre land to Muslims in Ayodhya, Iqbal Ansari has appeared on television several times.
Ansari, 53, confidently speaks into the cameras, making it clear that he won't seek a review of the court verdict. "I am not going to appeal," says Ansari in one such video clip aired on news channels.
On Sunday evening, we arrived at his single-storey house, a small building where a police guard tells us to write down our name and address in a police register. Ansari is not home.
Everything is fine now. We have fought this case for 70 years and there is nothing new, whatever has happened is good. This case was popularised by some people and we had to accept the court verdict, politicisation of this dispute led to communal violence.
"What if we are unable to meet him today," my photographer asks the policeman. "Then I will write in the register that the meeting did not take place," the policeman replied.
Except two signboards, there is nothing out of ordinary about the house. The first one is by police, listing important mobile numbers of senior officials of the district.
Ansari is an important man and his security cannot be taken lightly. The second signboard, a green name plate says: "Iqbal Ansari, litigant of Babri Masjid".
After 15 minutes, Ansari appears in the lane, riding pillion on a motorbike driven by an armed policeman, two more cops followed him.
Dressed in a Kurta and a Nehru jacket, Ansari, welcomes us into his modest house. Inside, the living room, a few chairs are neatly arranged in front of a large picture of Haji Hashim Ansari, his father, who fought the Babri Masjid case till he died at the age of 99 in 2016.
How Ansaris became a litigant
On the night of December 22/23, 1949, idols of Ram were sneaked by a group of people into Babri Masjid and placed under the central dome of the mosque.
Three days later, KK Nayar, Faizabad's then district magistrate declined to have the idols removed, saying that he would not be able to find Hindus to remove the idols from the mosque.
On December 29, 1949, the mosque was attached by a magistrate. Soon after, the idols were placed, Ansari's father Haji Hashim Ansari filed a suit in the court. It was the beginning of a judicial battle that ended on November 9 in 2019.
This act of placing the idols was described by Supreme Court on Saturday as "desecration of the mosque".
The senior Ansari fought the case along with other Muslim litigants till 2017 and Iqbal picked up the case when his father died in 2016.
"The morning after the idols were placed, a police complaint was filed and my father was barely 22-23 years old then," Iqbal told Gulf News in an interview on Sunday.
"The Babri mosque was near our house and that is why my father and other people got involved, he was 99 when he died," said Iqbal, the only son of Ansari.
"My father was a tailor and his shop was taken away when he was arrested during Emergency [imposed by Indira Gandhi from 1975 to 1977]," said Iqbal, the father of five, talking about his family's poor background. "We are not rich and have modest resources and expectations and now I am a motor mechanic and also own a taxi."
Post verdict
"Everything is fine now," said Ansari, talking about the Supreme Court verdict. "We have fought this case for 70 years and there is nothing new, whatever has happened is good," he said of the Supreme Court verdict on Ayodhya.
"This case was popularised by some people and we had to accept the court verdict, politicisation of this dispute led to communal violence."
"My father had accepted the 2010 order of Allahabad High Court [which had divided the disputed land into three parts — two for Hindus and one to Muslims]," he said, adding that "now I have accepted the Supreme Court."
While Iqbal has accepted the Supreme Court, he still believes that Muslims' case was on solid legal ground. "If we didn't have evidence, this case wouldn't have lingered on for 70 years.
"That is why there was no question of leaving the case, we didn't illegally occupy someone's house, this mosque was with us for 450 years," he said, explaining why he and his father pursued the case. "Before Independence, there was no issue, this dispute began in 1949."
"Over 200 hundred people had prayed on the day idols were kept."
"But now, I am happy that the Supreme Court has delivered a verdict, and we should now end [the dispute]," said Ansari.
Land allotment
While handing over the disputed land to Hindus for the construction of a Ram temple, the Supreme Court has directed the governments in New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to allot five acres of land for building a mosque at a prominent spot in Ayodhya.
"It is yet to be decided as to where this land will be allotted and we are not talking out it now," Iqbal said. "What is the hurry, the verdict came out barely 24 hours ago and we have waited 70 years for this, the Muslim litigants will decide."
The Central Sunnit Waqf Board will meet on November 26 to decide whether to accept the five acre land or not. "But the government has to tell us where the land will be given and we will accept it if we like it," he said.
We will not dismiss suggestions by educated Muslims, we want the Muslim intelligentsia to get involved in this.
Iqbal, however, said he will welcome proposals to build a hospital or a college for Muslims on the allotted land.
"We will not dismiss suggestions by educated Muslims, we want the Muslim intelligentsia to get involved in this."
"I will support a proposal for a good education institute on the allotted land, Ayodhya has 36 mosques and 72 cemeteries," he said. "We don't need big, beautiful mosques, places of worship should be simple," he said, adding, "we are not in competition with a grand temple."
