Jamiat condemns claim on Ajmer dargah, says it's deeply harmful to India's secular fabric

New Delhi, Dec 2 (PTI) Prominent Muslim organisation Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind on Monday condemned the claim that the famed shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer was built over a Shiva temple, and urged the government to intervene immediately to halt the rising spate of such claims.

Jamiat president Maulana Mahmood Madani described the assertion as not only "absurd" but deeply harmful to India's secular fabric.

He claimed that it is a "direct attack" on the heart of India.

In a statement, Madani also criticised the recent actions targeting the Jama Masjid in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi and the local administration's approval of what he said was a "communal panchayat" led by divisive elements.

Madani warned that if the government continues to allow such elements to operate with impunity, it risks deepening divisions and causing long-term damage to the country's unity.

He stressed that such claims should have been immediately dismissed by courts.

Underlining the legacy of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, he recalled that the Sufi saint was a man of humility, whose influence was never over territory, but over hearts.

Madani emphasised that such attempts to rewrite history and provoke divisions undermine the country's secular values and national unity.

It is imperative, he said, that the government and judiciary uphold the spirit of coexistence, tolerance and peace that Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti exemplified throughout his life.

Last Wednesday, a court in Ajmer, known the world over as the home of the dargah visited by thousands of devotees cutting across religious divides every day, issued notices to the dargah committee, the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Archaeological Survey of India on a plea seeking to declare the shrine a temple.

The notice came just days after four people were killed in Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh in violence following a local court ordering a survey of a Mughal-era shrine -- the Shahi Jama Masjid -- which petitioners said was built after destroying an old temple. PTI ASK RC