India’s Muslims spend night inside 600-year-old mosque to protest demolition

Hundreds of Muslims stayed inside and outside the Shahi Mosque in India’s Ujjain city through Sunday night to protest the partial demolition of the 600-year-old mosque.

Locals told Indian media outlet Maktoob that the crowd grew during the night as bulldozers remained stationed outside the mosque in preparation for the demolition.

Muslims from the neighbourhood have been camping around the mosque premises for weeks after the BJP-led state government said the demolition was necessary to widen roads ahead of the 2028 Hindu pilgrimage, which is expected to draw large crowds.

Speaking to Maktoob, prominent Indore cleric Mufti Junaid said the demolition of the mosque could put 28 other mosques at risk.

“They cannot keep demolishing mosques only because they are in the way of something. This is baseless and makes no sense that to establish one religion, you would completely demolish and erase the existence of other religions,” Junaid told Maktoob.

He alleged that several old mosques in Ujjain were at risk as part of efforts to reshape the city ahead of the major Hindu pilgrimage.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently dismissed two petitions challenging demolition notices issued by the Ujjain Municipal Corporation.

Another petition filed by the mosque authorities against the demolition is scheduled to be heard by the same court on Monday.