The design for a mosque and hospital to be built on a five-acre site in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur village assigned by the Supreme Court in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case was unveiled Saturday at the IICF office here. The Uttar Pradesh State Sunni Central Waqf Board had formed the foundation, the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF), to build the mosque and other public services on the site.
Professor SM Akhtar from Jamia Millia Islamia, who joined the program via video conference, showed the designs of the mosque and the 200-bed hospital to be installed on the site. A community kitchen (saarvjanik bhojnalaya) and a modern library will also be installed in the complex. “The design of the mosque has been prepared with modern technology, and it will be egg-shaped without a dome. The two-story mosque will have no minaret. Solar power will be installed in the mosque, and some 2,000 people will be able to offer ‘namaaz’ to the same time, “he said.
The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation today unveiled the design for the mosque and hospital to be built on the five-acre plot in Ayodhya. pic.twitter.com/beKSLcmUDx
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The hospital will provide much needed state-of-the-art facilities in the surrounding population, with a focus on the needs of children suffering from malnutrition and pregnant women, the IICF said in a statement here. The structure of the building will also house the trust office and publication house focusing on research and a publishing house for Indo-Islamic cultural literature studies.
“The construction work on the mosque was scheduled to begin on January 26, but in this period it seems to be difficult to get approval of the map, so construction is likely to start from August 15,” Athar Husain, Secretary of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation (IICF), told reporters. When asked if the prime minister of Uttar Pradesh will be invited to the foundation-laying program, Hussain said that according to Islamic traditions, no major functions are organized while laying the first stone of a mosque.
“After the hospital mosque is built, prominent people from the country and the state will be invited,” he said. To a question about the name of the proposed mosque, Hussain said: “The mosque will not be named after any king or nawab. Personally, I have suggested that the mosque be named Dhannipur Masjid. He also said that works on the mosque will begin soon. “The mosque will be ecological and plants from all over the world will be planted. The hospital will be a different building, which will have a ground floor plus four floors,” he said.
Professor Pushpesh Pant, consultant curator of the site’s archives and museum, said that a good museum is needed to show the achievements and joint struggles of the Hindu and Muslim communities in India. After a lengthy legal dispute, on November 9 last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the construction of a Ram temple on the disputed site in Ayodhya, and ordered the Center to allocate an alternative five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for the construction of a new mosque in a “prominent” location in the holy city of Uttar Pradesh.
The Ayodhya mosque was demolished on December 6, 1992 by ‘kar sevaks’ who claimed that an ancient Ram temple stood on the same site.
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