A carnival float that includes a Hindu temple deliberate for the upcoming India Day Parade in New York Metropolis has sparked controversy, with a number of teams calling it anti-Muslim and saying it needs to be faraway from the occasion.
The float represents a temple to the Hindu god Lord Ram, which was consecrated earlier this 12 months at a web site in Ayodhya, India, believed to be his birthplace. However the web site of the temple has been bitterly contested between Hindus and Muslims, and within the early Nineties a mosque there was razed by a Hindu fundamentalist mob.
Some US-based organisations have written a letter to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, calling the float anti-Muslim and saying it glorified the demolition of the mosque.
Among the many teams that signed the letter had been the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Indian American Muslim Council and Hindus for Human Rights.
“The presence of this float represents the need of those teams to merge Hindu nationalist ideology with Indian identification, however India is a secular nation,” the letter mentioned.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, which is organizing the float, says it represents a Hindu place of worship and is supposed to glorify a deity thought of an essential a part of Indian and Hindu identification. The Hindu American Basis mentioned it was an train in free speech.
The Federation of Indian Associations, which is organizing Sunday’s occasion, mentioned the parade represents India’s cultural variety and can characteristic floats from quite a lot of communities.
“There is no such thing as a place for hate,” Adams mentioned at a information convention earlier this week. “If there’s a float or an individual within the parade that promotes hate, they should not be doing it.”
Adams’ workplace later advised the Related Press that the First Modification’s proper to free speech prevents town from denying a allow or requiring a float or parade’s message to be modified just because it does not match the content material.
Hindus say the location in Ayodhya was sacred to them lengthy earlier than Mughal Muslims tore down a temple there to construct the 1528 Babri mosque, destroyed in 1992. The mosque’s destruction was adopted by nationwide riots that killed about 2,000 individuals, primarily Muslims. In 2019, India’s Supreme Court docket handed the land over to Hindus.
Human rights specialists say India has seen an increase in assaults, together with violence and discrimination, in opposition to minorities in recent times below Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, allegations Modi denies.
New York Metropolis’s annual parade takes place three days after India’s Independence Day.
