The Indian American Muslim Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and 20 other faith-based groups in the United States have called for the removal of an “anti-Muslim” tableau depicting Ayodhya’s Ram temple from the India Day Parade that will be held in New York on Sunday.

The Federation of Indian Associations is organising the parade to mark India’s Independence Day. Now in its forty-second year, the event is attended by several thousand persons every year, reported AP.

The contentious tableau is being organised by the United States arm of the Hindutva group Vishwa Hindu Parishad, reported The New York Times. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“This float presence represents these groups’ desire to conflate Hindu nationalist ideology with Indian identity,” the Indian American Muslim Council and others wrote in a letter this month to New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “This is not merely a cultural display, but a vulgar celebration of anti-Muslim heat, bigotry and religious supremacy.”

The Ram temple, which is under construction, was inaugurated in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Modi on January 22.

It is being built on the site of the Babri mosque, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists in December 1992 because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.

In a statement on Monday, the Interfaith Center NY called on the organisers and the Indian consulate to reconsider the inclusion of the float.

“While the history is complex, the newly (re)built Ram temple sits at the heart of Hindu-Muslim communal conflict,” the group said. “A celebration of the Ayodhya Ram temple even in the seemingly innocuous form as a parade-float replica thousands of miles away in New York City may be seen as an effort by Hindu nationalists to efface the presence of India’s approximately 200 million Muslims.”

The statement added: “The organisers of the India Day Parade have a legal right to celebrate their religious and cultural heritage as they deem appropriate, but we hope they will exercise sound judgement and sensitivity towards their religiously diverse neighbours.”

The Interfaith Center NY said that at a time when geopolitics and conflict “consume the Middle East, Islamophobic riots take place in the UK and attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh are happening”, faith communities have a “special responsibility to take extra care not to inflame local divisions” in New York city.

Play

On Wednesday, in an address to reporters outside New York’s City Hall, Husnaa Vhora of the Indian American Muslim Council said: “This is happening in New York City. For it to happen anywhere in the United States is appalling, but for it to happen in New York City, the Big Apple, the melting pot, amplifies the sentiment.”

Responding to calls for the float’s removal, Federation of Indian Associations Chairman Ankur Vaidya said in a statement: “As we celebrate what we consider a vital aspect of our faith through the celebration of the landmark, we unequivocally reject violence and hate in any form, including any damage to any religious place of worship. We stand for peaceful coexistence and encourage everyone to embrace this value.”

Vaidya rejected the view that the float was “anti-Muslim or meant to celebrate the destruction of the mosque”, reported The New York Times.

The association has described the parade as a “rich tapestry of India’s cultural diversity” and said that floats representing the country’s Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian faiths had been featured in its past iterations.

It said that the inclusion of the 18-foot-long, 9-foot-wide and 8-foot-tall float “promises to be a powerful symbol of cultural significance and a testament to a historic moment for the global Indian community”, reported The New York Times.

Ajay Shah, the president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, accused the tableau’s critics of “Hindu hate”, The New York Times reported. Shah said that their “full-time job is to malign mainstream Hindus and their faith”.

When asked about the controversy on Tuesday, Adams said that there was “no room for hate” in New York.

“I want to send the right symbolic gesture that the city’s open to everyone,” he said. “If there is a float or a person in the parade that’s promoting hate, they should not.”

This is not the first time that there has been a controversy over what was being displayed. In 2022, the mayor of Edison town in United States’ New Jersey criticised the inclusion of a bulldozer by Hindutva groups during India’s Independence Day parade in the state, saying that “any symbol or action that represents discrimination is unwelcome”.

The bulldozer had carried photos of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The incident was investigated as an act of bias by the local prosecutor’s office and the police, but no charges were eventually filed, according to The New York Times.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of civic authorities in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states summarily demolishing purportedly illegal properties of those accused of crime, mostly Muslims. This has prompted the use of the term “bulldozer justice”. There are no provisions in Indian law to allow for such punitive demolitions.