Ajmer Sharif Dargah row: Former bureaucrats and diplomats write Modi

Days after a local court ordered a survey of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, revered equally by Muslims and Hindus, a group of former bureaucrats and diplomats wrote to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention to halt all "illegal and pernicious" activities that are an "ideological assault" on India's "civilisational heritage and pervert the idea of an inclusive country".

Stating that he alone can halt "all illegal, pernicious activities", the group has reminded Modi that he himself had sent "chadars" on the occasion of the annual Urs of the 12th-century saint, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, as a homage to his message of peace and harmony.

On November 27, a civil court in Ajmer issued notices to the Ajmer Dargah committee, India's Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) after a petition was filed by Vishnu Gupta, national president of Hindu Sena, claiming that the Dargah was originally a Shiva temple.

The group of former bureaucrats and diplomats, including former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, India's former high commissioner to the United Kingdom Shivshankar Mukherjee, former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, former vice-chief of Army staff Lieutenant General Zameeruddin Shah and former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor Ravi Vira Gupta, wrote to the prime minister on November 29 about obscure fringe groups claiming to represent Hindu interests and demanding archaeological surveys of medieval mosques and dargahs to prove the previous existence of temples at these sites.

"Despite the clear provisions of the Places of Worship Act, the courts too seem to respond to such demands with undue alacrity and haste," they said.

The content of the letter was confirmed by two of the signatories to it.

"It appears unimaginable, for example, that a local court should order a survey on the 12th-century dargah of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti — one of the most sacred Sufi sites in Asia not just for Muslims but for all Indians who are proud of our syncretic and pluralist traditions," they said.