Ayodhya dispute in the context of "Ram Rath Yatra"

The Clash of Civilizations is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled The Clash of Civilizations?, in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

The phrase itself was earlier used by Albert Camus in 1946, by Girilal Jain in his analysis of the Ayodhya dispute in 1988, by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled The Roots of Muslim Rage and by Mahdi El Mandjra in his book La première guerre civilisationnelle published in 1992. Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations. This expression derives from clash of cultures, already used during the colonial period and the Belle Époque.

Ayodhya is a city mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit-language texts, including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These texts describe it as the capital of the Ikshvaku kings, including Rama.

The historicity of this legendary city is of concern to the Ayodhya dispute. According to one theory, it is same as the present-day Indian city of Ayodhya. According to another theory, it is a fictional city, and the present-day Ayodhya (originally called Saketa) was renamed after it around the 4th or 5th century, during the Gupta period.

Ram Janmabhoomi (lit. 'Birthplace of Rama') is the site that, according to Hindu religious beliefs, is the birthplace of Rama, the seventh avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu. The Ramayana states that the location of Rama's birthplace is on the banks of the Sarayu river in a city called "Ayodhya". Modern-day Ayodhya is in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is contested whether the Ayodhya mentioned in the Ramayana is the same as the modern city.

Some Hindus claim that the exact site of Rama's birthplace is within the grounds where the Babri Masjid once stood in the present-day Ayodhya, with this belief extending back to at least 1822. It has been suggested that a temple to Rama formerly existed at the same site as the Babri Masjid until it was replaced by the mosque, an idea supported by a court-ordered report of the Archaeological Survey of India following archaeological excavations around the ruins of the mosque, though the existence of this temple and the conclusions of the report are disputed.

The Babri Masjid (ISO: Bābarī Masjida; meaning Mosque of Babur) was a mosque located in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It was claimed that the mosque was built upon the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the legendary birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism. The Ayodhya dispute has been a disputed focal point between the Hindu and Muslim communities since the 19th century. According to the mosque's inscriptions, it was built in 935 AH (1528/1529CE) by Mir Baqi, a commander of the Mughal emperor Babur. Before the 1940s, the masjid was officially known as "Masjid-i-Janmasthan" ("the mosque of the birthplace"). The mosque was attacked and demolished by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992, which ignited communal violence across the Indian subcontinent.

The mosque was located on a hill known as Ramkot ("Rama's fort"). According to Hindu nationalists, Baqi destroyed a pre-existing temple of Rama at the site. The existence of this temple is a matter of controversy. The Archaeological Survey of India conducted an excavation of the disputed site on the orders of the Allahabad High Court. The excavation period was short due to court time constraints, lasting only 15 days. The report of the excavation concluded that there were ruins of "a massive structure" beneath the ruins of the mosque which was "indicative of remains which are distinctive features found associated with the temples of north India", but found no evidence that the structure was specifically demolished for the construction of the Babri Masjid. The report received both praise and criticism, with some other archaeologists contesting the results of the report.

Baqi Tashqandi, also known as Mir Baqi, was a Mughal commander (baig) originally from Tashkent (in modern Uzbekistan) during the reign of the first Mughal emperor Babur. He is often associated with serving as the governor of the province of Awadh and is traditionally credited with overseeing the construction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1528, which later became the focal point of the Ayodhya dispute.

The Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya, was destroyed on 6 December 1992 by a large group of activists of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations. The mosque had been the subject of a lengthy socio-political dispute, and was targeted after a political rally organised by Hindu nationalist organisations turned violent.

In Hindu tradition, the city of Ayodhya is the birthplace of Rama. In the 16th century, a Mughal commander, Mir Baqi, had built a mosque, known as the Babri Masjid at a site identified by some Hindus as Ram Janmabhoomi, or the birthplace of Rama. The Archaeological Survey of India states that the mosque was built on land where a non-Islamic structure had previously existed. In the 1980s, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its political voice. Several rallies and marches were held as a part of this movement, including the Ram Rath Yatra led by L. K. Advani.