Ahmedabad: Ahead of the upcoming inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya, well-known businessman of Gujarat and former chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Zafar Sareshwala has opposed the construction of the proposed mosque at an alternate location at Dhanipur village of Ayodhya. In a special conversation with ETV Bharat, Sareshwala said, "First of all, I am against this mosque." “Why do you want to build a mosque where there is no Muslim population around 30 km? What will you do by building a mosque there? I would have said give us land for a school-college in Lucknow in return for Dhanipur land,” he added.
With regard to the upcoming inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya at the site of the now demolished site of the Babri mosque, Sareshwala said, "As long as this was a case in the Supreme Court, it was an issue. After the Supreme Court verdict, it is no longer an issue. The Supreme Court has decided that now it is Ram Mandir, so everyone became silent.'' He further said ''The temple is almost built, it is fine, why should we have a problem, why do we react? Our (Muslims') problem is that we react to everything. There is no need to react on this topic,” he added.
Regarding the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, he said that ''the fight is between political parties. Why do Muslims come in the middle? What is the status of our politics? Parties that get 90% of your votes, do they give you tickets or not? So in the election, why we should react?” The Muslim leader also stressed on the importance of education as the way forward for Muslims. Zafar Sareshwala himself is running an education and training programme.
He said that after the 1992 Gujarat communal riots, he thought of doing something in the field. “At that time I felt that Muslims have no choice without education. Then, we started a small-scale vocational guidance programme from our office. In 2014, we created a structure for it. At that time actor Salman Khan's father Salim Khan was in contact with us. They suggested a name for this education programme ''Taleem ki Taqat'' (Power of Education). In 2014-2015, this programme was formally launched under the name ''Taleem ki Taqat''. Even after BJP came to power, this programme got a lot of support,” he added.
