Sunset over Delhi

Music

15:30

Crowds arriving at Jama Masjid

Harley: Keeping watch over Delhi's daily grind -- the Jama Masjid -- or Friday mosque is India's grandest, and it's the symbolic centre of power for India's 130 million Muslims.

15:41

Music

Harley: Tonight the faithful have come to watch power pass from father to son.

15:58

Music

Bukhari

Super:

Syed Ahmed Bukhari

Imam, Jama Masjid

Bukhari: 400 years ago when Jama Masjid was built, emperor Shah Jahan sent a message to the Shah of Bukhara to send a religious scholar.

He was given a Grand welcome and Shah Jahan announced in this Jama Masjid ‘the first son of the family would be made the royal Imam of this Mosque’.

16:09

Crowds in Mosque

Harley: And that same divine dynasty is still in command. Tonight, Syed Ahmed Bukhari is inheriting the mantle from a father too old and ill to continue.

16:38

28 years after his father passed on the baton, Syed Abdullah Bukhari is almost too sick to anoint his own eldest son. The old Imam must be carried in from hospital, for a ceremony which verges on anarchy.

16:55

Syed Abdullah Bukhari

17:21

Harley: With doctors in tow, and oxygen on tap, a once firebrand Iman is now frail and emotional.

Syed Ahmed Bukhari

Bukhari jnr: I have been made the 13th Royal Imam. When a father sees his son being capable of taking on his father’s mantle during the father’s lifetime, his tears are the tears of joy. I am proud that my father has these hopes and expectations from me. I hope I am able to fulfil it.

17:47

Syed Abdullah Bukhari at microphone

Harley: It's not just his father's hopes he carries. The steady stream of gifts come from those looking to the Imam for leadership -- or favours.

18:16

Finally, the last step in assuming the throne -- the crowning white turban -- a regional mark of respect which crosses religion and ethnicity.

18:28

And being India, you can't avoid a garland or ten.

18:39

Crowds at mosque

Harley: The man who set this 400 year family tradition in train -- Shahjahan -- didn't just build the mighty mogul empire which ruled before the British. He also knew a thing or two about architecture. He built the wondrous Taj Mahal.

18:50

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Architecture of Delhi

Harley: While his grand monuments are still in one piece, the world around has changed beyond recognition.

19:11

Syed Ahmed Bukhari

Bukhari jnr: It is the misfortune of Muslims – those who have ruled this country for 900 years are today slaves.

19:17

Dr. Azghar

Super:

Dr. Azghar Ali

Engineer Director,

Institute Of Islamic Studies

Dr. Azghar: Slave is too strong a word, but I would say Muslims are victims of injustice. They suffer from various injustices -- economic, political, social, etcetera.

19:28

Harley: : So they're among the poorer of the poor.

19:42

Dr. Azghar: Yeah. Poorest of the poor.

Jama Masjid Mosque

Harley: But the new Imam is itching for change. Syed Ahmed Bukhari's determined to revived past Muslim glories and reverse recent wrongs.

19:52

Archival footage: Hindu activists

In 1992, hardline Hindu activists stormed and demolished the Babri mosque at Ayodhya.

20:05

They say mogul rulers built the mosque on top of the birthplace of Ram, one of Hinduism's most important gods.

20:14

Dr. Azghar

Super:

Dr. Azghar Ali

Engineer Director,

Institute Of Islamic Studies

Dr. Azghar: It has polarised two communities as never before. I think it has done a lot of damage and it will take a long time to repair that damage.

20:25

Harley: Thousands were killed across India in the riots which followed, and eight years on, the scars are still fresh.

20:39

Syed Ahmed Bukhari

Bukhari jnr: We are not afraid. We will fight their conspiracies against Islam and Muslims.

20:46

Crowds praying

Harley: Though he says politics is his preferred path, the rhetoric is a call to arms.

20:56

Over head shot of Delhi

Bukhari jnr: We have to become a political force.

21:04

Syed Ahmed Bukhari

We have to get rid of the crutches. We’ve lost the battle till now - we should become a defeating power.

Harley: But the tough talking Imam will find it hard to prove he's more than just a figurehead.

21:26

Dr. Azghar

Super:

Dr. Azghar Ali

Engineer Director,

Institute Of Islamic Studies

Dr. Azghar: He's just a greenhorn who has entered politics, who has ambitions, but I doubt whether he will make a successful political career. His father could not. I don't think he should be leading prayers in Jama Masjid -- that's all. That is his function. I pray that he doesn't dabble in politics. It is not his area.

21:30

Crowds praying in Mosque

Harley: But the battlelines between the Imam and hardline leaders of India's Hindu majority have already been drawn.

22:01

And he faces a monumental contradiction; how to build a powerful religious party which does not inflame religious hatred. For those before him who have tried, history's not been so kind.

22:13

Credits:

Reporter: Jonathan Harley

Camera: Rakesh Negar

Research: Neeraj Bali

Producer: Tony Chapman

22:30