This is because a Varanasi Court on Thursday gave a historical decision in favour of a petition which claimed that there was a Hindu temple where the mosque is right now today. It has directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) for the comprehensive physical survey of the mosque complex and asked the state government to bear the entire cost of the survey.
Kashi Vishwanath Temple and Gyanvapi Mosque are adjacent to each other where thousands of Hindu devotees visit the temple while “namaaz” is also read alongside it. It was claimed that the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of the Hindu temple in 1669 to build a mosque in the same place. The Muslims denied such statements & said that there was no temple in place of a mosque. Later, a petition was filed to check the validity of these claims.
According to Hindu mythology, the Nandi bull is a companion of Lord Shiva who always points in the direction of ‘Shivalinga’. It points in the direction of the mosque. In other instances, some of the pillars of the temple can be seen which are attached to the walls of the mosque. This is taken as proof of the presence of the time back then in the year 1669. They want to fight for the centuries-old issues by ignoring the demolition of temples by the BJP government under the pretext of development. As much is being discussed about the Shivling found from the Vajukhana, there was no discussion about the dozens of Shivling found in the garbage heap of Kashi.
Is it because this Shivling was found from the mosque and all those Shivlings were excavated and thrown out from the temple? Dozens of Shivlings were found in Kashi even about three years ago. Not in the Wazukhana of the Masjid but in the debris. After the temple was demolished this shiv-lingas were thrown here and there. Thankfully no one debated the religion of those people who demolished those temples in PM Modi’s constituency in the name of progress.
These were the real Shivling, but no one questioned them, no one felt bad seeing them on the road and eventually they were broken into pieces and used in construction work. The fragmented Shivlings seen across Varanasi were not broken by Aurangzeb but the BJP government has got it broken in the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor. In Kashi, there are Shivlings in every house, even today Shivling is found in the Gangaji. Not only this, very few people would know that there is a secret Kashi, 120 km south of Banaras, where Shivlings are scattered on the banks of the river. Today a Shivling has also been found in the Gyanvapi mosque.
The Gyanvapi Mosque is a Jama Masjid located in the heart of Varanasi, north of Dashashwamedh Ghat near Lalita Ghat along the river Ganga. The Allahabad High Court, however, ordered an interim stay on the Varanasi court’s directive to the ASI. And, there are a bunch of petitions before the Supreme Court that may have a bearing on the Gyanvapi Masjid-Kashi Vishwanath Mandir dispute.
After the Babri Masjid demolition, India suffered communal riots. BJP’s political survival is communal clashes and Hindu sentiments. Both can be achieved if one more mosque is erased in the same line of Babri, again people will be made to pay Chanda for the construction of the Shiva temple. Though all this will not happen soon, this topic will keep burning for a few years. Presently, people are not worried about inflexion, job crises and trailing economy because they are conditioned to Hindu Rashtra.
The Supreme Court today asked the Varanasi administration where exactly the ‘Shivling’ (symbol of Lord Shiva) was found inside Gyanvapi mosque in the Uttar Pradesh city. The place, where the ‘Shivling’ was found, was sealed to avoid any law-and-order issues. The Supreme Court then told the Varanasi District Magistrate to ensure that if the ‘Shivling’ was found, the area should be protected, but without impeding Muslims from coming to the mosque for namaz. Muslim petitioners rejected the assertion, claiming it was a “fountain, not a Shivling”.
Meanwhile, a court in Varanasi has sacked a top official involved in the filming of the Gyanvapi mosque complex and has given a two-day extension to submit the report. The commissioner in charge of the job, Ajay Mishra, an advocate, was removed after lawyers representing the Hindu petitioners and the mosque respondents had a heated argument in court today over the findings of the filming being leaked to the media even before the report was submitted to the court.
Above all both, the Supreme Court judges hearing the Gyanvapi mosque petition are connected to the Babri mosque case. The two-judge bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and PS Narasimha is hearing a petition that challenges filming inside the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi in a case involving claims that parts of a temple are inside the mosque complex. The Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to a Varanasi court-ordered video assessment of the mosque complex, including three domes, underground basements and the pond.
Interestingly, this is the first temple-mosque case being heard by the Supreme Court since the Ayodhya verdict in 2019 and both judges have a connection with the Ram temple case. Justice DY Chandrachud was one of the five judges who heard the Ayodhya temple-mosque case for 40 days in 2019 before delivering a historic judgment handing over the Babri site for the building of a Ram temple and ordering alternative five-acre land for a mosque. Justice PS Narasimha was the senior lawyer for the Hindu petitioners in the Ayodhya case. He represented Rajendra Singh, the successor of the original petitioner, Gopal Singh Visharad. Both judges, Justice Chandrachud and Justice Narasimha, are in line to become Chief Justice. By now we can easily guess the final verdict.
