Dangerous Rift

After the announcement of the verdict of the Babri Masjid demolition case, which saw the land under the demolished Babri Masjid given to the Hindus, many people in India believed that the verdict would put an end to similar disputes. The Varanasi court, on the other hand, had other things in mind. Fuelled by communalism, the dispute over Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi is one that encompasses strategic “rewriting of history”, arising in a Hindu dominant postcolonial India; a controversy best described by the words of the famous Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, who says, “wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

The “majority” in this context is the Hindu majority, which over the centuries developed meta-narratives of how Hindus were oppressed by Muslim rulers. These un-nuanced and ahistorical notions were further accentuated throughout the advent of the British rule, which thus created the perennial Hindu-Muslim rivalry we see today.

When the Ayodhya dispute was raging, “Kashi-Mathura baaki hain” (Kashi and Mathura still remain) was another refrain that was making the rounds among the Hindutva vigilantes. The dispute over Gyanvapi Masjid, reminiscent to that of one over Babri Masjid, is probably one of the finest examples of iconoclasm in India. The Hindu populace unanimously believes that the mosque was a ramification of Emperor Aurangzeb’s religious fanaticism who constructed a mosque by demolishing a part of the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir.

However, according to many historians, the argument lacks historical accuracy as there are no recorded accounts of the incident. This is further solidified when the petitioners that originally filed the case against the mosque in 1991, contended that the original temple was built by King Vikramaditya about 2050 years ago and was destroyed by Aurangzeb in 1664.

By reading Gahadavala dynasty’s literature, we will realise how there are just scarce mentions of temples, which act as an antithesis to the Hindu narrative and the claim of the petitioners. According to a 12th century Sanskrit scripture known as the Kritya-kalpataru, there is no mention of any grand temple in the area of Varanasi at that time. This Gahadavala literature comes from the 12th century, which is the same era believed by Hindus that allegedly saw the actual temple get uprooted by Qutb Al-Din Aibak. However, there are no records of any major temple at that time. This shows that the Kashi Vishwanath temple was actually originally built due to Mughal patronage during the Akbar’s reign from 1556 to 1605. In the light of Gahadavala literature, the statement of the people that filed the case seems to be half-baked and made on pure assumptions.

Part of the controversy also has its deep-seated roots in a bloodthirsty campaign run by far-right Hindu extremist body known as the All India Akhara Parishad (AIAP), a revered body of “politicized priests” backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). With a very strong political backing, these extremist groups started a campaign that called for demolishing not only the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi, but also the Shahi Idgah Masjid at Mathura as the secondary demands of the Ram-Janmabhoomi movement, which originally gave Hindus the land occupied by the Babri Masjid.

However, the Sunni Central Waqf Board, one of the cardinal Muslim plaintiffs in the Ayodhya title suits, had, in its” settlement proposal” to the Supreme Court, sought that the Hindus withdraw their claims on the Kashi and Mathura mosques as one of the pre-conditions for resolving the dispute through negotiations. This even goes against “the Places of Worship Act” of 1991, which was created in the backdrop of the campaign for construction of Ram Mandir in place of Babri Mosque.

The law only made the Ayodhya case the only exception, while asserting that the law would be in effect in almost every other case. Logically, this should also apply to the case of Gyanvapi Masjid and the Shahi Idgah as well. However political pressure invoked by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) even made the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutional validity of The Places of Worship Act, back in March 2021.

The RSS and its ideological and organisational offshoot, BJP that rules India today are fundamentally against the concept of Indian nationhood and Indian citizenship as defined by the Constitution of India. In short, it can be said that the current government of India is in effect anti-constitutional. With over 200 million Muslims living in India, this Hindutva campaign of razing mosques can be seen as a modern form of ethnic cleansing.

The threatening of demolishing mosques is a modern day example of iconoclasm, that intriguingly happens in a country like India that claims to be secular on the international stage – How pretentious yet completely vile and preposterous. With a plethora of temples built during the British rule, one begs to wonder about the Hindu stance and realises how the British colonial strategies blurred the religious lines in India and used their divide and rule policy to create a dangerous rift between the Muslims and Hindus that is still present to this day.