Is Gyanvapi Mosque Another ‘Babri’ In The Making?
By
Aftab Alam, New Age Islam
23 August
2023
The “history of any nation cannot haunt the present and future generations…to the point that succeeding generations become prisoners of the past”, observed the Supreme Court (SC) in February 2023 while dismissing a PIL seeking to rename historical cities that have been named after foreign invaders.
Gyanvapi Masjid
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Notwithstanding
the above observations, the SC on August 4 refused to stay the order of the
Varanasi District Judge (DJ) to conduct a detailed scientific survey, including
excavations, wherever necessary, of the Gyanvapi mosque premises by the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), to determine if the structure was built
upon a temple. The SC, however, directed that "no excavation" at the
site would be done during the survey and assured the Muslim side that there would
be no damage to even a brick of the mosque's wall or structure.
Earlier,
the SC bench headed by the Chief Justice, in the same case, had observed that
the ascertaining of the religious character of the place of worship is not
barred by the 1991 Places of Worship Act (PoW), and the ASI survey was purely
investigatory and would not affect the mosque’s religious character.
Unfortunately,
by permitting the ASI survey, the SC has opened Pandora’s box. It is most
likely to give rise to new disputes over other Muslim mosques and monuments,
which have so far remained suspended due to the PoW Act. This was enacted to
freeze the status of religious places of worship as they existed on August 15,
1947, and prohibits the conversion of any place of worship and ensures the
maintenance of their religious character.
One must
not forget that this may also give rise to demands for reclaiming Buddhist
sites of worship, as many Hindu temples were constructed after destroying them.
Recently, Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya has called for an
archaeological survey of Hindu temples to determine if they were built after
destroying previously existing Buddhist structures. Historian DN Jha, in his
new book Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance, and History has
provided a detailed account of the desecration, destruction, and appropriation
of Buddhist stupas, monasteries, and other structures. The first Sunga emperor
Pushyamitra (ruled c.185-c.149 BC), is claimed to have destroyed as many as
84,000 Buddhist stupas and learning centres.
The courts
must realise the larger implication of their orders, as the more we reopen old
wounds, it will create more disharmony and “keep the country on the boil” permanently,
as Justice K. M. Joseph recently observed. The SC, while settling the Ayodhya
dispute in favour of Hindus, whom the court also found responsible for the
damage to the Babri Masjid in 1934, its desecration in 1949 leading to the
ouster of the Muslims, and its eventual destruction on December 6, 1992, which
constituted ‘an egregious violation of the rule of law’, yet had seen the PoW
Act as an assurance against the same methods being used elsewhere. The SC
emphatically said that history and its wrongs should not be used as instruments
to oppress the present and the future.
The
five-judge Constitution bench of the SC, which included the present Chief
Justice, in the 2019 Babri Masjid – Ramjanambhoomi judgement not only upheld
the unqualified validity of the PoW Act but also positioned it within the basic
structure of the Constitution. The SC bench said, “The Places of Worship Act
imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to
secularism under the Indian Constitution. The law is hence a legislative
instrument designed to protect the secular features of the Indian polity, which
is one of the basic features of the Constitution. Non-retrogression is a
foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles, of which
secularism is a core component. The Places of Worship Act is thus a legislative
intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our
secular values.” Thus, it virtually closed the door on any possibility of
repeating Ayodhya in Varanasi or Mathura.
Earlier, on
August 3, the Allahabad High Court said that the DJ order was ‘just and
proper’, and no interference was warranted from it as the ‘scientific survey is
necessary in the interest of justice, ‘and there is no reason to not believe
the ASI's assurance that the survey won't cause any damage to the structure. To
allay the fear of the Muslim side, the HC, however, directed that no digging
should be done on the mosque's premises.
The Anjuman
Intezamia Masjid Committee (the mosque committee) - the caretaker of the mosque
and a respondent in the Gyanvapi cases, had opposed the survey on the ground
that the petition is barred by the PoW Act and the ASI survey may cause damage
to the mosque.
Though an
old issue, the current controversy over Gyanvapi mosque re-surfaced in August
2021 when a group of women filed a suit in the Varanasi civil court seeking the
right to worship on a daily basis Maa Shringaar Gauri located on the outer
western wall of the mosque and all other visible and invisible deities present
in the Gyanvapi mosque complex.
On their
plea, the ‘videographic survey’ of the mosque complex was first conducted on
May 6-7, 2022, on the order of the Civil Judge of Varanasi. The leaked report
of this survey stirred controversy when petitioners claimed that a Shiv lingam
had been found in the mosque complex. The mosque committee, however, claimed
that the alleged structure was a fountain where Muslims used to perform
ablutions before offering Namaz. Most surprisingly, without waiting for the
survey report and hearing the mosque committee, the Civil Judge, on May 16
ordered the sealing of the Wazu Khana.
Against
this order of the Civil Judge, the mosque committee approached the SC, which
clarified that the Shiv lingam must be protected but without restricting
Muslims’ right to perform Wuzu. The CJI, who headed the SC bench, held
that this ‘maintains a balance between both parties’ interests’.
If we look
at the sequence of events and the way things are unfolding in the Gyanvapi
case, many people fear that it is slowly but surely moving in the direction of
the Babri Masjid- Ram Janmabhoomi title dispute, which had fuelled Hindu-Muslim
tension in the country for decades, eventually culminating in the destruction
of the mosque on December 6, 1992, by a frenzied mob that had triggered the
worst nationwide communal riots since India’s independence, killing thousands
of people.
Despite the
deep feeling of injustice, the Muslim community accepted the SC verdict calmly
and gracefully. They decided to move on with the hope that this would put an
end to all such disputes relating to mosques and temples. Muslims were assured
by no one other than Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself: “Kashi and Mathura are not
on our agenda, they will never be…when we are saying that it’s not on our
agenda, you need to trust us…Hum Ayodhya Ki Punaravritti Nahin Hone Denge,
Yah Hum Bilkul Saaf Baat Kahna Chahte Hain. (We will not let another
Ayodhya happen. We want to state it clearly).
But today’s
realities belie Muslims. After the SC’s 2019 Ayodhya judgement, there has been
a sudden rise in the number of court cases filed against Muslim monuments and
places of worships, alleging that they were destroyed by the Muslim rulers and
must be handed over to Hindu plaintiffs for worship. The violent slogan of the
1990s, Ayodhya To Jhanki Hai, Kashi Mathura Baqi Hai” (Ayodhya is a
trailer, Varanasi and Mathura are yet to come), is again gaining momentum.
In May, a
senior BJP leader K. S. Eshwarappa claimed that the Mughals had destroyed
36,000 Hindu temples and that they would “reclaim all those temples one by
one”. Though such claims are politically motivated and, in the words of Eaton,
a professor of Indian history at the University of Arizona simply “outlandish,
irresponsible, and without foundation”, still they raise a wave of concern
among Muslims across India, especially in view of the raging religious
polarisation, exponential rise in hate speech against them, calls for their
genocide and economic boycott, criminalization of their prayers, and their
systematic invisibilisation.
One fails
to understand that if the status of the religious place cannot be changed, then
why did the SC not stay the order of the DJ to investigate what kind of
religious place was there earlier. The question as to what was beneath the
mosque or was it built on the exact site where ancient Kashi Vishwanath Temple
existed is irrelevant in the present case as the PoW Act freezes its status.
What is important in the present case is what existed as on August 15, 1947. It
is an indisputable fact that Gyanvapi mosque has existed at the disputed site for
more than three hundred years, and where Namaz is being offered uninterruptedly
five times a day since its establishment.
Many
rightly fear that the ASI survey will create a political condition for seeking
an alteration of the mosque. It will also open the floodgates for similar cases
being filed against other historic Muslim monuments and mosques. It may set a
narrative about the temple’s destruction, brewing strong public sentiment to
restore the Shiva temple, as it happened in the case of the Ram temple, which
ultimately led to the destruction of the Babri masjid.
It is an
incontrovertible fact that in the past, invaders and Indian kings alike, had
destroyed several temples, as they were considered a symbol of power and
wealth. Targeting places of worship or converting them by the invading forces,
irrespective of their religious beliefs, was a regular practice across the
world. The primary consideration behind attacking temples was the plundering of
wealth and displaying the political and military might of the invaders.
However, the basic question is, can the wrongs of the past be corrected today?
And, if yes, from where or which time period would we start? The raking up the issue of historical
injustices would only foment communal tension in the country.
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Aftab Alam is Professor at Aligarh Muslim
University and heads its Strategic and Security Studies Department.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/gyanvapi-mosque-babri/d/130501
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