On May 16, chants of ‘Baba mil gaye’ came to fill the streets outside Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque. A court-mandated survey of the masjid had reportedly thrown up evidence strengthening the suspicion of several Hindu believers and religious outfits: Gyanvapi could have been built on the foundation of the famed Vishweshwara Temple that Aurangzeb destroyed in 1669. The floral motifs on the mosque walls were a clue of sorts, but it was, finally, the apparent discovery of a linga-like structure that had devotees excited about parts of a temple lying buried below.
As news spread that a purported ‘shivalinga’ had been found inside the masjid compound, Varanasi resident Manju Vyas wanted to immediately go inside Gyanvapi for “darshan”. When told that women weren’t allowed inside Gyanvapi, she retorted, “We’re going to a temple, not a mosque.” Vyas, along with four women petitioners, had moved a local court on August 18 last year, demanding they be allowed to worship Shringar Gauri 365 days a year. Enshrined on a red stone platform that rests on Gyanvapi’s western wall, the goddess is worshipped only on one day of the year—the Chaturthi (fourth day) of Chaitra Navratri.
The plaintiffs had a second appeal: they wished to pray to all “visible and invisible deities within the old temple complex”. On April 26, when the Varanasi court assured the petitioners that the disputed Gyanvapi site would be inspected, there were some who found in the decision a resonance of the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi case. In that case, too, the court commissioner’s survey had proved to be key.
V.N. Arora, former principal of Saket Degree College in Ayodhya, explains, “In the Ayodhya case, it was the civil judge of Faizabad who had appointed the court commissioner on April 1, 1950, to prepare the map of the disputed site. In the entire case thereafter, from the high court to the Supreme Court, the report of the court commissioner was discussed. The same report is also part of the Supreme Court’s decision in November 2019.” Litigation apart, one can already hear in the arguments of some Banarasis a ratcheting up of emotion that seems reminiscent of 1992.
Advocate Sudheer Tripathi represents Vyas and her fellow petitioners in the Varanasi court. He insists his clients have almost won their case: “You can no longer call Gyanvapi a masjid. Have you ever heard of a masjid that has in it a shivalinga or idols of other Hindu gods and goddesses? Wouldn’t it be great if by reaching an understanding we could give a message to the world that in India we solve age-old differences through reconciliation? The decision is theirs—to give it to us now or give it later.”
TIMELINE | Contested prayers at Gyanvapi
Gyanvapi’s caretaker committee, the Anjuman Intizamiya Masjid (AIM), says it prefers to keep its faith in the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act than react to veiled threats. Passed by the Narasimha Rao government at the peak of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1991, the Act states that the religious character of all places of worship—barring Ayodhya, then under litigation—shall be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947. In November 2019, when a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court decided the Ayodhya title suit in favour of permitting the construction of a temple on the disputed site, it upheld the provisions of the 1991 Act, stating that, “In preserving the character of places of public worship, Parliament has mandated in no uncertain terms that history and its wrongs shall not be used as instruments to oppress the present and the future.”
Even though there are before the Supreme Court two petitions challenging the Act on the ground that it bars judicial review, S.M. Yaseen, AIM’s general secretary, says he would still choose law over history. “History is disjointed,” he says. “You won’t even find the right history of Gyanvapi anywhere. I believe in the status quo that the 1991 Place of Worship Act ensures.” Advocate Tripathi, for his part, has a taunt ready. “If we have found a shivalinga there today, this means there was a shivalinga there in 1947. It was there in Aurangzeb’s time as well. If you go and offer namaaz in a temple, does that make a temple a mosque? No, nor do domes. They are offering namaaz in a temple.”
In 1936, when a certain Deen Mohammad had filed a civil suit before a Varanasi court, asking for the Gyanvapi complex to be declared a Waqf site, it was already an open question. When the court rejected Mohammad’s petition, he appealed to the Allahabad High Court. In 1937, the HC ruled that the Gyanvapi mosque complex belonged to Muslims, and that they had the right to pray there, but it also went on to allot the basement of the mosque to the Vyas family. Interestingly, the wazookhana, a structure for ablutions in which the purported shivalinga has now been found, had in 1937 been accepted as a property of the mosque.
Advocate Abhay Yadav, who represents AIM in the Varanasi court, says he was witness to the discovery of the linga-like structure. “As AIM’s lawyer, I was inside Gyanvapi when the structure was found. I can safely tell you that it is a fountain, not a linga.”
The advocate goes on to add that he also finds odd the May 17 Supreme Court order that allows Muslims to offer namaaz at Gyanvapi while securing the shivalinga that was found. “If you cordon off that area, you stop people from using the wazookhana. How can a Muslim offer namaaz without performing wazoo? Also, isn’t it strange how we can now ‘allow’ people to offer namaaz at a place of worship that is very much theirs?”
(Clockwise from top left) Muslims protest the Gyanvapi survey; Shringar Gauri priest Jitendra Nath Vyas shows some old documents; Sohan Lal Arya, a petitioner’s husband; police stand guard during the survey; (Photos: PTI)
While Vyas and her fellow plaintiffs had started by asking similar questions about Ma Shringar Gauri, there are some in Banaras who, in turn, doubt the fervour of their piety. Especially as the Vyas family, as distinct from Manju Vyas, are priests at the temples of Nandi, Ganesh, Gaurishankar, Tarakeswar Mahadev and Lord Hanuman, and also caretakers of the Shringar Gauri shrine. Jitendra Nath Vyas, who oversees worship at the shrine, says, “Shringar Gauri is seen daily but she is worshipped only once a year—on the Chaturthi of Vasantik Chaitra Navratri. This tradition has always been going on. Shringar Gauri is not worshipped regularly and this demand is not justified.”
In 1991, when the Ram temple movement was reaching its peak in Ayodhya, the dispute related to Kashi Vishwanath and Gyanvapi mosque also reached the court in Varanasi. After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, security at Gyanvapi was tightened, and the entire complex barricaded. Mahant Surendra Tiwari of the Kalika temple says, “In 1996, Hindu and Muslim festivals fell on the same day. The road leading to Shringar Gauri was closed for security. After that, it was closed forever.”
Following the inauguration of work on the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor in 2021, a path was created in the western part of the Gyanvapi complex which made the shrine of Shringar Gauri quite accessible. Indu Prakash Srivastava, the Vyas family’s lawyer, says, “Devotees of Shringar Gauri are getting regular darshan now, but the tradition is that worship is only done once a year. On the issue of daily worship at the Shringar Gauri temple, no one has taken the opinion of the Vyas family, the priests of the temple. This matter seems to be sponsored by outside elements.” The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Shiv Sena, one finds, are already running a ‘Shringar Gauri Mukti Andolan’.
Gyanvapi’s imam, Maulana Abdul Batin Noomani, finds it strange that it is the worship of Shringar Gauri that has stirred up this hornet’s nest. Even though AIM’s Yaseen says that the annual worship of the goddess has been an age-old practice, Noomani makes the case that Hindus themselves are divided on where the Shringar Gauri shrine should be ideally located. “Their own mahants say the shrine isn’t here, it’s somewhere else. Wherever Shringar Gauri may be, the masjid has nothing to do with it.” Surprisingly, Noomani thinks of the court-mandated survey as a silver lining: “It isn’t wrong. We have always welcomed it. Everyone will get to know the truth.”
Though the AIM had taken a stand—that there will be no videography inside the masjid or its cellars—the Varanasi court ordered a complete resumption of the survey on May 12. AIM also wanted the “biased” advocate commissioner Ajay Kumar Mishra replaced, but Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar instead expanded his team. On the three days that Mishra conducted his survey (May 14-16), imam Noomani says he was struck by how often findings that ought to have been confidential were being leaked. “Yeh mil gaya, woh mil gaya (We found this. We found that). What right do you have to say all this to the media? You are only spreading falsehoods in the minds of the people. This sort of behaviour ought to be punished.” Mishra seemed to find his comeuppance on May 17, when Justice Diwakar relinquished him of his duties after finding he had hired his own cameraman during the survey.
In its 2019 Ayodhya verdict, the SC upheld the 1991 Act saying that the religious character of all places of worship be maintained as on Aug. 15, 1947. Any move by the Modi govt to amend the Act will be challenged in the apex court
Jitendra Singh Bisen is an outsider in Banaras. Representing his Delhi-based niece, Rakhi Singh, one of the five Shringar Gauri plaintiffs, it took Bisen only a few hours to call a press conference after it was rumoured that a linga-like structure had been found in Gyanvapi. President of the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh, an organisation headquartered in UP’s Gonda district, Bisen said, “I would like to appeal to the nationdo not let your emotions get the better of you. Yes, a shivalinga has been found in Gyanvapi, but please act with patience and discretion. Ours is a constitutional fight.”
Bisen seemed to want to make clear that the fight would not be long when his organisation was involved: “We didn’t file these cases thinking they will then drag on for 500 years. No matter where we file a case—Mathura, Kashi, Qutab Minar, Taj Mahal—you will see that we get results fast. These are transformations we’ll see within our lifetimes.”
Given the frequency with which lawsuits are disturbing the peace of our monuments and places of worship, Bisen’s threat should not be taken lightly. Especially with Alok Kumar, VHP international working president, already declaring that the Places of Worship Act doesn’t apply to the “Gyanvapi Mandir”. Clearly, Kashi is likely to be a new flashpoint. Having heard news of the ‘shivalinga discovery’, Sunil Ambekar, an Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh of the RSS, said, “You cannot suppress history for long. This is the right time to bring all such evidence in front of our people.”
While the Gyanvapi case has all the makings of another mandir vs. masjid battle as in Ayodhya, there are significant differences. For one, to appropriate the site the BJP would have to amend the 1991 Places of Worship of Act by using its brute majority in Parliament to remove Section 3 of the Act, which prohibits individuals and groups of people from converting a place of worship of any religious denomination, and Section 4, which declares that a place of worship’s religious character “shall continue to be the same” as it was on August 15, 1947.
Since the Supreme Court had already upheld the 1991 Act in its 2019 Ayodhya verdict and recognised that the law as it stands secures the fundamental values of the Constitution, any such move by the ruling dispensation is bound to be challenged in the nation’s highest court.
BJP leaders in Banaras remain circumspect. Daya Shankar Mishra, the recently elected MLA from Varanasi (South), said: “Both sides will respect the court’s decision. This is just a survey being conducted. We really should not think of bleak future possibilities. Banaras is a city of understanding.” When it comes to matters of peace, Congress leader Gaurav Kapoor finds common ground with Mishra: “Varanasi is very much a land of entrepreneurs and we like to focus on that rather than anything else. ‘What did Aurangzeb do? What did Babur do?’ This is just a hundred per cent political propaganda. Wouldn’t it be nice if we stopped to worry about the economy for once?”
It would have been, but the mandir-masjid debate has most often precluded all other thought.
—with Ashish Misra
