Gyanvapi mosque: A fresh cause célèbre for the BJP?

The mosque could become the focal point for a resumption of communal strife like the one witnessed during the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid movement

When the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case in November 2019, clearing the way for the building of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, one had hoped that a long, bitter, communally-charged chapter in the history of modern India had finally come to an end.

Clearly, that is not to be. Not content with having won the day with Ram Janmabhoomi decades after a rampaging mob demolished the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the country's Hindu Right have now turned their attention to other sites to "reverse" and "rectify" other historical wrongs. Whether it is the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, which lies next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, or the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, which is part of the site believed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna, or the Qutub Minar complex in Delhi — they are all in the crosshairs of Hindu groups who claim that the structures were built on the ruins of Hindu temples destroyed by the subcontinent's Islamic rulers, and, hence, they ought to be restored to Hindus.

This, despite the fact that the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, lays down that the religious character of a place of worship cannot be changed from what it was on August 15, 1947 (Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi was the only exception to the law). This, despite the fact that in its Ayodhya judgment in 2019, the Supreme Court had underlined the criticality of this law and said, "Historical wrongs cannot be remedied by the people taking the law in their own hands. 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."

Read | Gyanvapi mosque 'discovery': A Shivling or a fountain?

But evidently, such legal strictures are of no consequence to Hindutva groups whose "present and future" are fixated on a unique set of goals. For large sections of the Sangh Parivar, a meaningful present and future seems to be predicated on just one factor. Much more than jobs, economic prosperity, human development and social harmony — in short, much more than all the usual markers of progress in a modern society — the success of their present and the possibilities of their future seem to depend on a strident assertion of Hindu religious identity, especially in the face of Muslims and their religious symbols and practices. Seventy-five years after India became independent and went on to give itself a Constitution that guarantees equality to all its citizens, Hindu right-wing groups continue to find existential relevance by advancing a vengeful, revisionist and hegemonic agenda born of an ancient sense of victimhood because, once upon a time, Muslims happened to rule large parts of this land.

So obsessive is this need to undo history, so pervasive is the desire to erase the manifestations of anything Islamic from the country's cultural landscape and reclaim and rebrand them as "Hindu" (the enthusiasm for rechristening roads and cities with Muslim names springs from the same impulse), that even the Taj Mahal, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan's world-famous monument to his beloved wife Mumtaz, has not been spared. Earlier this month, BJP leader Rajneesh Singh filed a petition seeking the opening of 22 underground rooms inside the structure, which, he claimed, contained evidence that the site had once housed a Shiva temple. Thankfully, the Allahabad High Court has dismissed the petition as unsustainable.

Other structures may not be so immune. On Monday, there was a dramatic twist to the ongoing legal battle over the 17th-century Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, which was built by Aurangzeb after demolishing a Shiva temple. Hindu petitioners have been demanding that they be allowed to offer prayers at the mosque because it was built on the remnants of a temple. After a local court permitted a video survey of Gyanvapi and its precincts, a lawyer for the petitioners proclaimed that they have found a Shiva linga there, which at once turns up the volume on the dispute and makes it a sensitive and emotive issue for many Hindu worshippers.

The Varanasi court has ordered the district administration and the police to seal off the area of the mosque where the Shiva Linga has allegedly been found. As things stand, unless the Supreme Court, which is to hear a petition from the mosque management committee on Tuesday challenging the survey, rejects this clear attempt to dilute the Places of Worship Act in the Gyanvapi case, the stage seems set for a resumption of the violence, hatred and communal strife that one witnessed during the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid movement.

One must ask, however, if it is merely fringe Hindutva groups, spurred by faith and bigotry and ancient grudges, who are keen to pick the scabs of bygone wounds. It could be argued that the BJP, which spearheaded the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the late 1980s and 1990s — a movement which catapulted the party from just two seats in Parliament in 1984 to forming the government at the Centre in 1998 — no longer needs such religious rallying points. It could be argued that coming back to power in 2014, and winning a second term in 2019, and with no credible Opposition to challenge its might at the national level, the BJP has little to gain from unleashing the violence and social unrest that must necessarily follow the demand for closure and/or dismantling of centuries-old Islamic places of worship on the ground that they overlie demolished Hindu temples.

However, while the ruling party's top brass has remained silent on the quickening demand for opening other Ram Janmabhoomi-like fronts, its minions at the state level have been vocal about the matter. BJP leaders such as Vinay Katiyar and others have repeatedly raised the slogan "Ayodhya toh bas jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura baaki hai (Ayodhya is just a glimpse, Kashi and Mathura are yet to come)". The Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, too, has tweeted statements like "Mathura ki teyari hai (preparations are on for Mathura)." On Monday, he appeared on TV channels, smilingly endorsing the petitioners' claim that a Shiva Linga had been found at the Gyanvapi mosque. It is unlikely that such active support for these "reclamation" drives in Kashi, Mathura and so on, could have come from the BJP's local leaders without the tacit approval of the party's policymakers.

With Ayodhya done and Article 370 dusted, perhaps the ruling party is in need of a fresh cause. With the economy struggling and inflation hitting new peaks every day, with promises of jobs and prosperity largely unfulfilled, perhaps it needs a new set of promises that are deliverable. What remains to be seen is how long India's Hindu majority can be distracted with this relentless appeal to its sense of historical injustices and the need to overturn them, and how long that distraction continues to be a satisfying alternative to the shortcomings of the present.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.