In Uttar Pradesh, a judge rejected an exclusivity request from a committee representing Muslims. The verdict was greeted with singing and dancing by the group that started the dispute. It is feared that the confrontation could become a new Ayodhya and give rise to confessional violence.
New Delhi () – First victory in court for Hindus over Muslims in the controversy that has erupted over the Gyanvapi Mosque, which risks becoming a new Ayodhya, the scene of a wave of confessional violence 30 years ago. which culminated in a massacre. This morning the District Court of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, rejected the injunction filed by the Anjuman Intezamia committee (representing Muslims), to challenge the request to hold celebrations related to Hindu deities within the Islamic place of worship.
The Hindu faithful received the news with songs and dances. Shortly after the verdict, Manju Vyas, one of the five women who started the dispute, shouted in the courtroom: “Bahrat is happy… and my Hindu brothers and sisters should light candles and pray to celebrate.”
Meanwhile, public authorities stationed more than 2,000 officers around the Kashi Vishwanath mosque and Hindu temple, which adjoins the Islamic place of worship, to ensure security and avoid the danger of serious riots. Several religious leaders called for calm and peace.
The monocratic judge AK Vishvesh ruled that the appeal filed is admissible, rejecting the claims of exclusivity of the Muslim counterpart represented by the Anjuman Intezamia Committee, which announced an appeal to the Allahabad High Court. The standoff over the century-old Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in the Hindu tradition, has been going on for months, fueling new tensions between India’s two largest religious communities. Hindu groups say the mosque, located in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, was built on the ruins of a Hindu temple ordered demolished by Muslim rulers in the 17th century.
To fuel the claims, a small group of five Hindu women asked permission to perform rituals related to their faith in a part of the mosque. The court then decided in May of this year to make some footage of the complex and open an investigation to assess the claims of the respective fronts. Hindus claim that a representation of Shiva appeared when the video was being shot in the mosque, a claim Muslims refute.
The events at Gyanvapi are in many ways reminiscent of the Ayodhya precedent, which gave rise to the Hindu-Muslim clashes that led to the 1992 massacre, when a group of Hindu extremists demolished the 16th-century building and built another on the supposed birthplace of god Rama. In the clashes that followed, nearly two thousand people died and the project of a secular and multicultural nation that was born in the first years of independence crumbled. The Supreme Court entered the dispute that, with a ruling of November 9, 2019, established that the place of worship belonged to Hindus. At the same time, he condemned the destruction of the mosque as an illegal act and gave Muslims the right to build another place of worship, offering five acres of land to the Muslim community in Dhannipur village.
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