On Friday morning, as Special Advocate Commissioner for the Gyanvapi mosque advanced survey, Vishal Singh, visits Assi Ghat, surrounded by armed safety guards and his affiliate legal professionals, he causes a minor stir. Looking on the small crowd of onlookers tailing the officer, a befuddled Rudra Kumar, who runs a tea stall on the steps of the ghat, says, “Lagta hai yagan bhi survey hoga. Survey ho gaya to yahan bhi kuch niklega (Looks like there will be a survey here too. If that happens, they will find something here too.)”
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In Varanasi, a metropolis that is three cities in a single, the place Kashi, Benaras and Varanasi have ebbed and flowed into one another for hundreds of years, the ‘survey’ is what holds out each promise and worry — the promise, to some, that ‘historic wrongs ‘ can lastly be corrected and the glory of the town restored to match the grandeur of the newly refurbished Kashi Vishwanath temple advanced. And the worry that, with that, some extra of the outdated, unvarnished Varanasi could possibly be misplaced without end — a metropolis cramped lanes held numerous small temples and mosques and remarkably nonetheless had house left for its folks.
Hearing a petition by 5 Hindu girls in search of entry to wish at “a shrine behind the western wall of the mosque complex”, a court docket in Varanasi had on April 8 ordered an inspection of the location together with a videographic survey of the motion.
The refurbished Kashi Vishwanath Temple and the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi. (Express picture by Renuka Puri)
On May 17, the Supreme Court requested the Varanasi district Justice of the Peace to safe the world the place a shivling was claimed to have been discovered throughout the videographic survey of the mosque space with out impeding or proscribing the rights of Muslims to entry and supply namaz on the mosque.
Two separate experiences on the videography survey of the Gyanvapi mosque, which had been submitted to the Varanasi court docket on May 19, acknowledged that particles of outdated temples had been discovered on the nook of the northern and western partitions exterior the barricading, and Hindu motifs resembling bells , kalash, flowers and trishul had been seen on pillars within the tehkhana (basement).
A day later, throughout Varanasi, the survey and its ‘findings’ proceed to be spoken of with pleasure — or rigorously sidestepped.
Rudra, the tea vendor on the steps of the Assi Ghat, has realized that there will not be any extra surveys — the officer was right here just for a TV interview.
“We already knew that the mosque space was a part of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The survey report has solely confirmed that,” he says. On the objections raised by the Muslim side, he says, “Kehne dijiye unko (allow them to say what they need to).”
Kanhaiyya Kumar, 31, who has simply purchased a cup of tea from Rudra, joins within the dialog. “Apne itihaas ko janana zaroori hai (It is important to be aware of our history). When the Mughals ruled, they plundered us and destroyed our temples. Now it’s our waqt (time) and Modiji is in power, so we can hope to get back what we lost,” says Kumar, who owns a dosa stall exterior Assi Ghat.
Once the court docket upholds the claims of the Hindu petitioners, the temple will lengthen into the mosque, he says, extending a warning, “Jo Ayodhya me hua, wahi Kashi me hoga (whatever happened in Ayodhya will happen in Kashi).”
At the identical ghat, Ved Prakash Pandey, 86, has simply completed his yoga session as a part of Subah-e-Banaras, a cultural program that the state authorities started in 2014 and is now a vacationer draw. The survey and the “truth it has brought out”, he says, was a lot wanted – “sanskaron ke liye (for the sake of tradition)”.
The discuss not often veers away from the survey, and when it does, Pandey is essentially forgiving of the federal government. “Inflation is a global problem, not just India’s. Petrol is costly, but then you see queues of vehicles at petrol pumps these days… If lemons are expensive, that is good for the poor farmer,” he says.
The metropolis’s famed “Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb” appears just a little jaded within the new Varanasi, but those that discuss of it, like Hazi Mohammad Naseer, who runs a cosmetics store in Dalmandi, a market space lower than a kilometer from the Kashi Vishwanath Temple -Gyanvapi Mosque advanced, level to the truth that the town has had no communal conflict in latest historical past, or that the late Bismillah Khan performed his shehnai at Hindu weddings, or that some Muslim properties even have Hindu temples inside them.
On more moderen occasions, Naseer prefers a strategic silence. “We have decided not to say anything about the Prime Minister and Chief Minister while speaking on this issue. Otherwise bulldozers will start working. We have been asked by the imams of our mosques to pray for the safety of Gyanvapi Mosque during the Friday prayers,” he says.
The metropolis had barely recovered from the rancour of the elections, he says, when the survey controversy has stoked recent fears. The BJP had made a clear sweep of Varanasi within the elections earlier this yr, profitable seven of the eight seats with its ally Apna Dal (S) profitable one.
Seated subsequent to Naseer, Mumtaz Ahmed, who works in a garment store, is extra forthcoming. “I’ve prayed on the Gyanvapi Mosque a number of instances prior to now. There isn’t any shivling within the wuzu khana. All that is being finished to divide the 80 per cent and 20 per cent for political causes,” he says, including that solely outsiders stand to learn from the dispute, not the folks of Varanasi.
On Friday, because the loudspeakers — a lot muted after the enforcement of a latest order to decrease decibel ranges — announce the tip of the azaan, devotees file out of the Gyanvapi Mosque. Any discuss of the survey is strictly averted.
“Our stand is being introduced within the courts by legal professionals of the mosque committee. Now the matter can also be within the Supreme Court. We ought to look ahead to justice from the court docket. It is best for us to argue contained in the court docket, not on the roads,” says a namazi who would not need to be recognized.
Inside the Kashi Vishwanath temple advanced, the idol of the Nandi bull, gazing within the route of the Gyanvapi Mosque, has been drawing crowds since final week when discuss of a shivling being found throughout the survey first got here up. “Is that where they found the shivling?” a couple of devotee asks the clergymen, safety personnel and native guests, pointing within the route of the masjid wall.
Ganeshi, a priest seated close to the Nandi, solutions most of those queries and engages in some hypothesis of his personal concerning the mosque and the court docket case.
Guru Prasad Jaiswal, a devotee from Gorakhpur, hangs across the Nandi for some time earlier than heading to the shrine. “God alone knows what is happening these days. The controversy will now shift to Kashi because you can no longer milk Ayodhya for votes.”
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
