THIRTY years after mobs demolished a historic mosque in Ayodhya, triggering a wave of sectarian bloodshed that saw thousands killed, fundamentalist Hindu groups are eyeing other Muslim sites in India – even the world-famous Taj Mahal.

Emboldened under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aided by courts and fuelled by social media, they believe that the sites are built on top of Hindu temples, which they consider representations of the “true” religion of the country.

Most in danger is the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, where Hindus are cremated by the Ganges.

Reports last week claimed that a leaked court-mandated survey of the mosque discovered a shivalinga, a phallic representation of the Hindu god Shiva, at the site.

“This means that it is the site of a temple,” government minister Kaushal Kishore, a BJP party member, told local media, saying that Hindus should now pray there.

Muslims are already banned from performing ablutions at the water tank where the alleged relic – mosque authorities said it is a fountain – was found.

Religious riots

The fear now is that the Islamic place of worship will go the way of the mosque in Ayodhya, which Hindu groups believe was built on the birthplace of Ram, another deity.

The frenzied destruction of the 450-year-old building in 1992 sparked religious riots, in which more than 2,000 people died, most of them Muslims, who number 200 million in India.

The demolition was also a seminal moment for Hindutva – Hindu supremacy – paving the way for Modi to rise to power in 2014.

The movement’s core tenet has long been that Hinduism is India’s original religion, and that everything else – from the Mughals, originally from Central Asia, to the British – is alien.

Some fringe groups have even set their sights on Unesco world heritage site the Taj Mahal, the best-known monument in the country that attracts millions of visitors every year.

Despite no credible evidence, they claimed that the 17th-century mausoleum was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan on the site of a Shiva shrine.

“It was destroyed by Mughal invaders so that a mosque could be built there,” said Sanjay Jat, spokesman for hard-line organisation Hindu Mahasabha.

A court petition last month was filed to force India’s archaeological body, the ASI, to open up 20 rooms inside, believing they contained Hindu idols.

The ASI said there is no such idol and the court summarily dismissed the petition.

But it is not the first such case and unlikely to be the last.

“I will continue to fight for this till my death,” said Jat.

“We respect the courts but if needed, we will demolish the Taj and prove the existence of a temple there.”

‘Gospel truth’

Audrey Truschke, an associate professor of South Asian history with Rutgers University, said the claims about the Taj Mahal are “about as reasonable as the proposals that the Earth is flat”.

“So far, as I can discern, there is not a coherent theory about the Taj Mahal at play here so much as a frenzied and fragile nationalist pride that does not allow anything non-Hindu to be Indian and demands to erase Muslim parts of Indian heritage.”

But while the demolition of the Taj Mahal remains – for now, at least – a pipe-dream of the fundamentalists, other sites are also in the crosshairs.

They include the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after he attacked the city and destroyed its temples in 1670.

It is next to a temple built on what is believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna.

A court yesterday agreed to hear a suit demanding the removal of the mosque, one of a slew of similar petitions.

Police in the northern city have been put on alert.

Another is Delhi’s Qutub Minar, a 13th-century minaret and victory tower built by the Mamluk dynasty, also from Central Asia.

Some Hindu groups claimed it was constructed by a Hindu king and that the complex housed more than 25 temples.

Such claims are born of “very sparse” knowledge of the past, said historian Rana Safvi.

Instead, a “sense of victimhood” is being fuelled by social media misinformation, “making them believe it is the gospel truth”, she added. – AFP, May 20, 2022.