Gyanvapi temple had a muddled past
In Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, a team from the Archaeological assessment of India (ASI) came early on Friday. Under strict security, they began a scientific assessment of the complex at the Gyanvapi mosque, which is close to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple.
The Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee had filed a petition objecting to the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) survey of the mosque complex next to Varanasi’s Kashi Vishwanath temple, but the Allahabad High Court on Thursday allowed the ASI to proceed with its survey.
The Varanasi District Judge’s order from July 21 had been contested by the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee.
In response to a request made by four Hindu ladies on May 16, 2023, Varanasi district judge AK Vishvesha ordered the ASI survey of the Gyanvapi complex on July 21.
It may be appropriate to examine the matter from a historical and archaeological standpoint at this moment, when this mandir-masjid argument over Gyanvapi is raging. However, if Muslims and Hindus can come to an amicable agreement on the historical details of Gyanvapi, it will be a precedent for other contentious sites.
Gyanvapi temple had a muddled past
The Gyanvapi mosque is situated in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. A Gujarati trader rebuilt the Vishwanath temple in the grounds of another old temple, the Avimukteshvara, approximately 1236 CE, according to history that has been preserved since the first half of the 13th century. Until it was substantially demolished under the Sharqi monarchs of Jaunpur (1436–1458 CE), the Vishwanath temple flourished in splendour. But Sikandar Lodhi entirely destroyed the temple in 1490. After 90 years, approximately 1583–1583, the temple was reconstructed by the eminent scholar and author Narayana Bhatta (1514–1595) with the assistance of Raja Todar Mal (Raghunath Pandit), a senior court official of Akbar, and with the backing and patronage of King Man Singh of Jaipur.
The Kashi Vishwanath temple, re-constructed in 1780 by Ahilyabai Holkar, the Queen of Indore, is just a short distance away. A well-known temple honouring the Hindu god Shiva is Kashi Vishwanath.
A well was concealed by a nineteenth-century arcaded pavilion until 2018, which was situated in an open space in the main temple of Vishveshvara (Vishwanath) in the Gyanvapi neighbourhood. The mosque is frequently referred to as the Gyanvapi mosque due to its location. The Gyanvapi well has now entered the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor due to the realignment of the holy city.
Recent petitions assert that the ‘original’ Kashi Vishwanath temple was located on the same site as the Gyanvapi mosque. Whether this is real or not is debatable, although researchers appear confident that it does in fact stand on the ruins of a Shiva-related Vishweshwara temple. Although historians disagree on the actual antiquity of this Vishweshwara temple, they do concur that Qutub-ud-din Aibak, the general of Ghurid Sultan Mohammad Gauri, initially destroyed it in the 12th century.
The temple allegedly was demolished by Aurangzeb in 1669, and a mosque was built in its place. The mosque’s courtyard was still used and completely unaltered on the plinth of the temple. The building continued to contain a number of additional Mughal architectural characteristics that are still there today.
The Gyanvapi site, in particular for its surviving plinth, remained popular among Hindu pilgrims, therefore it is possible that Brahmin priests were still allowed to live in the mosque complex and wield privileges related matters of Hindu pilgrimage despite the temple’s destruction.
Regarding the timeline of events and historicity of the original temple site, there are several claims and counterclaims that are prevalent, but there is no historical scholarship to support any of them.
The Gyanvapi mosque, which has minarets as high as 71 metres and still dominates the skyline of Hinduism’s holiest city, rose in its stead. Even though Aurangzeb had the option of destroying the entire temple, he purposefully left the back area standing, ostensibly as a warning and perhaps even to mock the city’s Hindu population. Two mosques now stand on the remains of the ancient Vishwanath temple: the lesser-known upper mosque, constructed in the 13th century by Raziyya Sultana, and the more well-known lower mosque, constructed in the 17th century by Aurangzeb.
The Kacchawahs and Maratha leaders attempted to overthrow Aurangzeb’s mosque and reconstruct the Vishveshvara temple multiple times between the early and middle of the 18th century, but each attempt was crushed by the Mughals. Gyanavapi, which serves as the sacral mundi for initiation and completion rites, is regarded as the hub of the cosmic domain of Kashi.
Revising history
Only remnants of Raja Todar Mal’s temple, which was rebuilt in 1585 in Chunar sandstone less than 100 metres to the south of the historic Vishwanath temple, may be seen at the location where the mosque built by Aurangzeb now stands. The apparent remnants of the temple, which was not totally destroyed, are elevated above the qibla wall.
It is difficult to determine the original layout of the temple that Raja Todar Mal and Narayana Bhatta constructed. We have James Prinsep’s possible reconstruction of the monument’s overall design, which was published in 1833 and was partially based on the description of the deities as envisioned in the Kashi Khanda. In Prinsep’s design, the temple is depicted as a mandala (cosmogram) comprising three 3×3 square chambers, the larger of which is set aside for Vishveshvara. This reconstruction is dubious since it complies neither with the visible architectural evidence nor with the customs of the time regarding temple construction.
Now the question is, could a mosque be constructed with ill-gotten gains or on a land that is illegally occupied, much less the place where a house of worship for a different religion once stood? There is general agreement that such a building couldn’t be dedicated as a mosque since it would be wicked.
The sober and principled stance has always been that desecration and destruction of a place of worship belonging to another religion is an abomination for which there could be no theological justification or normative justification in Islam, regardless of what has happened in history. Unambiguously stated in the Quran, “The monasteries, the churches, the synagogues, and the mosques, where God’s name is abundantly remembered, would have been destroyed had God not been repelling some people through the means of some others” (22:40).
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