Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath addressed the Gyanvapi mosque row in an interview on July 31, urging the Muslim side in the case to offer a solution for a “historical mistake”.
The interview comes as the Allahabad High Court is hearing a plea by the mosque committee, which has appealed against a Varanasi district court’s order directing the Archaeological Survey of India to hold a survey and determine if the Varanasi mosque was built on a temple. A ruling on the case is reserved till August 3.
CM Yogi, speaking to Smita Prakash in an ANI podcast, said there would be a dispute if Gyanvapi is called a mosque. “There will be a dispute if we call it a mosque. I feel whoever has been blessed with sight by God, that person should see. What is a trident doing inside a mosque. We did not put it there. There is a jyotirlinga, dev pratimas (idols),” he said.
“The walls are screaming and saying something. I feel there should be a proposal from the Muslim society that there has been a historical mistake and we need a solution,” the chief minister said.
On July 30, Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya said if the BJP looks for a temple in every mosque, it will cost them dearly. “Because if they look for a temple in every mosque then people will start searching for a Buddhist monastery in every temple,” PTI quoted Maurya as saying.
“The Badrinath and Kedarnath temples in Uttarakhand, the Jagannath Temple in Puri, the Ayyappa Temple in Kerala and the Vithoba temple in Pandharpur (Maharashtra) were Buddhist monasteries. These Buddhist monasteries were demolished and then Hindu religious shrines came up there. They were Buddhist monasteries till the eighth century,” he said.
Last year, lawyers representing Hindu petitioners claimed that a ‘Shivling’ was found in the Gyanvapi mosque complex, located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, during a videography survey. However, the mosque committee disputed the claim, saying it was part of the water fountain mechanism in the wazookhana reservoir that is used by devotees to perform ritual ablutions before offering namaz. (Agency inputs)