Gyanvapi: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad claims that the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which requires that the nature of all religious places of worship be preserved as it was on August 15, 1947, does not apply to the Varanasi Gyanvapi Mosque issue.
The Hindu right-wing group maintains that the status of the holy edifice has remained unchanged since 1947 and that Hindus have always performed puja at the site. According to VHP worldwide working president Alok Kumar, the spot where the “Shivling” was discovered was a shrine even in 1947. The Gyanvapi Mandir was his name for it.
On the final day of a court commissioner-led video inspection, lawyers representing five Hindu plaintiffs claimed that a “Shivling” was discovered in the ablution water tank of the mosque. On Monday, Civil Judge, senior division, Ravi Kumar Diwakar ordered that a portion of the Gyanvapi Mosque premises be sealed. The mosque’s keepers, on the other hand, claimed that the object was part of a stone fountain.
“Gyanvapi was always been a temple”
“The site where the Shivling is is a temple, and it was one even in 1947,” Mr. Kumar stated. This is no longer debatable.” He believed that all people of the country would see and respect the “evidence,” and that the county would progress to its “natural conclusion.”
VHP national spokesperson Vinod Bansal said on Tuesday that the Places of Worship Act of 1991 did not prevent the organization from believing that the spot where the “Shivling” was discovered was in essence a temple.
“We are convinced that the mandir’s status has never changed. Mr. Bansal explained, “It was a distinct thing that sometimes puja was regular and other times it was formal.” “We believe it was a mandir in 1947 because puja was performed at the time.” And there should be puja today… which is being done,” he explained.
Mr. Bansal explained that the 1991 Act only applied to structures whose status was being changed. “You want to construct something else after shattering a structure… it [the Act] could have an influence.” However, we began performing Puja in 1947 and continue to do so today,” he remarked.
Siddharth Nath Singh, a BJP MLA, urged Congress to explain why it introduced the Places of Worship Act of 1991. “Wasn’t it to appease a segment of the minority at the height of the Babri controversy, and why accept a colonial power’s 1947 cut-off date?” Mr. Singh tweeted, “It’s time for Congress to respond.”
‘It’s a plot,’ says the narrator
While legal experts and the Gyanvapi Mosque’s caretakers have argued that the lower court’s orders to seal the mosque’s ablution tank were in violation of the Places of Worship Act, 1991, the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board has stated that Gyanvapi was and will continue to be a mosque. According to AIMPLB general secretary Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, the attempt to name it a temple was nothing more than a plot to sow sectarian discord.
According to Mr. Rahmani, a court decision in the Deen Mohammad vs State Secretary case in 1937 that the entire compound of the Gyanvapi Mosque belonged to the Muslim Waqf and Muslims had the right to offer namaz in it based on oral testimony and documents. According to Mr. Rahmani, the court also decided how much of the disputed land belonged to the mosque and how much belonged to the temple.
The object alleged by the Hindu plaintiffs to be a “Shivling” was not proof, according to senior counsel S. Farman Naqvi, who represents the Mosque committee before the Allahabad High Court. “Just because the petitioner is interpreting it in some way does not make it proof.” He stated that “the court will decide.”
Mr. Naqvi was particularly concerned that the Hindu plaintiffs’ application on the discovery of the “Shivling” was presented and accepted by the civil judge, rather than the advocate commissioner designated by the court. Mr. Naqvi added that this was done before the May 17 deadline for the findings of the court commission proceedings to be delivered in court under a sealed cover.