Call it by its name

When the Muslim community objects to the assault on their places of worship, the counter-question is often: hasn’t the government bulldozed temples, too, in Kashi and Ayodhya? Doesn’t that prove that the motivation is not bigotry but public convenience or administrative adherence?

The attempt to equate the two is, however, misplaced. While Hindu temples in Kashi and Ayodhya came down for bigger, grander temples, Islamic structures came down on grounds of encroachment on public land, even when they were centuries old.

In rare cases, when the administration served notices to the caretakers, asking for documents to ‘show cause’ why the structures should not be demolished, they went ahead anyway, without a proper hearing or scrutiny of documents, reveals a research project by the Network of South Asian Journalists, administered by the ICFJ (International Center for Journalists), Washington, DC.

The project reveals that in Uttarakhand alone, over 300 mazars (shrines), mosques and madrasas (schools) were bulldozed during the last four–five years. Vishnu Jain, representing the Hindu side in the Gyanvapi disputed structure case, had claimed there were at least 50 ‘disputed’ mosques and monuments across the country which needed to be restored to Hindus.

Historian Shahid Siddiqui affirms that various Hindu organisations have compiled a list of approximately 30,000 such structures, many of which are of cultural, historical, architectural and religious significance to the Muslim community, who continue to worship there.

Senior advocate Farman Haider Naqvi, representing the Muslim side in the Gyanvapi case, points out that although the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 stipulates that religious places should remain as they existed as on 15 August 1947, the challenge to the Act remains pending before the Supreme Court. This, he says, has allowed the lower courts to make observations, order surveys and admit stray complaints for hearing.

Sometimes the courts have even altered the nature of the places of worship. In Varanasi, for instance, the court allowed Hindus to conduct a puja in the southern cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque, and the district judge ruled that the Hindu petitioners’ plea to worship did not violate the Act.

Muslim places of worship have become battlegrounds in BJP-ruled states. The trend is not new. In Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Bhopal, mosques and mazars have been razed for years under the guise of widening existing roads or as part of anti-encroachment drives. In the 1990s, when Kalyan Singh was chief minister, Uttar Pradesh saw the demolition of Ghaziuddin Ghazi’s tomb in Ghaziabad.

The war on Muslim sites accelerated from 2014, starting with a renaming spree. Mughalsarai Junction became Deendayal Upadhyay Junction. Allahabad was renamed Prayagraj. Gurgaon became Gurugram, and open spaces and parks where Muslims congregated to offer Friday prayers were barred. Then followed the demolition spree.

The Muslim community can therefore hardly be blamed for seeing this as an organised campaign. With Narendra Modi’s return to power, it now fears the loss of even more sites.

During the heat and dust of the election campaign in May 2024, a case was filed in the Jaunpur district court, claiming that the 14th-century Atala Masjid was an ancient Hindu temple. The petitioner, advocate Ajay Pratap Singh, cited an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report in which one of the directors had described the mosque as a temple.

Maulana Shahabuddin, representing the mosque, made the counter-claim that the mosque was constructed by Feroz Shah Tughlaq in 1393. (Ironically, the madrasa that Tughlaq established right next to the mosque is recognised as a monument by the ASI.)

A similar lawsuit was filed in Lucknow, claiming that the ancient name of the city was Laxman Nagri. Teele Wali Masjid was apparently built on the ruins of Laxman Tila, an ancient Sanatan dharma heritage site. The same Ajay Pratap Singh filed a case claiming that Salim Chishti’s dargah in Fatehpur Sikri was originally a temple dedicated to Kamakhya Devi. The 800-year-old Jama Masjid in Badaun, claimed the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, was constructed on the remains of a Shiva temple.

The century-old Chhotey Mian Chishti’s mazar in Delhi’s Mandi House area, three kilometres from the new Parliament House, was levelled on a fateful night in April last year, giving Akbar Ali, the caretaker, no time to present relevant documents to the SDM.

At 2.00 am on 20 August 2023, Wajahat Ali, the caretaker of the two-and-a-half centuries old Mama-Bhanje’s mazar in Jhandewalan, received a call from the PWD office — the mazar would be demolished because it encroached on the road. At 4.00 am, the bulldozers arrived. By 8.00 am, it was a heap of rubble.

On 30 January 2024, the Akhoondji Mosque (which is at least 600 years old) and its adjoining madrasa in Delhi’s Mehrauli was razed to the ground by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). Journalist Prashant Tandon points out that the claim of encroachment on DDA land is absurd, as the mosque predates the DDA’s existence by centuries.

The 150-year-old mosque near Air Force Bhawan in the Sunehri Bagh area is up next for demolition by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), citing traffic needs. Despite the stay order, the NDMC has challenged the claims of the Delhi Waqf Board.

The Delhi Waqf Board contends that plots allotted by the NDMC to a Central agency — the Lal Masjid in Aliganj village along the Lodi Road and the adjacent graveyard for instance — hold Mughal-era mosques and graveyards that are not the NDMC’s property. These objections were, however, overruled.

Senior lawyer Changez Khan challenged the demolition in court. While the mosque has been spared temporarily, its days are numbered. Caretaker Nafisa Begum admits to pressure on her to withdraw the case. “Not only have they filed numerous suits,” she says, “now they are demanding that we abandon the mosque.”

Adjacent to the newly minted Parliament House stands a mazar that has, for years, graced the entrance to the Central Secretariat Metro Station. Its railings and embellishments have already been vandalised.

And these are the ones that make the headlines. Mukhtar Ali, a resident of Old Delhi, laments the overnight disappearance of hundreds of anonymous graves and tombs. These graveyards, says Professor Abdul Qadir Siddiqui from Jamia Hamdard University, bear not just the remains of freedom fighters and eminent personalities, they bear memories.

With every demolition, those memories are erased, and our collective consciousness is poorer for it.