Yogi’s Taj U-turn due to his court case?

After raising hackles by mentioning Taj’s Islamic past and dropping the Taj out of UP tourism department’s booklet, Yogi Adityanath metamorphosed. He waxed eloquent about the Indians who, with their sweat and blood, had built the mausoleum and he appeared with a broom at the Taj Mahal to clean a small area outside it. Does his change of mind have anything to do with a case in the Allahabad High Court for his involvement in 2007 Gorakhpur riot?

Yogi Adityanath was jailed in 2007 for instigating communal violence and provoking Hindu YuvaVahini members to set on fire a mausoleum in his own parliamentary constituency, where he is the Mahant of the Gorakhnath temple. The case was filed by Parvez Parwaz, a resident of Gorakhpur, in 2008.

Parwaz’s counsel Asad Hayat seemed confident that Yogi would resign as CM “because he wouldn’t be able to delay his prosecution for long”, despite the government having submitted recently that the Chief Minister can’t be prosecuted. “This is the strength of Indian democracy that even a fanatic puts on hold his communal agenda for a while,” added Asad Hayat, while acknowledging that he didfear for his life because of the case against a “hot-headed politician”.

According to local residents, Yogi won the Lok Sabha election from Gorakhpur consecutively five times only by raising the issues, which would create a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. This man had based his campaign in the 1998 Parliamentary election on the promise to rename Ali Nagar, Miyan Bazar and Urdu Bazar in Gorakhpur town to Arya Nagar, Maya Bazar and Hindi Bazar.

“Although Adityanath had won Gorakhpur Parliamentary seat five times but the names of those three markets never changed in government records. Some businessmen who support the mahant have written Arya Nagar, Maya Bazar and Hindi Bazar on the boards of their shops but majority of the shopkeepers still use the old names,” said Manoj Singh, a social worker in Gorakhpur, stressing that fanatical views are bound to fail in a democracy in the long run.

Mohammad Irfan Bedar, who was appointed caretaker of Taj on April 20, 1998, said, “Those who associate Islam or violence with the monument are fools.” Bedar, fighting a case in the Supreme Court since 2005 to list the Taj as a waqf property, also questioned the intention of Samajwadi general secretary Azam Khan behind his statements in support of the 17th Century mausoleum and the Mughals.

He reminded that Azam had written to the Central government to hand over the management of the Taj to the state government. “Azam as UP’s waqf minister in November 2014 wanted to become the caretaker of the monument, which attracts 50,000 tourists, mostly foreigners every day,” said Bedar. “Azam had made same demand in 1987 but it was turned down at that time. He renewed the demand in 2014 and got frustrated again.”

Ironically, Azam had said in January 2013 that he was willing to lead a crowd to “raze the Taj Mahal because Shah Jahan had no right to spend crores from public coffer to immortalise the memory of his beloved”.

Currently, while 25 per cent of the earning from the 17th century monument goes to the Archaeological Survey of India, 75 per cent remains with Agra Development Authority.

“Instead of creating a controversy around the Taj, politicians should have addressed more relevant issues. For example, the monthly salary of the Imam of the mosque on the Taj Mahal premises where Friday prayer is conducted is `15. Shah Jahan used to pay an Imam of the Taj 15 silver coins a month, which means about `90,000,” adds Bedar.

The ASI, which rejected the demand to make it a waqf property, argues that it has been managing the monument as per a notification of the British government dated November 18, 1920, which says that the Taj falls under Ancient Monument Preservation Act, 1904, and vests in the government.