On April 8, a civil court in Uttar Pradesh asked the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a survey at the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi ...
On April 8, a civil court in Uttar Pradesh asked the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a survey at the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi to determine whether it was built over a temple. The order was passed in a representative suit filed by devotees of the deity “Swayambhu Lord Vishweshwar” who claimed that the mosque was built at the site after a temple was demolished in 1669 on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangazeb. They have asked the court to restore the land to the Hindus for the construction of a temple.
An ASI survey has obvious political ramifications. It was a similar survey in 2003 that muddled the Babri Masjid dispute in Ayodhya, when the ASI report claimed that there existed a large structure beneath the 16th-century mosque that could have been a temple. The ASI, however, was not able to provide any direct evidence that a temple was destroyed for the purpose of building a mosque.
Despite this, the Supreme Court in 2019 awarded the disputed site to the Hindu side for the construction of a Ram temple. Even though the Supreme Court did not base its judgement on the ASI survey, expressly stating that the title suit cannot be...
