By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – The historic 12th century Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra Masjid, situated near the famous dargah of Sufi mystic Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, has become the latest target of right-wing outfits taking advantage of the majoritarian tendencies raising their ugly head in the Bharatiya Janata Party rule. The Hindu extremists have staked claim on the mosque with a bogus assertion that a Sanskrit school and a Jain temple existed at its site earlier.
The mosque, where regular Namaz is offered five times a day, is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which has declared that it is actually a Masjid built by Qutub-ud-Din-Aibak, first Sultan of Delhi, in 1199 A.D., contemporary to the other one built at Qutub Minar complex of Delhi known as Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque. The ASI website says that Sultan Iltutmish had subsequently beautified Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra Masjid in 1213 A.D. with a screen pierced by corbelled engrailed arches which appeared in India for the first time.
A group of Jain monks, led by Sunil Sagar Maharaj, and several leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) visited the mosque earlier this month despite objections raised by the people living in the densely populated locality and demanded that it be handed over to its “original owners”. The extremist elements demanded that ASI should undertake a survey of the structure, just like it has done at other places where a controversy has been raised.
The Jain monks, who were not wearing any clothes as per their religious beliefs, reached the monument from Fawara Circle via Dargah Bazaar in Ajmer and spent some time on the mosque premises and inspected the site. In a clear indication that the monks and VHP leaders were conniving to make Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra a new flashpoint, they gave interviews to the local television and YouTube media channels in a provocative language and issued threatening statements.
Deputy Mayor of Ajmer Municipal Corporation Neeraj Jain said that demands to redevelop Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra have been raised in the past as well. “We have in the past demanded that the monument should be redeveloped and its past glory restored,” Jain said, adding that there were idols kept in a store room in the monument. He said the visitors had found that the mosque was built “illegally by miscreants after destroying a Sanskrit school”.
Adding fuel to the fire, Rajasthan Assembly Speaker Vasudev Devnani said the Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra had always been imprinted in the public mind as a Sanskrit school. “The people of Ajmer know what importance it had in the form of education in the ancient times in the Sanatan culture. How it was captured and became Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra from a school is a matter of research,” Devnani, elected to State Assembly from Ajmer North constituency, said. He said a formal request will be made to the ASI to launch a survey of the monument.
However, the ASI’s official stand, as stated on its website, is that a large number of architectural members and sculptures of temples are lying inside the verandah of the Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra complex for safety and security purposes by the Archaeology Department, which shows the existence of a Hindu temple in its vicinity during circa 11th-12th century. “This mosque, built from the dismantled remains of temples, is known as Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra possibly from the fact that a fair used to be held here for two and a half days,” the ASI says, making it clear that the remains of the Hindu temples, lying in the vicinity, were used as a normal practice for the construction of the mosque.
On the other hand, Devnani, spurred by the irrational claims that a Sanskrit school and a Hindu temple had once existed at the site, has demanded that an ASI survey should immediately be done to find out whether the Jain delegates’ claim is true. “I will write to the Chief Minister to conduct this survey as soon as possible. It is a subject to research whether it was occupied and converted into a mosque. The necessary action can be taken after that,” Devnani said.
Monk Sunil Sagar Maharaj was also emphatic about his claim despite the absence of any evidence to support it. “A Sanskrit school used to be there at the historical Adhai Din ka Jhonpra. It seems that it started being called Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra and was converted into a mosque due to the Mughal influence. They might have also changed the early structure of the place, but a slew of symbols are still there,” Sunil Sagar Maharaj, who led the delegation to the monument, said.
“We have also found similar idols and many other old structures in Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra that indicate the presence of a Jain temple on the premises. But everything is gone now, and only a mosque is visible,” the Jain monk said, while affirming that “things should be returned to those to whom it belonged to historically”.
Taking strong exception to the visit of Jain monks and VHP leaders to Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra Masjid and their bogus claims and demands, Syed Sarwar Chishti, Secretary of Ajmer Dargarh’s Anjuman Khuddam Syedzadgan – a representative body of Khadims at the dargah – termed it highly inappropriate. He especially raised objection to the monks entering the mosque premises in an unclad state, without wearing any clothes.
“It is highly wrong how these people entered the mosque without following any etiquette and started claiming our holy place as a Sanskrit school without any proper evidence. How could they even enter the premises without wearing any clothes? I have notified the matter to the local police inspector, and he said that the visit was not permitted,” Chishti said in a statement released through an audio clip on the social media platforms.
Reacting to Chishti’s remarks, Devnani said since the Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra was an ASI site, anybody could visit the place. “It does not belong to any specific community. Anybody including the Jain monks and Hindus can visit there whenever they want. It is for everyone. Rather, Chishti should apologise to the Jain delegates for his comment,” Devnani said. He also said that Chishti’s comments about the clothes of Jain saints amounted to an insult to the entire Jain community.
Significantly, the pilgrim town of Ajmer has witnessed a similar controversy about Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s dargah as well in the past, with the right-wing outfits claiming that even the 12th century dargah used to be Hindu temple. On May 27, 2022, Rajyavardhan Singh Parmar, president, Maharana Pratap Sena, wrote a letter to the then Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot claiming that there were symbols of Swastik on the walls and windows of the dargah. He demanded that ASI should conduct a survey of the dargah.
In a letter shot off to the Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma on January 27 this year, after the BJP came to power in the state, Parmar sought an ASI survey again in line with the survey of Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid and Varanasi’s Gyanvapi Masjid. This trend clearly shows the clamour growing among the extremist elements of the Hindu community for construction of temples at the sites of Islamic monuments after deliberating raising a controversy with the false claims. Amid the growing Hindutva rhetoric, The BJP is sadly giving a free hand to such elements to vitiate communal harmony in the country as part of its politics of polarisation practised through the temple-mosque debates.
