Another temple-mosque row in Madhya Pradesh as permission is denied for Nag Panchami celebrations

On Thursday, a section of the Hindu groups had submitted a memorandum to Collector Buddhesh Kumar Vaidya to open the site in the heart of the city on Nag Panchami. Vaidya sent the memorandum to the ASI which, on August 2, cited a gazette notification of 1951 and stated that Bijamandal was not a temple but a mosque.

Vaidya said the ASI is the “custodian of the structure, so he had forwarded the memorandum to allow it to take a call on the matter”. A senior ASI official, however, told The Indian Express, “There was no controversy at all over his monument. There is a mosque here and both communities have existed peacefully. Hindus used to offer prayers in the vicinity and there was no dispute. This is an attempt to incite the people and nothing else.”

BJP’s Mukesh Tandon, the Vidisha MLA, said, “We have been offering prayers here for 32 years. There was nothing wrong in what the Collector did. The ASI has come out with a statement that this is a mosque. I will go to court to seek its permission for a survey.”

The ASI official said, “The site has some protected structures, which is why the doors are locked. There is no other reason. It is declared a protected monument.”

Chaudhary Parvez Ahmed, acting president of the Muslim Society in Vidisha, meanwhile said, “The Muslim community has been offering namaz in the Bijamandal idgah mosque for a long time. An agreement was made in 1965 and we stand by that. The idgah mosque was built by the government, and the land was purchased from the property handed over to us.”

Some groups argue the site was originally a Hindu temple that was allegedly demolished during the reign of Aurangzeb, who ruled from 1658 to 1707 AD. According to the ASI, “The mosque is constructed on the ruins of a Hindu Temple. One of the inscriptions found on the pillar says that it was a temple of Goddess Charchika (12th-13th Century).”

– With PTI inputs