Sitting under dim lights in the main foyer of the Kaila Devi Temple, Mahant Rishiraj Giri reads out a poem: “Paanch sadi se jama rakt jab sholay ban kar khaulega, Babar bhi tab kabr se uth kar Harihar, Harihar bolega (When the frozen blood of five centuries comes to a boil, even Babar will rise from his grave and chant ‘Harihar, Harihar’).” Giri’s followers, mostly from the Yadav community, nod in appreciation. His Uttar Pradesh Police security detail joins in. It is at this temple, around 25 km from Sambhal city, that the November 19 court petition claiming Hindu right over the city’s Jama Masjid was conceived. According to Hari Shankar Jain, petitioner no. 1 in the case, Giri approached him over a year ago saying there had once been a Harihar Temple where the mosque stands today. “The Mahant gave me some literature and books too… I started doing my own research and, after I had collected enough evidence, this petition was filed,” says Jain. The 70-year-old is behind several similar petitions, including on the Gyanvapi Mosque adjoining the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, and reminds that he has taken a vow “to take back all the temples that were demolished to build mosques”. Jain’s son Vishnu Shankar Jain is the lawyer of the Hindu side in all these cases, including the Sambhal mosque one. Giri himself is petitioner no. 3 in the case. Apart from being a priest, Giri, 47, runs an organisation called the ‘International Hari Har Sena’ which, he claims, has been working for the past five years to “restore Hindu dignity” – he likens it to what Balasaheb Thackeray’s (united) Shiv Sena and Yogi Adityanath’s Hindu Yuva Vahini do. Local papers have reported the organisation’s protests in the past over comments on Sanatan Dharma. The petition regarding the Sambhal mosque was not spur of the moment, Giri says. “A lot of groundwork has gone into it. We have been going village to village and making people aware of the Hari Har Temple. Hindu society is ready to fight for its dignity. When we thought the time was right and the atmosphere appropriate, we filed the case,” he says. Before he takes a break for a smoke – Giri chucks a cigarette pack towards an aide, who lights a cigarette and holds it out for him, in the manner of making a ritual offering – Giri says Hindus would soon be offering prayers inside the Sambhal mosque. The case will move faster than a bullet train, he declares. “Inhone abhi tak chaiwala dekha hai, gai-wala nahin (They have seen how others worked, not us).” The pace, in fact, has been electrifying. The Jains filed their petition in the Chandausi court at around 12 pm on November 19, with Vishnu Shankar seeking immediate inspection of the mosque so that the status quo was not disturbed. The government lawyer in the case, Prince Sharma, did not object, and the prayer was granted by 2.38 pm. Asked about his stand in court, Sharma told The Indian Express: “I am the government lawyer on record. So when the case came up, I had to represent the government.” A resident of Sambhal, Sharma’s father is also a lawyer and is associated with the VHP. After the petition was accepted, the court promptly appointed Advocate Commissioner Ramesh Raghav to conduct a “survey” of the mosque and submit a report by November 29. It did not specify when the survey should be conducted. But Raghav took the court order to the District Magistrate’s office immediately and sought its execution the same day. By evening, the survey had been completed, with officials saying they had intimated the Jama Masjid Committee formally. The committee has denied this, and said everything was done in haste, “against natural justice”. “The court proceedings were one-sided. While we were aware such a petition was being filed, we had no time to do anything about it. The notice for the first survey was handed over to us minutes before the survey," Jama Masjid Committee President Zafar Ali told The Indian Express. Raghav says they did not need to inform the masjid committee, and that all necessary procedures were followed. “In a civil procedure, unless a caveat is filed, the opposite party is not notified at the time of admission. The court did not specify the date of the survey… so it was at our discretion. Since the news of the petition had by now spread… we thought we had to make a surprise survey. What if some things were displaced inside the mosque?” he told The Indian Express. Ali says they did not get any time on the second survey as well, conducted on November 24. “We were verbally informed only at 6 pm on November 23 and a formal notice was given at 9 pm. There was no court order for a second survey,” Ali says. Raghav argues they did not need court permission for it. It was when the survey team arrived for a second inspection on November 24 that a crowd gathered as rumours spread of digging at the mosque. Stonepelting by local residents followed, with four people dying of bullet injuries. Police have denied firing came from their side. An 1878 case, a 1976 murder As the row blows up, both the Hindu and Muslim communities are bringing up old, hazy “facts”. Members of the Hindu community in Sambhal city say they have always called the structure, located in the Kot Purvi area of the city, Harihar Mandir; many claim their grandparents talked about a temple existing at the site. Elderly Hindus living around the mosque say they visited it as children and there was a chain hanging under the central dome that may have once held a bell. They also claim that a well near the entrance is “sacred” and Hindus offered prayers there till a few decades ago. Muslim residents around the mosque concede that Hindus call it Harihar Mandir but say it is due to the fact that a temple existed in the mosque’s vicinity in ancient times, and not at the site itself. Yet, both sides point out, none of this came in the way of their mutual amity, with Hindus and Muslims celebrating festivals together and Hindus fetching water from the mosque’s wazu khana. The first time the issue entered courts was when a title suit was filed on the structure in the Moradabad court by one Chheda Singh in 1878. Ali said the suit was thrown out. This was also confirmed to The Indian Express by sources in the district administration. Peace then largely prevailed till 1976, when the mosque’s maulana was killed by a Hindu man, leading to riots and a month-long curfew. A police post has since stood at the entrance, while the decline in the flow of Hindus visiting it, which began then, never stopped. Many Hindus claim their entry is barred, but masjid committee members say there is no such restriction. Officials also say there are no orders stopping Hindus from entering the mosque. “It’s just that the atmosphere was not conducive for such intermingling anymore. While Muslims were not as welcoming as in the past, the Hindus too began to fear going inside,” an official said. Amidst this, Hindutva organisations gradually built their claim over the structure. According to Amit Varshney, VHP Sambhal in-charge, every year during the Shravan month, a Hindu group leaves from Moradabad to offer water to “Lord Shiva” at the mosque, but is stopped by the administration. “This dispute has been going on for 150 years. Our job is to make people aware and awaken Hindu society, which we have been doing,” he says.
