Hindus throng another disputed mosque in India

NEW DELHI: Thousands of Hindus have been flocking to the site of India’s 17th century Gyanvapi mosque where Hindu priests have been allowed to say prayers from a cellar in the latest sectarian dispute over holy sites.

A court ruled on Jan 31 that Hindu priests can use that part of the mosque in the holy city of Varanasi, in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, after an archaeological survey said it was built following the destruction of a temple there.

Conflicting religious claims have been dividing India - which has a Hindu majority of about 80 percent of its 1.42 billion people but also the world’s third largest Muslim population - since independence from British rule in 1947.

Hindu priests in the adjoining Kashi Vishwanath temple, devoted to Lord Shiva, now offer prayers at the Gyanvapi mosque’s cellar five times a day, said priest Ashutosh Vyas, who comes from one of the petitioner families in the legal case.

“Every day, more than 10,000 people visit the Gyanvapi area to get a glimpse of their lord from a distance,” he said. “The number has been increasing since the court order. People are very desperately waiting to see a temple at the site.”

Reuters could not independently verify the number of visitors. A government official, who declined to be named, said many among the tens of thousands of devotees who come to Kashi Vishwanath now also visit an area near the mosque from where the Hindu praying site can be seen.

Senior police officer Ashok Mutha Jain said there had been no change in the security arrangement of the area with plainclothes officers in three shifts, as well as armed and unarmed forces, guarding it like before. Syed Mohammad Yaseen, joint secretary of the Gyanvapi mosque committee, said Muslims are still praying there five times a day.