India: What is behind the 'reclaiming temples' campaign?

At least five people were killed, and many more injured, last week during street clashes sparked by a survey investigating if India's centuries-old Shahi Jama Masjid mosque was built on the former site of a Hindu temple in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The hilltop mosque in the city of Sambhal has long been contested, with Hindu groups claiming it was constructed on the ruins of the Harihar temple in 1529.

A local court ordered the survey after a Hindu priest in November claimed the mosque was built on the temple site.

Nearly 1,000 Muslim protesters gathered outside the mosque in a bid to block surveyors from the government's Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from entering to investigate the claims.

The court's swift authorization for the survey has exacerbated tensions between India's Hindu and Muslim communities. A judicial inquiry commission is now probing the circumstances surrounding the violence.

Amid the incident in Sambhal, a petition was filed in court by a right-wing Hindu group in the northwestern state of  Rajasthan claiming that the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, a Sufi tomb, was built on the site of a Hindu temple.

Politics and religion closely intertwined in India

Opposition political parties have suggested political motives behind the disputes, rather than genuine historical inquiries.

Some Hindu activist groups, which are often linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party, have claimed that several mosques in India were built over Hindu temples centuries ago during the Muslim Mughal empire.

"The governance of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological mentor, the RSS, is weakening the rule of law in the country," Asaduddin Owaisi, chief of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a political party advocating Muslim rights, told DW.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a Hindu umbrella group that advocates a Hindu nationalist agenda. It provided the ideological inspiration for the BJP. 

Owaisi pointed out that the Ajmer Sharif Dargah is 800 years old and many non-Muslims also worship there.

Owaisi added that India's 1991 Places of Worship Act was passed to preserve India's secular character and prevent communal conflicts. Its aim is to preserve worship sites as they were on August 15, 1947, India's Independence Day.

Legal disputes over religious sites intensify

Despite this legal framework designed to protect religious sites from being contested based on historical claims, courts have increasingly entertained petitions challenging this status.

Over the past few years, there have been efforts by Hindu nationalists to challenge the status of mosques across the country by asserting that they were originally temples destroyed by Muslim rulers.

There is currently a debate about the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism's holiest cities, which is mired in legal battles.

The status of the Mathura Shahi Idgah mosque in the northern city of Mathura is also embroiled in a legal dispute.

Similarly, the 13th-century Bhojshala-Kamal Maula complex in central Madhya Pradesh has become the latest site for an ASI scientific survey.

The action followed a Madhya Pradesh High Court ruling, which ordered the ASI to conduct a survey of the premises as the complex is contested by Hindus and Muslims, who call it Vagdevi temple and Kamal Maula Mosque, respectively.

Similar claims have also been made about other historical sites, such as the Qutub Minar, a 13th-century minaret and UNESCO World Heritage Site in New Delhi, further fueling tensions.

The example of Ayodhya Temple 

Last year, Modi inaugurated the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built on the site of the Babri mosque that had been similarly contested as a holy site for Hindus. The mosque was torn down by Hindu extremists in 1992 and a temple later constructed in its place.

The success of the campaign to build a temple in Ayodhya has been seen as rousing Hindu claims for a growing number of mosques across the country to be demolished to make way for Hindu temples.

Two years ago, S Eshwarappa, a former deputy chief minister of Karnataka state, claimed that at least 36,000 temples had been destroyed to build mosques during the time when Muslim emperors ruled India. He said that they would all be reclaimed legally.

Shazia Ilmi, a national spokesperson for the BJP, told DW that stoking temple-mosque disputes goes against the grain of the plan "Developed India 2047" — a pledge to make India a fully developed economy by its independence centenary.

"We cannot hark back to the past but must move on. Ironically, the Ajmer shrine is visited by thousands of devotees cutting across religious divides every day," said Ilmi.

Edited by: Keith Walker