Gyanvapi mosque tightens up security after release of ASI report; Anti-Muslim crackdown continues in India

Security measures have been beefed up outside the Gyanvapi mosque, a day after the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report on the Gyanvapi mosque complex revealed there “existed a large Hindu temple prior to the construction of the existing structure”.

Following the release of a survey report by the Archeological Survey of India, confirming evidence of Hindu temples, stringent security measures were put in place to prevent any untoward incidents, especially during Congregational Prayers of Muslims.

The ASI survey was ordered by the district court after the Hindu petitioners claimed the 17th-century Gyanvapi mosque was constructed over a pre-existing temple.

A powerful Hindu group said several mosques in India were built over demolished Hindu temples, apparently hardening its stance in a decades-long sectarian dispute just days after a huge temple was inaugurated on the site of a razed mosque.

The comments from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party, come after Modi and the RSS chief led Monday’s consecration of the temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992.

Meanwhile, relentless anti-Muslim campaigns seem to trouble the community. Authorities in India’s financial capital Mumbai have torn down several Muslim-owned makeshift shopfronts after communal clashes sparked by a divisive Hindu temple opened this week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The fight over claims to holy sites has divided Hindu-majority India, which has the world’s third-largest Muslim population, since independence from British rule in 1947.