Gyanvapi row: Parties silent, RSS, BJP likely to leave matter to courts

WHILE THE Opposition maintained silence on the matter of an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report saying a “huge temple” existed where the Gyanvapi Masjid next to Kashi Vishwanath Temple now stands, the RSS and BJP indicated they were in no hurry to get into the issue, and would wait for courts to take the lead on the matter.

The ASI report, which was submitted to the Varanasi district court hearing the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi matter, was handed over to the petitioners in the case on Thursday. As per the report, “there existed a large Hindu temple prior to the construction of the existing structure”, and that parts of it had been reused.

Asked about the issue, an RSS functionary, not wishing to be named, said: “In the 1980s, the Sangh had to take up the Ayodhya Ram temple as a mobilisational issue so as to reach out to people and get our concerns into the mainstream debate. At that time, society was not alive to these concerns, like it is today. Now, it is society that has taken up all these cultural concerns as collective concerns. What is the need for the Sangh to do anything when society is itself active? Now people are themselves filing cases and also discussing these issues regularly.”

An RSS insider also argued the same, saying: “The court asked the ASI to report its findings, and it has done so. We don’t feel any need to do anything in particular about this. There will be discussions among people in society… These matters are not exclusively ours, it is society at large, and it showed a lot of enthusiasm days ago for the Pran Pratishtha of Ram Temple in Ayodhya… Let people discuss the issues and let courts do their work.”

A source in the BJP said roughly the same thing. “I don’t think we are going to do much