Today in Politics: Will Opposition respond to ASI report on Gyanvapi, what stand will RSS take?

With the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report on the Gyanvapi mosque complex concluding that “there existed a large Hindu temple prior to the construction of the existing structure”, the response of the BJP-RSS and the Opposition will be among the things to watch out for on Friday.

The initial reaction to the report came from AIMIM leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi who posted on X late on Thursday night, “This (ASI’s findings) wouldn’t stand academic scrutiny before any set of professional archaeologists or historians. The report is based on conjecture and makes a mockery of scientific study. As a great scholar once said ‘ASI is the handmaiden of Hindutva’.”

With RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat earlier this week calling for “hosh (reason)” at a time of “josh” (excitement) — he was speaking at the Ayodhya Ram Temple consecration event — the Sangh is most likely to stick to the position of leaving these other temple disputes up to the courts, something it has repeatedly emphasised since the Ayodhya judgment in 2019.

How a beleaguered and divided Opposition responds, if it does at all, will also be crucial. When it came to the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, the parties of the INDIA alliance could not come up with a unified response. While some such as the Congress and the Left labelled it a political event and stayed away, others such as the NCP and the SP said they would visit the temple at a later date. As this dispute looks set to simmer and make its way through the courts, along with the dispute in Mathura, how the Opposition deals with it will be crucial in the long run.

In context: For the Hindu Right, the temple disputes in Mathura and Varanasi (the latter is also known as Kashi) are part of a larger ideological project as