The memory of the Gyanvapi mosque presents a curious phe­nomenon !

‘GYANVAPI’ is an intriguing name for a mosque. Vapi means well. ‘Gyanvapi’ is the corruption of the Sanskrit term Jnana-Vapi or the Well of (Sacred) Knowledge, symbolising Shiva-Tattva (or the Philosophy of Shiva). The fact that for three-and-a-half centuries, even the Muslim community has not bothered to rename the mosque after an Islamic nomenclature reveals its obvious historical truth hiding in plain sight. Physically, and to spell out this truth, in 1669, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb demolished the original Kashi Visvesvara Temple and raised the Gyanvapi mosque using its debris. In fact, another famous mosque which underwent the same Aurangzebian fate still stands in the sacred city : The Alamgir Masjid, built after destroying the Bindu Madhava Temple. The renaming was successful in this event.

The memory of the Gyanvapi mosque presents a curious phe­nomenon. Both the Hindu and the Muslim communities have preserved this memory in their own ways. To the Hindu com­munity, the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, so violently transformed into the Gyanvapi mosque, is one of the most enduring and high-profile proofs of their civilisational and spiritual loss and a heartless usurpation of their piety. In Muslim chronicles written during Aurangzeb’s rule and later, the demolition is described as a celebration of the conquest of ignorance and infidelity. The Muslim community in our own time cannot quite maintain this position in public. However, ever since the Gyan­vapi mosque survey began, leaders of the Muslim clergy firmly maintain that the mosque belongs to the community and studiously bypass or downplay the question of its real origins. – Mr Sandeep Balakrishna