A court in north India ordered authorities Monday to limit large Muslim prayer gatherings in the historic Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Hinduism's holiest city, after a survey team found relics of the Hindu god Shiva and other Hindu symbols there, lawyers involved in the case announced.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, a BJP member, told Reuters local TV partner ANI that the government welcomed the court order "and we will implement it".
Earlier this month, the court in Varanasi set up a team to survey the premises after five women sought permission to perform Hindu rituals in one of its quarters saying that a Hindu temple once stood at the present Islamic site.
Members of extremist Hindu groups claim that Muslim invaders and Muslim kings during their centuries of rule destroyed Hindu temples to build mosques or mausoleums on top of them as part of their expansionist strategy in the subcontinent, according to Reuters.
The Gyanvapi Mosque, located in the political constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of the three large mosques in northern Uttar Pradesh. Extremist Hindu groups claim it was built after demolishing a historic temple.
Lawyer H. S. Jain, who represented the female petitioners, told the court that the survey team had found relics of Shiva and other Hindu symbols there. The judge banned Muslims from holding large prayer gatherings inside the mosque.
Police said the court order would help maintain law and order at a time when hardline Hindu groups tied to Modi's political party demanded to excavate inside some mosques and to permit searches at India's iconic Taj Mahal mausoleum.
However, India's Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned Varanasi court order to ban Muslim prayer gatherings in a high-profile mosque. The top court in an interim order stated Muslims right to prayer should not be disturbed, and simultaneously the area where Hindu religious relics were said to be found should be protected.
Leaders of India's 200 million Muslims see the latest move as another
attempt by hardline Hindus to undermine their rights to free worship and
religious expression, with the tacit agreement of Modi's ruling Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In 2019, the Supreme Court allowed Hindus to build a temple at the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid that was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992 who claimed that it was built on the spot where Hindu Lord Ram was born.
The incident led to religious riots that killed nearly 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, across India.
'Indian govt preparing for Muslim genocide similar to Holocaust'
Similar to the Holocaust, the Indian government is preparing for the genocide of Muslims through discriminatory policies and acts of state-sponsored violence, revealed the World Without Genocide group which is based in Washington
Founder and Executive Director of the group Dr Ellen Kennedy reminded: "I speak to you as a Jew...We must pay attention to what is happening to Muslims in India today because it is beginning to echo what happened to Europe's Jews 80 years ago."
He was speaking at a congressional briefing last month on the decision of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to recommend India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) in its 2022 annual report for egregious violations of religious freedom for the third year in a row.
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