New Delhi: The “existing structure” at the Bhojshala Temple-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Madhya Pradesh was made from “parts of earlier temples”, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has said in a report submitted to the state’s high court today (July 15), though it offers no new insights into the provenance of a historical site that experts have already studied exhaustively since the 19th century.
In March, the high court asked the ASI to survey the site, which is located in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district. It is hearing a petition demanding that the complex be handed over to Hindus and that Muslims be barred from offering prayers there.
Though the ASI’s report contains nothing new – the use of temple parts at the complex was first recorded in the Dhar Gazeteer in 1908 – it is likely to be seized upon by Hindutva organisations, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, whose leaders have sought to use disputes over places of worship across India to polarise society on religious lines and consolidate their Hindu votebank.
The Places of Worship Act, 1991, froze the religious character of a place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, and prohibits any change in that character. Despite this law, the Supreme Court in 2022 gave the green light for a ‘survey’ to be conducted at the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, and following this, a number of disputes that the 1991 law was meant to put an end to have been revived. Among them is the claim made by Hindutva groups to ownership over the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula complex.
However, unlike Ayodhya, or the mosques in Varanasi and Mathura which are under the control of Muslim worshippers, the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula complex has been a protected archaeological monument for over seven decades, akin to the Taj Mahal or Qutub Minar — over which Hindutva groups have also laid claims.
The claim that the mosque is a Hindu temple predates partition, though in 1935, the diwan of the erstwhile Dhar State, K. Nadkar, issued a proclamation stating that the Bhojshala was a mosque and would forever remain so.
The ASI has controlled the site since 1951, when it was declared a monument of national importance under the Ancient and Historical Monument and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act. This meant it would no longer be open to regular worship of any kind except on special days. In 1995, an agreement was reached by Hindus and Muslims in Dhar on the conditions under which each community could access the site on Tuesdays and Fridays respectively. A key condition was that Hindu worshippers would go peacefully and that there would be no shouting of slogans or other provocative behaviour, and no carrying of deities. On other days, tourists would be free to visit upon paying the ASI’s fee. Finally, in 2003, the ASI itself decided that Hindus could worship at the site on Tuesdays and Muslims on Fridays.
Earlier this year, an organisation named the Hindu Front for Justice challenged this arrangement and petitioned the high court, which stated in March 2024 that the “nature and character of the whole monument” needed to be “demystified and freed from the shackles of confusion”.
Like other Hindutva groups, the Front claims a temple at the site was ‘destroyed’ to build a mosque and wanted the ASI to conduct a survey to ascertain the complex’s ‘true nature’.
In its report, the ASI has said that from the art and architecture of pillars and pilasters – a kind of column – at the site, it could be said that “they were part of earlier temples and were reused while making [the] colonnades of the mosque”.
The “art and architecture of these pillars and pilasters in colonnades suggest that they were originally part of temples. For their reuse in the existing structure, figures of deities and humans carved on them were mutilated,” the agency also said.
It added that human and animal figures were chiselled out or defaced as they “are not permitted” in mosques.
According to the ASI, three distinct archaeological phases exist at the site, with the first consisting of brick structures, the second being an enlargement of the first with basalt stone, and the third consisting of limestone materials that are built over the basalt structure. Based on artifacts the agency found, it said the brick structures dated to the 10th or 11th century CE.
But as historians have documented, all of this was already known.
Writing in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012 about the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula complex which is situated right next to the tomb of Kamal ud-din Maulavi, a 13th century Sufi of the Chishti order, M. Willis noted that the mosque was “built primarily of reused temple parts”:
“The variety of pillars used in the building, and the number of inscribed tablets still visible in the floor with yet others displayed along the walls, show that the materials for this building were collected from a number of old sites over a wide area.. The approach to the construction of the mosque deliberately mimics what was done at the Qutb in Delhi. Both buildings do not simply use temple material because nothing else was available or because the use of temple pillars was a triumphant display of Islamic supremacy. Rather, the reuse of old temple parts represented a comprehensive appropriation of the resources of the past – both architectural and cultural – and their radical reconfiguration into a new kind of sacred space unknown in India before the appearance of Islam. Just as individuals could choose to become Muslim and find a place in the new Islamic dispensation, so too pillars, beams and slabs could be converted and find an appropriate role the new architecture.”
The ‘Bhojshala’ contains no idol and there is no historical evidence that it ever did. Some historians initially misidentified a statue from Dhar in the British Museum of the yakshini Ambika, protector goddesss of the 22nd Tirthankara, as Saraswati but the inscription on the statue – and its iconography – make it clear that this is not so. In any event, the statue at the museum was recovered from the ruins of the Dhar city palace and not the Bhojshala.
Interior of the Mosque at the tomb of Kam ¯ al al-D ¯ ¯ın. Unknown photographer, 1902. Courtesy of the British Library, Photo 2/4(90), item 4303212. (Source: WILLIS, M. (2012). ‘Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī: from Indology to Political Mythology and Back.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 22(01), 129–153)
In his 2012 article, Wills has also shown how the name ‘Bhojshala’ originated in the early 20th century as a neologism by colonial administrators who intended to suggest, on the basis of scanty evidence, that the mosque was really a school started by Raja Bhoja of Dhar:
“While [‘Bhojshala’] was a clever bit of Sanskritisation, it had no basis in common parlance or the architectural types known from ´silpa-texts. A dharm´sal¯ a¯ was and is a well-known place of refuge for pilgrims, and there are various functional buildings called ´sal¯ a¯, such as those used by washer men (dhob¯ı´sal¯ a¯). But there is no such thing as a Sanskrit ´sal¯ a¯ (that would be vidyalaya ¯ , vidyap¯ ¯ıt .ha or jn˜anap ¯ ¯ıt .ha) and no ´sal¯ a¯ named after a king.”
Dormant disputes revived
The latest development comes months after the ASI said a “large Hindu temple” existed at the site of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi before its construction and a local court allowed Hindus to worship inside a sealed basement of the mosque.
Hindu plaintiffs in the Gyanvapi case seek religious rights within the mosque as well as its ultimate possession from Muslims.
There is a similar challenge from Hindu plaintiffs seeking the removal of the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura.
They claim that the birthplace of Krishna lies beneath the mosque and that there were a “number of signs” establishing that the structure of the mosque was a Hindu temple.
