Fresh controversy churned by the petition filed by Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta. He claimed that there was a temple of Lord Shiva under the Ajmer Sharif Dargah. A local court in Rajasthan’s Ajmer issued notices to the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the Ajmer Dargah Committee over a petition seeking a survey of the renowned Ajmer Sharif Dargah.
Vishnu Gupta who said that there was a temple at Ajmer Sharif Dargah like “in Kashi and Mathura”.
According to Gupta, in one of his books, Har Bilas Sarda, (judge, politician and an academic who held an important position during British Rule, wrote in 1910 about the presence of a Hindu temple) wrote, “Tradition says that inside the cellar is the image of Mahadeva in a temple, on which sandal used to be placed every day by a Brahmin family still maintained by the dargah as gharyali (bell striker)”.
“There are roads in Ajmer named after Sarda, so we said that the court should take his words seriously, that at least a survey should be done so that the truth comes out,” Gupta said, claiming that “the Ajmer structure was constructed after demolishing Hindu and Jain temples”.
Civil Judge Manmohan Chandel issued notices after Gupta claimed in his petition that the dargah — the mausoleum of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti – was a Shiva temple. The court order has not been uploaded online or shared with the petitioners so far.
This comes a week after the Rajasthan government renamed Ajmer’s Hotel Khadim — an undertaking of Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation — as Ajaymeru. Calling for the name change, Assembly Speaker Vasudev Devnani, who is an MLA from Ajmer North, had claimed Ajmer was famous as Ajaymeru during the reign of Rajasthan’s 12th Century warrior king Prithviraj Chauhan and that it was called that in ancient Indian texts and history books.
The fresh controversy has surfaced when last week, a district court in Sambhal had ordered a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid, in response to a plea which claimed that it was built on the site of a Hindu temple. This is similar to claims made in the cases of Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the Shahi Idgah in Mathura, and the Kamal-Maula mosque in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh.
The next hearing in the case is on December 20.
