Why movement for Bhojshala ‘reclamation’ discounts layering of history, has political context

Baker had been looking over the area that was to become Central Vista, the ceremonial axis of the city of New Delhi.

In the early 20th century, only a few villages occupied this land. Among them was the village of Indarpat inside the Purana Qila, or old fort. The name recalled the Indraprastha of the Mahabharata and there was a strong popular belief that this was the location of the legendary city of the Pandavas.

Baker also saw the remains of the city of Shergarh, the 16th-century city founded by Sher Shah Suri. Many of the stones of Sher Shah’s city had moreover been recycled from the 14th-century city of Siri. In addition, Baker saw a vast area dotted with tombs and graves. These burials dated from various centuries in the second millennium C.E., and were particularly thick around the shrine of the great Sufi teacher Nizamuddin Auliya, whose own burial place had been revered since his death in 1325.

This historical layering in long inhabited places is by no means specific to Purana Qila, or even Delhi and in fact is apparent through the ages in all parts of the world.

For instance, the great city of Pataliputra (in modern Patna) served as the capital of successive powers – among others, the kingdom of Magadha, and the Mauryan, Shunga and Gupta empires.

This layered history is evident in archaeological records, often in the form of monumental architecture built adjoining or even on the ruins of structures from previous centuries. At such historical sites, it is not unusual to see the reuse of stones from earlier eras, as was the case in Sher Shah’s reuse of stones from a city built earlier by Alauddin Khalji. The 16th-century rulers of Vijayanagara, as well as the Adil Shahis of Bijapur, are said to have reused stones from earlier Chalukya era buildings to construct their monumental structures.

Such layered histories, though taken for granted by historians and archaeologists, on occasion become subjects of controversy, as in the case of the ‘Bhojshala’ complex in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh. This site, believed to have been founded around the 11th century as a Saraswati temple, is identified by the Muslims as the 14th century Kamal Maula mosque.

The site has come into prominence in our times, with a movement to “restore” the site to its “original” state and use. Last month, the Madhya Pradesh high court recognised the structure as a temple and quashed a 2023 Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) order that had regulated worship by both Hindus and Muslims at the site.

The push for the “reclamation” of the Bhojshala complex and other such moves is predicated on viewing these historical layers at sites primarily through the lens of a historical injustice that needs to be righted in the present. But a historical understanding of this process puts these cases in perspective.

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To return to Baker in Delhi, much of the landscape that he saw that morning was soon to be swept away, to be replaced with the roads, parks and buildings that are today familiar to us in New Delhi.

This was, however, but one among many historical layers that had been, and were in the future to be added to the site.

Let us take the example of Purana Qila. This site is an archaeological mound, though despite the popular belief identifying it with the Pandava city of Indraprastha, no archaeological evidence confirming the existence of a city that might correspond to the date and descriptions has so far been found here. What archaeologists have found are historical layers going back to the 3rd-4th centuries B.C.E. and layers of subsequent habitation.

This site was picked in the 16th century by Mughal emperor Humayun to build the fortress that we call Purana Qila. But when Akbar moved his capital to Agra later in the century, it was abandoned. Sometime after that it was occupied by a rural population, who gave their village the name ‘Indarpat’, in accordance with the popular belief regarding Indraprastha.

In the second decade of the 20th century, this village was cleared away, the population was resettled elsewhere and the interior of the fort was landscaped in conformity with a ‘monument’ suitable for the centre of a grand capital city – New Delhi. It became a site for tourism and recreation. During World War II, it briefly housed Italian prisoners of war.

Then, with the Partition of India in 1947 came refugees. Many of those coming in large numbers from the newly-formed Pakistan ended up being accommodated in the various monuments around Delhi and Purana Qila was one of them. They stayed here for many years and several new brick structures came up within the fort. Some years later, these were removed as the refugees were resettled.

Some of these events happened within the lifetimes of many who are still alive and living in Delhi today, but they seem to have been largely erased from our collective memories.

Similarly, in the colonial archive, there is an early 19th-century sketch of the area near Nizamuddin, which shows a vista strewn with graves and tombs. I find it fascinating, because it is recognisably today the area that is occupied by Sunder Nursery, which came up in this location immediately following Independence. For the making of this plant nursery, as well as for the building of the colonies known as Nizamuddin East and Nizamuddin West, several of the graves and tombs were demolished. Again, this is not a thought at the forefront of the sensibilities of the residents of this posh neighbourhood, or of those who throng the popular Sundar Nursery today.

The demolitions that accompanied the founding of New Delhi were pragmatic acts of a colonial state, acts that in today’s parlance would have been labelled ‘development’. The same colonial state, more than half a century ago, had carried out demolitions that had been largely punitive. Following the Revolt of 1857, the conquering British army occupied the Red Fort and not only demolished most of the buildings within its walls, but a large area around the fort. The aim was declared to be strategic – to secure a clear line of fire around the perimeter of the fort, to provide security to the occupying army.

The poet Ghalib wrote in a letter to a friend in September 1860: "The city here is being demolished. Extensive, famous markets–Khas bazaar, Urdu bazaar, Khanam ka bazaar, such that each was a small town in itself; now no one can tell where it was located. The owners of shops and houses cannot point out the spots where their properties stood." One of the prominent buildings demolished was the Akbarabadi Masjid – the largest mosque in the city after the Jama Masjid.

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Other demolitions at the time were purely punitive – the aim being to erase Mughal imperial landmarks at the centre of the city. The square known as Chandni Chowk, along with the adjoining sarai, both built by the emperor Shahjahan’s daughter Jahanara, were razed to the ground. On their sites were built emphatically colonial landmarks – a Town Hall on the spot formerly occupied by the sarai and a clock tower in the centre of the chowk. A new road (popularly called Nayee Sadak) was created by demolishing buildings south of the chowk.

These measures were quietly accepted by a population that had already been beaten down by the terror unleashed after the revolt. The Mughal dynasty was at an end, the emperor exiled to Rangoon; so the royal family was hardly in a position to protest either. Life went on, and there were those who even benefited from the land transfers that took place, since the property of the royal family or those who had opposed the British was confiscated and sold by auction.

Among those to have benefited was the merchant Chunna Mal, who is said to have bought valuable pieces of real estate at low prices, including the Fatehpuri Mosque, another imperial mosque of Shahjahan’s era.

Instances such as these are not uncommon in history, irrespective of place and time. Whether motivated by the desire to refashion and “develop”, or as punitive action, the result is violence perpetrated on the place and on the people connected to it. And yet, with time, the violence and the suffering are largely forgotten, particularly as the generation directly affected passes on. The new layer of history becomes the lived reality of succeeding generations – until another moment in history adds another dimension.

Under these circumstances, it is interesting to examine how and why some old memories of “displacement” may be brought to the forefront at a particular time in history.

In Delhi, we may only look at the Qutub Minar complex and a demand that is raised from time to time to “right the wrong” that was purportedly done more than eight centuries ago, when temples were claimed to have been demolished and a mosque constructed from the stones. For whom is this justice demanded?

Those who would have worshipped in these temples could have had a grievance, but they are long gone, past caring. For those who came in the succeeding generations, the story of destruction may have remained, but actual personal memory of the place as a place of worship was not there. In time, they built new temples and, in a sense, moved on.

So much so that in later times, even when they were in a position to make the demand that a temple be resurrected on that very spot, they did not make that demand. Not during the Mughals, when many temples were being built in Delhi — Hindu, Jain and Sikh. Not when the Marathas were the rulers of the city for several decades. Clearly, it was not even on their mind.

​Why then do some make the demand today?

​A grievance where none had existed for centuries cannot be interpreted as a trauma resulting from that original act of violence. It is no accident that these and other such instances around the country – the movements around “restoration” or “reclamation” at sites such as the Babri Masjid (Ayodhya), Gyanvapi Masjid (Varanasi) and the Bhojshala Complex arose in the 19th and 20th centuries, under British colonial rule. The colonial state, while it perpetrated untold violence against the Indian people, also, for its own benefit, pushed a narrative of a historic division among those people along religious lines. By pushing these narratives, it hoped to divide people amongst themselves, and in effect divide opposition to the state itself.

​It is within that political context that the narrative selectively around religious sites developed – raising issues of long forgotten “injustices”. Similarly, movements of a similar sort should be seen today within their political context. We should ask ourselves why some selective “wrongs” of displacement are sought to be redressed. In whose interest is it?