How Shringar Gauri case took shape over 38 years

VARANASI: The genesis of the Shringar Gauri worship case that has spawned a welter of legal and other complexities goes back 38 years, long before the five women plaintiffs approached a Varanasi court in April last year seeking the right to unhindered worship of the goddess and other deities along the outer wall of the Gyanvapi mosque complex.
Among those at the vanguard of the campaign from the start is Sohan Lal Arya, vice-president of VHP’s Kashi chapter and husband of one of the plaintiffs, Laxmi Devi. “I was inspired by the late Mahant Paramhans Das’s role in placing Ram Lalla under the central dome at Ram Janmabhoomi, and started looking for ways to resume worship of deities at the mosque complex,” he said.
Clarifying that VHP had no role in the case, Arya said, “In 1984, I started meeting people who I presumed could help collect facts to start court proceedings. But that didn’t work out. Finally, I met a senior shastri of the Vedic study centre, who told me about the ground realities of the Gyanvapi complex”.
Temples in the nagara style of architecture have eight mandaps — Ganesha, Aishwarya, Bhairav, Gyan, Tarkeshwar, Mukti, Dandapani and Shringar, Arya said. “When the Aadi Vishweshwar temple was attacked by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669, he destroyed the Aishwarya and Mukti mandaps along with the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to build a mosque.”
The Ganesh, Shringar and Dandapani mandaps in the west and the Bhairav, Gyan and Tarkeshwar mandaps could not be destroyed, Arya said.
“In 1995, a petition was filed in the district court with the same demands. The court also appointed a commission, which surveyed the outer area in May 1996. But the survey of the internal area of Gyanvapi could not be done due to protests.”
Arya was in Mathura in 2018-19 when he met Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh (VVSS) chief Jitendra Singh Visen, who happened to know advocates Hari Shankar Jain and his son Vishnu Shankar Jain
Visen’s niece Rakhi Singh, Arya’s wife Laxmi Devi and Varanasi natives Sita Sahu, Manju Vyas and Rekha Pathak filed a petition in the court of the civil judge last year, seeking permission for daily worship of Shringar Gauri, Ganesh, Hanuman and Nandi, besides steps to prevent damage to the idols.