The Gyanvapi Mosque, located in the northern Indian holy city of Varanasi, has become the latest potential point of tension between India’s majority Hindu community and its Muslim minority, which makes up around 13% of the 1, 4 billion people in the country.
Disputes between religious communities over such sites have erupted since independence in 1947, but have become more frequent in recent years.
A mosque committee had asked a district judge in Varanasi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, to deny the petition of five Hindu women to allow them to worship and perform rituals for various “visible and invisible deities in the complex. of the old temple”.
The committee told the court that the mosque was established around 600 years ago and has remained a place of worship for Muslims ever since.
The petitioners said a Hindu temple had preceded the mosque on the site and that an idol of a deity and relics were still there. Judge Ajay Krishna Vishvesha said the Muslim side had failed to present arguments to dismiss the petition and set the next hearing in the case for September 22, according to Shivam Goud, a lawyer for the Hindu petitioners.
A lawyer from the mosque committee was not immediately available for comment. The group has previously said it may appeal the case to a higher court.
Armed police patrolled the area outside the court ahead of the verdict to prevent any unrest.
Hindu petitioner Manju Vyas said after the verdict: “We are so happy, we made history today.”
In the most prominent dispute, the Supreme Court of India in 2019 granted a previously disputed religious site to Hindus in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
In 1992, a Hindu temple was built on the site of a 16th-century mosque demolished by Hindu mobs, sparking religious riots in which around 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed across the country. .