In the heart of Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar city, around 250 km from Bhopal, lies the tomb of Chishti saint Kamal al-Din, a follower of Farid-al Din Ganj-i-Shakar and Nizam al-Din Auliya. Adjacent to this tomb stands a spacious hypostyle mosque constructed primarily from “reused” temple parts.
The Bhojshala Temple-cum-Kamal Maula mosque complex in the district has been at the centre of a dispute dating back to the demolition of Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya in 1992. While Hindus regard the Archeological Survey of India (ASI)-protected complex in Dhar as a temple dedicated to Goddess Vagdevi (Saraswati), Muslims consider it the site of the Kamal Maula mosque.
An ASI survey report on the disputed site, submitted in Madhya Pradesh High Court on July 15 this year, stated that its scientific investigation had revealed the “existing structure was made from parts of earlier temples”. The report was submitted following a PIL filed before the High Court by the ‘Hindu Front for Justice’ that had challenged an ASI order dated April 7, 2003, that permitted puja at the complex on Tuesdays and namaz on Fridays.
The July 15 report was met with much enthusiasm by the state’s Right-wing outfits, which have been demanding the closure of the Kamal Maula mosque, a ban on Friday namaz and installation of a Saraswati idol in the Bhojshala complex since December 1992. Right-wing groups here have also claimed that Paramara dynasty’s Raja Bhoja — who has become their potent symbol of late — built the temple at the disputed complex.
The Kamal Maula mosque at the disputed site has been referred to in the writings of English author John Malcolm in 1822 and Major General William Kincaid in 1844. While they documented popular legends associated with Raja Bhoj, they never identified the ‘Bhojshala’.
According to a 2012 research paper by Michael Willis, published by the Royal Asiatic Society, the Bhojshala (the Hall of Bhoj) was a centre for Sanskrit studies associated with Raja Bhoja. Willis noted that the mosque adjacent to Kamal al-Din Chisti’s tomb had been identified as the Bhojshala since the early 20th century, turning it into “a focal point of religious, social, and political tension”.
In his paper, titled “Dhar, Bhoja and Sarasvati: from Indology to Political Mythology and Back”, Willis traced the first reference to Bhoja by Alois Anton Fuhrer, a German Indologist, who worked for the ASI. Fuhrer travelled to Central India in 1893 and recorded the mosque complex using the term “Bhoja’s school”. However, he was dismissed from his position in the ASI after an investigation uncovered an enormous degree of bad scholarship.
On the invention of the term ‘Bhojshala’, Willis had argued that a small archeological department office was established in Dhar in 1902 by the British government under the charge of Superintendent of State Education K K Lele. At that time, Lele had found “two serpentine inscriptions giving the alphabet and grammatical rules of the Sanskrit language”. This posed a conundrum for Lele who, in a bid to explain the mosque at Kamal al-Din as a “reused” Hindu building with a Sanskrit basis “invented” the term Bhojshala, since Sanskrit refers to educational institutions as vidyalaya, vidyapeeth or jnanpith.
Known for the love story of Malwa’s King Baz Bahadur and shepherdess Roopmati, Dhar soon came under the shadow of communal politics that continues to surround Bhojshala even now. Tensions first broke out at this site in 1952, when Hindus decided to celebrate Bhoja Diwas. This prompted the Muslims to celebrate an urs (the death anniversary of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti) in 1953. Over the next few decades, Muslims would continue to offer namaz at the site on Friday, while Hindus gathered there to celebrate Basant Panchami.
After the demolition of Babri Masjid, Right-wing outfits in Madhya Pradesh started demanding opening of the site for Hindu worship. In 1994, on the second anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid, a curfew was imposed in the district after the VHP threatened to hoist a flag on the monument. In years that followed, local peace committees worked out a formula to ensure both communities gained access to the site, and even worked out an agreement on the Tuesday and Friday prayers.
This agreement was flouted in 1997. Once again, a curfew was imposed in the district after the VHP threatened to hoist a flag atop the site. In 2003, an election year for the state, around a dozen policemen were injured in Dhar and several police vehicles torched by a mob protesting against the alleged “high-handedness” of the district administration in handling the Hindu Jagran Manch’s plan to enter the site on Basant Panchami. In February’s Lok Sabha session that year, the controversy found its way to Delhi, where senior BJP leaders called for the opening of the Bhojshala. Former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, then an MP from Vidisha, informed the Lok Sabha that “the State government had banned the entry of Hindus in Bhojshala by suppressing the feelings of Hindus”.
In March 2003, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government waded into this controversy after Union Tourism Minister Jagmohan Malhotra asked the Digvijaya Singh-led Congress government to allow Hindus to pray at the site from sunrise to sunset, and to permit Muslims to offer namaz between 1 pm and 3 pm on Fridays. This differed from the formula set by the Congress government, which stipulated that Hindus would be allowed to offer prayers at the site for two hours on Tuesday.
In 2003, the disputed site became a campaign issue for the state BJP unit. Uma Bharti, then the BJP campaign incharge for Madhya Pradesh, had in the run-up to the polls trained her guns on the Digvijaya government that had tried to troubleshoot this hotspot for past communal incidents. The Hindu Jagran Manch meanwhile mobilised voters in the region on the Bhojshala issue. These events gave Bharti the momentum she needed to unseat the Digvijaya government. She would take over as CM in December 2003. In 2022, the Shivraj-led BJP government promised to bring back the Saraswati idol from the British Museum, further fueling the political discourse.
Decades later, even as Bharti, now sidelined by the BJP, did not contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bhojshala remained an election issue in Dhar, where Right-wing outfits still dream of turning the site into MP’s Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
