Hours after the Varanasi District Court allowed Hindus to worship at the Vyas Cellar inside the Gyanvapi structure, worship of Hindu idols in the basement was done earlier today. This was done after the district administration opened the locks to the cellar last night and made necessary arrangements for the regular puja of the deities.
In a landmark order, the district court of Varanasi yesterday said that the Hindus have the right to worship the deities in the Vyas Ji Ka Tehkhana (the basement cellar of the Vyas family) at the Gyanvapi complex. Notably, the Vyas cellar is one of the several cellars in the complex, which has been under the control of the Vyas family for centuries. The generations of the family have been worshipping Goddess Shringar Gauri and other deities there since the 16th century, before it was stopped and the cellar was locked in December 1993 by Mulayam Singh govt.
The court had asked the district administration to open the cellar and make arrangements for worship within 7 days. But the administration officials didn’t wait and moved quickly to implement the order. The officials reached the premises on Wednesday late night along with police officials. They removed the steel grill around the southern cellar on the mosque premises, and a pathway leading to the cellar connecting to the road in front of Kashi Vishwanath Mandir was carved out.
After that, the administration officials let the members of the Vyas family to enter the Vyas Ji Ka Tehkhana to perform puja rituals. Officials including the police force remained present at the spot during this time.
As per reports, idols of deities recovered in the cellar, details of which have been mentioned in the recently published ASI report and were in the custody of the district administration, were placed inside the cellar for the puja. Earthen lamps were lit inside the cellar in the night, puja rituals were done, and at last, the Mangala Aarti was performed. The rituals ended at around 3 AM.
Later in the morning, women from the Vyas family entered the cellar for prayers. Visuals from the cellar show three female members of the Vyas family, including a teenage girl, performing puja inside the cellar for the first time after 31 long years. With this, the three women created history by marking a successful end of the struggle by the Vyas family in particular and Hindus as a whole for the right to worship at the holy place, which has been repeatedly destroyed by Islamic tyrants over the last millennium.
श्री काशी विश्वनाथ मंदिर और व्यासजी के तहखाने का 30 साल बाद संपर्क शुरू हुआ…#ज्ञानवापी परिसर से बैरिकेडिंग हटाई गई…#व्यासजी के तहखाने तक रास्ता बनाकर पूजा आरंभ हुई…
— Arvind Mohan Singh (@ArvindSinghUp) February 1, 2024
त्राहिमां शरणागतम प्रभु त्राहिमां🙏#GyanvapiCaseNews pic.twitter.com/YuhUFjtOxP
According to Varanasi Divisional Commissioner Kaushal Raj Sharma, regular full-fledged puja of the deities inside the cellar would commence in compliance with the district court order from Thursday onwards.
The order by district court judge Dr AK Vishvesha said that the Vyas family has been worshipping there since the British period and they have been doing it up to December 1993. The court order also stated that the state govt had stopped the worship under the basement without any authority to do so. Therefore, the court allowed Hindus to worship at the Vyas cellar. The order was passed in a petition filed by Shailendra Kumar Pathak seeking the right to recite prayers and perform worship rituals at the Vyas Ji Ka Tehkhana located in Varanasi’s Gyanvapi complex.
Notably, the Vyas family had filed a separate plea in 1991, seeking the transfer of the Gyanvapi mosque structure to Hindus. They asserted that, except for the upper structure dedicated to namaz and the domes, the entire structure still belongs to the Lord Visheshwar temple. Even though the Vyas family no longer resides in the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi complex, they still retain ownership of Vyas Ji Ka Tehkhana, one of the four basements of the mosque.
स्थानीय लोग #ज्ञानवापी के नाम को सही करने में लग गये। 🔥
— Sadhvi Prachi (@Sadhvi_prachi) February 1, 2024
हर हर महादेव।🚩 pic.twitter.com/2t6R7ZUA4K
In a related development, some people at Varanasi changed the name of the Gyanvapi mosque to Gyanvapi temple on a board. They pasted the words Mandir and Temple over the words Masjid and Mosque on the road signage.
