Yogi says Gyanvapi ASI report an example of India's ancient culture

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister added that the Indian traditions and culture were so ancient that they could not be contained in the history.

Lucknow: Amid claims by the Hindu litigants' lawyer that the report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which conducted a scientific survey of the contentious Gyanvapi Mosque premises in Varanasi and submitted the survey report in the district court earlier, found evidence of a Hindu temple there, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said that the ASI report revealed a lot about our ancient culture.

Speaking at a function here, Adityanath said that the Indian traditions and culture were so ancient that they could not be contained in the history.

''Varanasi mein Kashi Vishwanath dham hai....Abhi aapne dekha hoga ki Gyanvapi ko lekar ASI ki report samne ayi hai....ye report kya kehti hai?...bahut kuch aapke samne udaharan prastut karti hai,'' (Kashi Vishwanath Dham is in Varanasi...you must have seen the ASI report on Gyanvapi Mosque...what does the report say?...it is an example before us), Adityanath said.

He referred to the recent consecration of Ram Lala idol at Ayodhya and said that so far the people had seen only 500 years old proof of the ancient Indian culture. ''We should be proud of our culture and traditions....they are beyond History,'' he added.

Earlier also Adityanath had virtually endorsed the claims of the Hindu litigants and asked the Muslim community to ''correct the historical mistakes''. ''There will be a dispute if I call Gyanvapi a mosque....those who have been given sight by the God should see....what's a trident doing inside a mosque?.....we didn't keep it there...the walls (of Gyanvapi) are screaming....there is Jyotirlinga, there are many idols,'' he had said.

Hindu plaintiffs' lawyer Vishnu Shankar Jain had recently claimed citing the ASI report that there was evidence to prove that the Gyanvapi Mosque had been built after demolishing a Hindu temple in the 17th century.

Jain had claimed that ASI's 800 page long report had found ancient scriptures had been found in Kannada, Devanagari and Telugu languages. The scriptures were about Rudra, Janardan and Vishweshwar and that the pillars of the demolished temple were used to build the Mosque.

The lawyer of the Muslim plaintiffs in the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi Mosque case, however, refuted claims and said that '''broken idols'' were no proof there existed a Hindu temple in the Gyanvapi Mosque complex.

The premises had been a bone of contention between the two communities for the past several decades but there was renewed clamor to ''take back'' the Kashi Vishwanath Temple premises by the saffron outfits after the favourable decision of the apex court in the Ram Temple case.

The Hindu petitioners contended that a part of the temple had been demolished by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the 17th century. The Muslim side contended that the Mosque existed before the reign of Aurangzeb and also claimed that the same had also been mentioned in the land records.