‘Bhojshala identity is a colonial-era rebranding, has no archival backing’
Since your research traces the term Bhojshala back only to 1903, how do you view the legal weight being given to a name that lacks a pre-colonial archival trail?
It's sad because the association that they're making with the fact that this was once a Saraswati temple comes even after 1903. This ”massive discovery” by then ASI director K N Dikshit, who found a sculpture in the British Museum which he said is Saraswati, was ridiculous because there is an inscription on the sculpture that says this is a statue of goddess Ambika/Amba who is a Jain goddess, and that it was made by a person called Vararuchi.
In the judgment, they have said that at the end of the day, Jainism is part of Hinduism. This absolutely makes no sense because if you look at both of these religions historically, they've often been in loggerheads with each other...The remains which have been used to make the Kamal Maula mosque, which has been misnomered as Bhojshala, are basically Jain temple remains. And they have nothing to do with a Saraswati temple. Even the name Bhojshala is incorrect. What K K Lele (who was in charge of the archaeological department at Dhar), who in 1903 gave this name, wanted it to mean was King Bhoja’s school. But shala does not mean a school. A shala just means a place. A school would have been called vidyalay, vidyapeeth or gyanpeeth…
This 120-year history is being given far more importance than the fact that an inscription on the mosque states that the structure was first repaired by Dilawar Khan Ghori, the governor of Malwa region, in 1392-93, which means it was even older at that time. It was the first jama masjid of Dhar…It's sad that this almost 700-year-old mosque has now been branded a temple.
You describe these sites as palimpsests of reused materials. Does the legal search for an ‘original religious character’ overlook the functional ways medieval builders operated?
What exactly is the legal framework looking for? Because if the argument is that this is a mosque which was made by reusing a temple wholesale, then they would have had to add the mihrab (a semicircular niche in the wall) and the minbar (pulpit)… So, they did just this and let the temple be as it is? This is not the case in the Kamal Maula mosque. If you see the height of the pillars in the mosque, it is clear that these have been stacked one on top of the other. It's a hypostyle mosque.
It being made out of reused material does not mean that the material itself, all of it, has come from a temple or temples. These could be pillars that might have come from a palace which has multiple histories associated with it. If you look at a 14th-century temple, and if you look at this particular mosque, which is a 14th-century congregational mosque, you will see that there is a huge difference in the size of the pillars. The temple pillars at that time were usually smaller in size. These pillars, stacked one on top of the other to achieve height, have been reused from multiple sources.
Secondly, even the inscriptions found inside the mosque, which are being claimed as 'Hindu inscriptions' with grammatical sutras, are basically Sanskrit inscriptions and have a Jain connection.
Lele, in the early 1900s, said the inscriptions are actually grammatical sutras. And because they are grammatical sutras, they must have been of the so-called Bhojshala. Those inscriptions have nothing to do with any of this.
The minbar or a raised pulpit.
Credit: X/@Starboy2079
Where exactly does the ASI’s scientific findings at Dhar clash with the ‘political mythology’ you’ve documented?
The ASI under English did a better job at understanding what the structure is than what happened from the 20th century onwards. They identified it as a mosque. They even documented the history of Kamal Malawi's (Kamal-al Din) tomb, and how the tomb and mosque are sort of related… And then found a 'Hindu inscription'. But they identified that this is reused temple material or reused material of an earlier structure.
The British were one of the first to identify these sort of structures which have either been made out of reused material, or have been entire temples that have been converted into a mosque, which is very rare in the subcontinent. So, they identify Kamal Maula's mosque as one made out of reused material... The biggest break is Lele, and then Dikshit in 1917 radically changed the whole dynamic to this being a Saraswati temple...The judgment says that Jainism is part of Hinduism. I don't see how that is relevant in declaring this to be a temple of Saraswati, because Saraswati is not a Jain deity at all.
The pillars, stacked one on top of the other to achieve height, have been reused from multiple sources, says Ruchika Sharma.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Saumysbag
If the 'Bhoja’s Saraswati' statue in the British Museum is not originally from this site, what remains as the primary physical evidence for the court's 'religious character' ruling?
It's these reused materials. The only basis they have is the fact that this is built out of reused material. And also this idea presented before the court that it looks like a temple. No, it does not look like it. No temple looks like this at all. No temple has a mihrab, no temple has a minbar, no temple has such a height. The height in itself should give you the idea that this is not a temple at all…
Does the ASI possess the archival data to manage this site as a 'Sanskrit center', or is the state asking them to curate a legend?
More than a legend, I think this is a carefully manufactured myth. Lele based his claim on the fact that there are two Sanskrit inscriptions inside.
These are grammatical sutras and they have nothing to do with King Bhoja. Where is the name Bhoja coming from? There is zero documentation to support this or that it was a shala. The term Bhojshala is a misnomer.
And there is a clear illusion of Jain history over here. What is associated with the mosque is Jain history because of the materials used. Indologist Michael Willis’ study has shown that the two inscriptions talk about a play by a disciple of a Jain scholar. There is Jain history associated with the site. And that needs to be acknowledged.
Does moving Muslim worship to an 'alternative land', as suggested by court, settle the dispute, or does it effectively erase the site’s history as a shared space?
100%. What it erases is the around 700 years of history of this being a mosque. It replaces it, not with history, but with a carefully manufactured myth.
The Jain history associated with it does not mean that this suddenly becomes a Jain temple. Because it never served as that in the first place.
It is sad that India is going down this path where the material used in a particular structure is going to decide the status of the structure — the religious status of the structure or the functional status of the structure.
As sites like Ayodhya, Gyanvapi, and now Bhojshala are legally reclassified, is the historian’s role now to explain the past, or simply to act as a witness to its reconstruction?
I think the historian's role is both of them. Historians before us have been doing this for a long time. Which is why we can say with complete surety that before 1903, we didn't have a Bhojshala.
The history of this site has been documented through inscriptions. It has been documented through its architecture, through 700 years of prayers inside the mosque, and through English surveys, etc. There is documentation available of it only being a mosque. Documentation is a part of explaining history. You cannot explain history till you've documented the facts. A historian's role has always been this and should continue to be. And we need to create public awareness because more than the fact that you've erased 700 years of history of this being a mosque, what is problematic is the repercussions that it's going to have on the ground.