Court rules Kamal Maula Mosque in Dhar is Vagdevi temple

The Madhya Pradesh High Court ruled on Friday that the kamal maula mosque in Dhar is a temple dedicated to a Hindu goddess, accepting a petition that said a temple predated the structure. Mohammad Rafiq, the mosque’s muezzin for 50 years, said the mosque had been taken from Muslims after the ruling.

Dhar Bhojshala ruling

The court declared the medieval site a temple of Vagdevi, or the Goddess of Speech, and dismissed the petitions of the Muslim community. It also allowed the Muslim community to seek an alternative piece of land in the district to construct a mosque.

The Kamal Maula mosque sits within the Bhojshala complex, a protected monument of archaeological importance in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state. The court relied heavily on a survey of the monument by the Archaeological Survey of India two years ago.

Mohammad Rafiq and Hafiz Naziruddin

Rafiq, who has served at the mosque for 50 years, said, "Until last Friday, our mosque was ours; today it is not". He also said, "I had never imagined in my dreams that something like this would happen."

He said his grandfather, Hafiz Naziruddin, used to lead prayers there before India gained independence in 1947. Rafiq’s account places the ruling inside one family’s long link to the site, which now clashes with the court’s finding that the complex is a temple.

2003 Bhojshala access

Under a 2003 agreement with the Archaeological Survey of India, Hindus were allowed to visit the site every Tuesday and Muslims were allowed to offer prayers on Fridays. The site has been disputed for decades, with the earliest Hindu nationalist claims dating to the late 1950s.

On Sunday, the site was awash in saffron flags. Young men danced to religious tunes and filmed the rituals on their phones, while local activists installed a temporary idol of the goddess as Hindu worshippers gathered in large numbers under heavy police deployment. Muslims have pledged to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court.