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ABSTRACT
Following the Indian Supreme Court's verdict allowing the construction of a Rām Mandir at the site of the former Babri Masjid in 2019, Hindu nationalists have put renewed pressure on the North Indian city of Mathura. There, the seventeenth-century Shahi Idgah shares a boundary wall with a temple complex associated with the birth site of the deity Kṛṣṇa. Between 2019 and 2023, at least nine court cases were filed to remove the idgah from the vicinity of the Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi. With the future of a contentious religious site unfolding in the courts, I adopt an ethnographic perspective to assess the consequences of political stake claiming in the name of religion within the city of Mathura. I argue that the very threat of transforming a religiously plural landscape into a distinctively Hindu territory has had material consequences for those who live in Mathura. This situation demonstrates how rhetorical and spatial erasure mutually reinforce one another within contemporary Hindutva projects, whereby Muslim sacred territory in India becomes progressively more difficult to access, both conceptually and on the ground.
Acknowledgments
This article would not have been possible without the friendship and support of several families resident in the Mathura-Vrindavan area. To the Goswamis, the Agrawals, and the Vermas who were willing to discuss local affairs with me: thank you. I also express my gratitude to the Fulbright-Hays program which funded my research. For their feedback on earlier drafts of this article, I thank Zehra Mehdi, Quinn Clark, Gaurika Mehta, and the anonymous reviewers. I am grateful for Rachel Hirsch and Adil Mawani, both of whom offered helpful insights along the way. Finally, I give special thanks to Vera Lazzaretti and Knut Jacobsen for their prompt and helpful advice when writing and revising.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The juridical status of Hindu deities as minors to be represented by next friends in court became established within colonial-era case law involving the management of Hindu endowments. By the early-twentieth-century, this notion had become a matter beyond dispute. According to one justice from 1925, for example, ‘a Hindu idol is, according to long established authority, founded upon the religious customs of the Hindus, and the recognition thereof by Courts of law, a ‘juristic entity.’ … It is unnecessary to quote the authorities; for this doctrine, thus simply stated, is firmly established.’ (Pramatha Nath Mullick v. Pradyumna Kumar Mullick Citation1925), https://indiankanoon.org/doc/290902/.
2 For more detailed assessments of the politically motivated destruction of the Keśav Dev temple, see C. B. Asher (Citation1992), 254, 259–260; Entwistle (Citation1987), 182–183; Growse (Citation1883), 36–37; Pauwels (Citation2011), 289.
3 The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist activist organization, launched movements to construct temples in Varanasi and Mathura in 1995. Then, they chanted slogans that suggested Ayodhya was only an example of work remaining to be done in the other two cities. See Pauwels (Citation2011), 279.
4 The onset of COVID-19 in early 2020 foreclosed further opportunities for in-person research until a brief research period in January 2023. Where appropriate, I supplement ethnographic data with news and media reports, especially when considering developments in Mathura from March 2020 to September 2022. Individuals whose names appear in the news articles I cite have not been anonymized. I have given pseudonyms to all of my interviewees, with the exception of those whose titles otherwise make them identifiable.
5 On September 10, 2021, Yogi Adityanath’s government designated twenty two wards of Mathura surrounding the Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi a tīrtha sthala. Consequent upon this change in status, governmental officials imposed a ban on the sale of alcohol and meat in these wards, and the enforcement of this ban began to be implemented one day later (Chaturvedi and Jaiswal Citation2021). Although the ban on the sale of meat and liquor did not prohibit their transportation or consumption within the designated area, it forced residents to travel considerable distances to procure non-vegetarian fare. In addition to being untenable for households without vehicles, the need to commute to purchase meat raised risks. The ban emboldened right-wing vigilante groups, already active in the area, to harass those suspected of having non-vegetarian food in their possession. In the week following the enforcement of the ban, the Gau Rakshak Dal assaulted two Muslim men who were transporting meat through the city (Jaiswal Citation2021a). As Jaffrelot and Anderson have argued, Hindu para-state groups often operate without interference (indeed, they are often assisted) by the police (Citation2018, 473–474). Muslims thus lost the ability to pursue dietary conventions safely or viably.
6 Indeed, the name for the property holds most purchase with art historians interested in numerous materials excavated from the site during the colonial period. The most famous of these is perhaps the late-first-century sandstone sculpture known as the ‘Katra Buddha.’ See F. M. Asher (Citation2002), 8.
7 In 1944, Jugal Kishore Birla purchased the land from the descendents of the Raja Patnimal of Banaras, who in 1815 had bought the property at auction from the British East India Company. Birla entrusted the property to the Shri Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi Trust, which he helped establish in 1951 and which has since been reestablished as the Shri Kṛṣṇa Janmasthan Seva Sansthan. See Śarmā (Citation1982), 123–124.
8 This claim, published in a brochure for the Janmasthan temple complex, suggests that the Shahi Idgah was built only upon the meeting hall of the original Keśav Dev temple. Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan (Citationn.d.), 32–33.
9 This ‘old’ (prācīn) Keśav Dev temple is so-named only because a ‘new’ Keśav Dev temple was constructed inside of the Janmabhūmi complex in the late-1950s. The ‘old’ temple—once new, of course—was constructed in response to the destruction of the seventeenth-century Keśav Dev temple by Aurangzeb. The image installed in the temple is a replica of the original, which was lost at the time of the seventeenth-century temple’s destruction. The fate of the original mūrti is disputed: Aurangzeb’s chronicler suggests it was transported to Agra and buried under the steps of its Begum Mosque, a detail which has inspired demands by Hindu activists for excavation work (Growse Citation1883, 37; c.f. Entwistle Citation1987, 181). Others suggest it was covertly transported to the village of Rasdhan near Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh (Entwistle Citation1987, 181n247).
10 The proximity with which the Parikramā Mārg passes the Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi does lead some pilgrims to stop and visit the complex. Yet the current police checkpoints, which require the deposit of all electronic devices at coat checks, dissuades the majority from doing so.
11 Vrindavan also enjoys the prestige associated with one of the principal Vaishnava priestly orders, or sampradāyas. The development of Vrindavan into the temple town it is today owes itself to the declaration by Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the fifteenth-century Bengali mystic and founding figure of the gauḍīya sampradāya, that the site was the very same forest in which the child Kṛṣṇa grew up. See Hawley (Citation2020), 8.
12 See also Burton-Page and Michell (Citation2007), 54–55; Porter (Citation2018), 281–282.
13 Although not as grand as the towering gopurams distinctive of South Indian Hindu temple compounds, the construction of a second series of archways around the Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi similarly demonstrates powerful patronage of the site and marks the further expansion of territory formally associated with the temple. These additional gates were built after the designation of Mathura as a tīrtha sthala in 2021, financed by a state entity called the Uttar Pradesh Braj Tirtha Vikas Parishad.
14 On August 9, 2023, Indian Railways began the demolition of houses near the kaṭarā site—a primarily Muslim neighborhood—to facilitate the expansion of this narrow-gauge rail line. See Porecha (Citation2023).
15 The presence of children ‘at play’ within the clearing outside of the idgah finds uneasy comparison with the recent assessment by Sarbani Sharma of children playing cricket in Srinagar (Citation2022). Unlike Srinagar’s Eidgah, the Shahi Idgah is barred from local children as a place of play. Although I did see several children tossing a ball in the clearing that leads to the idgah, its steep slopes, railway track, and proximity to police on duty made the area unsuitable for a team sport wherein the narrative possibilities of play could find meaningful expression.
16 gūmane āyā.
17 pāgala hai, kyā?
18 Discussion of India as a sacred Islamic land is beyond the scope of this paper. See Ernst (Citation1995); Friedmann (Citation1975).
19 The group in question is called Khudai Khidmatgar.
20 The Allahabad High Court subsequently granted Khan bail on December 18 (R. K. Pandey Citation2020).
21 The use of ritual as a way to stake claims upon religious territory finds further expression elsewhere in this issue: see the contributions of Christopher Fleming, Knut Jacobsen, and Vera Lazzareti.
22 Indeed, Much of the Rām Janmabhūmi movement in the late-1980s falls within the rubric of an electoral season.
23 I do not mean to suggest that the BJP is singular in its use of such intimidation, nor do I accuse the politicians mentioned below of involvement in criminal activity. I focus in this article on political attempts to Hinduize the city of Mathura, with particular reference to the land disputes involving the Shahi Idgah and the Kṛṣṇa Janmabhūmi, and in this respect BJP politicians are of particular relevance.
24 These vigilante groups constitute what Christophe Jafffrelot and Edward Anderson have identified as a growing Hindu parallel state (Citation2018, 474).
25 This is what Jaffrelot and Anderson have called ‘the saffronization of the public sphere’ (Citation2018, 479).
26 This call to undertake a jal abhiṣeka emerged immediately after the arrest of Faisal Khan, as described above.
27 For examples of these slogans, see Pauwels (Citation2011), 279.
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Nick Tackes
Nick Tackes is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, USA. Nick’s current research involves the public-facing welfare projects of large-scale Hindu sects in North India. His principal research interests include religion and healthcare; new religious movements; charismatic religious leadership; Hindu reform; material culture; and ethnography. Nick earned his PhD in Religion from Columbia University (2022).