Hindu groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal have threatened that the building will have a “Babri Masjid-like fate” if the state government does not remove it. There is heavy security at Aurangzeb’s tomb in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
On Monday, security guards were seen stationed at the Aurangzeb tomb. People from the Bajrang Dal also protested in front of the Nagpur District Collector’s office on Monday because they want Aurangzeb’s tomb to be taken down.
Nitin Mahajan, the leader of the Bajrang Dal party, said on Sunday that the tomb of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Maharashtra’s Sambhajinagar should be taken down. He warned that if the government doesn’t act, the tomb will be destroyed like the Babri Masjid.
On December 6, 1992, a big group of Hindu activists known as “Kar Sevak” tore down the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The VHP, Bajrang Dal, and other groups were in charge of the destruction.
In the years that followed, there were more court cases over who owned the land. Eventually, in 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the land should be given to Hindus so they could build a Ram Mandir (temple), while Muslims should be given another plot of land so they could build a mosque. At the site of the old Babri Masjid, work has begun on building the Ram Mandir.
“In Sambhajinagar, people are worshiping Aurangzeb’s grave.” Building the grave of the person who killed Sambhaji is going on… When these kinds of graves are worshiped, society grows in the same way… We couldn’t do anything at the time, but now Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal want it taken down… On March 17, we will tell the government that it needs to go away… Mahajan told the news agency ANI on Saturday, “We will greet the government if they take it down. If that doesn’t happen, VHP and Bajrang Dal will take to the streets and start a huge protest.”
“We all saw what happened in Ayodhya when the Hindu community protested against the Babri structure, so we know what happens when the Hindu community does that.” If the government doesn’t take down the grave, we’ll do Karseva and do it ourselves.
A few days ago, T Raja Singh, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and MLA for Goshamahal, wrote to Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat asking for more information on the money that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) spent on maintaining Aurangzeb’s tomb. Singh’s letter from March 15 asked for a detailed list of all the costs that had been spent over the years, such as those related to security, maintenance, and other things.
Congress says that the Bajrang Dal and VHP do not want peace.
Vijay Wadettiwar, the head of the Congress party, said on Monday that Bajrang Dal and VHP don’t want the people of Maharashtra to live in peace because of the controversy.
“They (VHP and Bajrang Dal) have no choice but to do this…” They don’t want the people of Maharashtra to be happy and peaceful… It’s their goal to slow down the state’s growth… Wadettiwar told them, “I would like to say to them that Aurangzeb was here for 27 years and he wasn’t able to do anything to the state. Now, what will they get after the grave is moved?”
Atul Londhe Patil, a spokesman for the Congress party at the national level, said that things are difficult in Maharashtra and that law and order have broken down in the state. He also listed problems that he said the government was trying to hide.
“Farmers are killing themselves because they can’t get water and electricity…” The unemployment rate has gone up… The BJP makes up new problems with Hindus and Muslims to hide all of these problems. They took people away from PF and pension plans and put them in the stock market instead. In just five months, the average person has become poor. People are interested in the past to take their minds off of the important problems… This time, people won’t fall for it. “They need to talk about the real problems,” Patil said.
