Fri 04 June 2021:
Eleven Muslim families are being asked to hand over their homes situated close to the Gorakhnath temple for the purpose of ‘security’, to the UP state government.
According to The Cognate, the district administration of Gorakhpur has pressurized Muslim families to sign the memorandum termed as ‘consent letter’ to vacate the houses.
According to the government authorities, the properties are being cleared citing the security of Gorakhnath Math Temple.
Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh’s right-wing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is the “mahant” or chief priest of the Gorakhnath temple.
Before Yogi Adityanath became the chief minister in 2017, Adityanath, a saffron-clad hardline leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was a member of parliament from Gorakhpur for nearly two decades.
The letter in Hindi says, “To abide the order of district administration to deploy police force keeping in view the security at The Gorakhnath Temple, we are giving our land and signing this document with our will. We don’t have any objections. To express our consent, we are signing this document below.”
The area in the letter is registered as Village Old Gorakhpur Tappa, Town Pargna Haveli, Tehsil Sadar District Gorakhpur.
The Gorakhnath Math is spread over an area of 52 acres, at the head of which is Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister himself.
The circular includes the names and signatures of the 11 property holders dated 28th May.
Javed Akhter, a signatory of the consent letter told The Cognate, “We have signed the letter under the pressure of the administration and other people who are willing to give their land. We were forced to sign the circular.”
Akhter is a retired engineer in Railways of India and has spent his life in the same house. This property was registered under his father’s name and was transferred to him after his father left. Now he lives with his family in the house. The last two generations of his family spent their life on this land.
He further said, “The administration has made the security of the temple a reason to grab our property. We are residing here for more than a hundred years, how our existence and houses will be a threat to the security of the temple?”
“Two police stations are also there in the area to maintain law and order, how can anyone breach Temple’s security”, he added.
The houses are located at a distance of around 30 meters from the boundary (outer foundation) of the Temple and both the communities (Hindus and Muslims) co-exist peacefully in the area.
Akhter said, “We will pursue the matter legally if the administration will try to snatch our property illegally through power. We will not leave our ancestral land like this.
Musheer Ahmad, another resident of Gorakhnath also confirmed the same.
This is not the first instance of the administration using high-handedness to vacate properties.
With a population of 220 million, nearly 20 percent of them Muslims, Uttar Pradesh has long been a flashpoint for religious tensions which intensified after the BJP came to power in 2014.
In May last year, Yogi Adityanath ordered the demolition of over 100 shops in the vicinity of Gorakhnath Temple. Over a hundred shops were bulldozed and razed for widening a road. One report said the shopkeepers, some of whom claimed to be in possession of the shops for 70 years, were not in favour.
As of now the matter is limited to the signatures on the so-called consent letter. No physical action has been taken yet, as told by a signatory.
Nawab donated land for Gorakhpur temple
Roshan Ali Shah, the great 18th century Sufi of Gorakhpur requested Asaf-ud-daula, the then Nawab of Avadh, to grant land for the Gorakhpur Matth.
Asaf-ud-Daula had given grants to Roshan Ali Shah for the building of an Imambara. But Roshan Ali wanted donations for the Gorakh temple as well.
An article appearing in the Indian Express edition of 8th February 2007 quotes Adnan Shah, the current presider of the Imambara, how “the Sufi saint wanted half of Gorakhpur for himself and the remaining for his Hindu counterpart.”
The same article quotes Chitranjan Mishra, a professor of Gorakhpur University, as saying clearly that “legend apart, it is on record that Asaf-ud-Daula donated land and properties for the Imambara and for the Gorakhpeeth. Even today most of the city is owned either by the Imambara or by the Peeth.” (See http://archive.indianexpress.
Further evidence of Asaf-ud-Daula giving land grant to Gorakh Peeth exists both in the records of the Gorakh temple and the 200 year old archives of the Imambara.
File Photo: Indian PM Narendra Modi with Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath at Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur, July 22, 2016.
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