The piece of land in Mathura, where today the Shai Idgah and the Krishna temple complex stand, has a long history of conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities, writes Susan Mishra

Mathura- the birth place and abode of Shri Krishna and one of the seven sacred cities (Sapta Mahapuris) holds immense significance and is of great religious eminence for the Hindus.  This site of paramount religious importance has been embroiled in controversy centring on Hindu Muslim contestation for scared space.  The piece of land, where today the Shai Idgah and the Krishna temple complex stand, has a long history of conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities. The history of the current 20th-century temple can be traced to the beginning of the 19th century when Mathura came under the British dominion. The series of events leading to the construction of the current temple is fascinating.  In 1815 the entire land of Katra Keshav Dev measuring 13.37 acres was put for auction sale by the British authorities. Raja Patni Mal of Banaras was the highest bidder. After the acceptance of his bid in the auction,  he became its owner.

The objection raised by Muslims against the ownership and possession of Raja Patni Mal over the land of Katra Keshav Dev was rejected by the Court as well as by the administration. More than six decrees were passed between 1875 and 1877 which were in favour of Rai Narsing Das, the heir of Raja Patni Mal, who held possession of the compound. Thereafter, a number of cases were filed by Muslims, questioning the auction sale, ownership, and possession of Raja Patni Mal,  but all of them were dismissed.  Rai Kishan Das filed a Civil Suit in 1928 and the Hon’ble High Court in Second Appeal of 1932 vide judgment dated 2.12.1935 declared  Raja Patni Mal and his heirs as the rightful owners of 13.37 acres of land of Katra Keshav Dev. Also, the judgment stated that  Muslims had no right over any part of the said land. 

Shri Jugal Kishore Birla had taken a pledge to construct a glorious temple at Katra Keshav Dev glorifying the birth place of Lord Shree Krishna, and for this purpose, he had purchased the land of Katra Keshav Dev in the name of revered Hindu leader Pt. Mahana Mandan Mohan Malvia, Goswami Ganesh Duttji, and Bhikhen Lalji Aattrey in 1944. He also decided to create a trust for the development of the land associated and the ‘Shree Krishna Janmbhoomi Trust’ came into existence on 21.2.1951.

The crucial location of Mathura and its historical and religious significance invariably led to its being attacked and plundered numerous times. These attacks also centered on the destruction of the temples of Mathura. The onslaught of the invading armies by no means fettered the spirit of the faithful. This holy Hindu site repeatedly came out victorious—every time a  temple was destroyed, the faithful worshippers of Shree Krishna built a new one.

The evidence for the earliest temple at Mathura comes from an inscription known as the Vasu Doorjamb Inscription dated to the early 1st century CE.  The Sanskrit inscription in Brahmi script was found on a red sandstone temple doorjamb dumped in an old well in Mathura. The doorjamb is about 8 feet long, 1.24 feet wide and 8 inches thick. The inscription is dedicated to the deity Vasudeva clearly indicating Vaishnavite affiliation. The inscription reads, ‘ a gateway of stone and the railing was erected at the... of the great temple of Bhagavat Vasudeva. May Bhagavat Vasudeva, being pleased, promote (the dominion or the life and strength) of svamin mahakshatrapa Sodasa)’. This piece of evidence is significant as it confirms that the large temple building tradition was in vogue in the Mathura region at a very early period. Another inscription from Mora, 11 kilometers from Mathura, testifies the early religious significance of the area for Vishnu worshippers in and around the sacred land of Mathura. It records the construction of a stone temple for the installation of the Pancha Vrishni Viras, by a lady called To?a. This inscription is dated to the 1st century CE and these five heroes ( Pancha Vrishni Viras) have been identified by J.N. Bannerjea as Vasudeva, Sa?kar?a?a, Pradyumna, Samba and Aniruddha, who were the scions of the Vrishni family and closely related to each other. Furthermore, the find of more than two dozen four-armed Vasudeva Krishna images from the Kushana period in 1950’s and joint images of Krishna his brother Balarama and sister Ekanamsa, all from Mathura between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, leave no doubt about Mathura’s sanctity in the ancient past.

The narratives relating to Shree Krishna’s life are described in the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the Bhagavad Gita and the Harivamsha Purana, a later appendix to the Mahabharata with a detailed version of Krishna's childhood and youth.  He also finds mentioned in the Chandogya Upanishad which has been dated to 8th to 6th centuries BCE. The question that arises is that is there any historical evidence pertaining to the existence of a settlement at Mathura at such an early date? In fact the excavations carried out at Mathura seem to attest the literary tradition, as seen in the presence of particular pottery known as Painted Grey Ware (PGW). This pottery is dated between 1200 to 600 BCE and has been found in many sites referred to in ancient texts – Hastinapur, Mathura, Kurukshetra, and Indraprastha. The period roughly corresponds to the later Vedic and Upanishadic periods. The excavations were carried out by the ASI in the 1950s with the trial trench laid 500 feet to the north of the superimposed Aurangzeb Mosque. Excavations revealed that the vast settlement at Mathura can be dated as far back as the 6th century BCE, if not earlier on basis of the finds of PGW.  The site was occupied till 2nd century BCE. After a brief period of inactivity, it was again occupied from 100 CE to about 6th century CE. It is interesting to note that found among material remains were a coppersmith's furnace and beads of crystal, agate, carnelian, lapis lazuli and jasper. 

This sacred site was in the medieval period plundered and temples were desecrated on more than one occasion, but each time the sanctity of the site was re-established by the building of a new temple. Mahmud of Ghazni attacked and plundered Mahaban, and Al Utbi describes in his Tarikh-i-Yamini the neighbouring holy town which is identified as Mathura-   "In the centre of the city there was a huge and magnificent temple, which the people believed wasn’t built by men but by the angels.” Temples were burnt down, demolished and the gold and silver idols and wealth plundered and taken away.  A stone inscription in Sanskrit records that in the 12th century, a person named Jajja built a Vishnu temple at Mathura which was described as being brilliantly white and touching the cloud. This temple too underwent destruction in the 16th century CE under Sikander Lodi and this is described by Abdullah in Tarikh-i-Daud. In 1636 with lavish sponsorship by Vir Singh Bundela of Orccha, the Keshavaraya temple in Mathura was built in red sandstone and worship at the site was quickly restored. The temple was the recipient of a Mughal grant in Akbar’s farman of 1598, and Prince Dara presented a stone railing to this temple at Mathura. The Keshavraya temple underwent destruction on the orders of Aurangzeb.  But this did not hinder the continued sanctity of site as an important pilgrimage centre. Brajnath’s Shri Braj Parikrama, suggests a revival of pilgrimage, shortly after Aurangzeb’s destruction. In addition to the much-contested Shahi Idgah, apparently, another structure in place of an earlier temple is the Jama mosque. A Muslim officer under Aurangzeb named Abdul Nabi had destroyed a temple and erected a mosque on its ruins in 1661. According to reports of late 19th century sculptures found in a mound near the Gatasram Temple in Mathura City together with others amply testify to the earlier presence of Vishnu and other temples and a Hindu sacred landscape at Mathura.

Interests in tracing the past of Mathura attracted the attention of archaeologists as early as the late 19th century CE. Their exploration and excavations brought to light the presence of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu remains and the existence of the Mathura School of Art. Dr Führer while digging at the back of the Masjid traced the plinth of some old brick sub-structure, which, according to the popular belief, marks the ground floor of the sanctum of the once famous and imposing temple of Keshava visited and described by the French travellers Tavernier (1650) and Bernier (1663). About 50 paces to the northwest of this plinth a trial trench was dug, in the hope of exposing the foundations and some of the sculptures of this ancient Keshava temple. Dr. Führer mentions that, at a depth of 20 feet he came across a portion of the circular procession path leading around a stupa. On the pavement, composed of large red sandstone slabs, a short dedicatory inscription was discovered, according to which this stupa was repaired by the Kushana King. In 1853 regular explorations were started by General Cunningham on the Katra and continued in 1862. They yielded numerous sculptural remains; most important among them is an inscribed standing Buddha image 3 feet in height.

The Mathura region is most strongly

associated with the legend and worship of Krishna, but between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE, its religious landscape was extremely diverse. The details of sculptural and inscriptional discoveries in the 19th and early 20th centuries enable us to identify the location of some of the shrines. For instance, Katra Mound was the site of a Buddhist vihara from the early 2nd century CE, the Jamalpur/Jail Mound was the site of a Buddhist establishment, a shrine of the Naga deity Dadhikarna existed and a Jaina establishment stood on the Kankali Tila from the 2nd century BCE onwards.

(The writer is a research scholar, worked as Project Associate and recipient of  Devangana Desai Senior Fellowship CSMVS Mumbai. She  has also co-authored two books)