In the North Indian town of Gurgaon, the ruling BJP refused to allow Muslims to offer the Friday prayers in the open. At the same time, in Varanasi, the Prime Minister of India, in the presence of over 3,000 Hindu political and religious leaders, inaugurated on December 13 the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor on to connect the Temple with the banks (ghats) of the Ganges.
Brahmans dedicate the Temple to Shiva, the God of Destruction and one of the holy Hindu trinity. They claim that an argument took place between Brahma, the god of creation, and Vishnu, the god of preservation, about who was supreme.
Shiva pierced the three worlds as a huge, endless pillar of light to test them. Vishnu took the form of a boar and sought out the bottom, while Brahma took the form of a swan to fly to the pillar's top. Brahma lied that he had found out the end. Vishnu confessed to being unable to find the bottom. Shiva cut off Brahma's head and declared him un worshipable. He rewarded Vishnu for his honesty and assured his worship until eternity. They believe that Brahmans constructed the Temple in the sixth century C.E.
The Temple's name comes from the presiding deity Shri Vishwanath or Vishweshwara, meaning the 'lord of the universe' or the 'keeper of the universe'. In ancient India, Varanasi or Benaras was called Kashi.
Maratha ruler, Ahilya Bai Holkar of Indore in the year 1780, the current structure of the Temple Bahamans believe that the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb destroyed the Temple that his great-grandfather Akbar's minister Raja Tudor Mal had built. They accuse Aurangzeb of building the Gyanvapi Mosque, which co-exists on an adjacent site.
Brahmans believe that Hinduism would restore its dignity when Hindus reclaim the Masjid and purify the area defiled by Muslim invaders from the 11 century onwards.
Muslim historians and religious leaders reject the Brahman that British Colonial accounts approve.
There are three main Muslim narratives.
1 The original building was never a temple but a structure of the Din-i Ilahi faith. Aurangzeb destroyed it.
2. The original building was indeed a temple but destroyed by a Hindu ruler Jnan Chand (a Hindu), due to the priest having looted and violated one of his female relatives.
3. Aurangzeb destroyed it because it served as a hub of political rebellion. However, Muslims reject that Aurangzeb demolished any temple to commission the mosque. Instead, they claim that the third Mughal emperor, Akbar, built the Masjid. Later, Aurangzeb's father, Shah Jahan, started a madrasah at the mosque site in 1048 Hijri (1638–1639 CE). They quote Aurangzeb's written orders found in Hindu Temple granting protection to them at Varanasi and providing patronage to them.
A resurgent Hinduism is keen to eliminate any visible sign of Muslim presence from India. Its starting point was the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It claims to purify India from the company of at least 3,000 mosques that exist in areas Hindus consider holy. The politics behind the Kashi Vishwanath Temple is to paint Muslims as barbaric whose rulers destroyed Hindu civilization. The purpose is to recreate the Hindu glory based on Manusmriti, a religious code that institutionalizes inequality through the caste system. The absence of any significant Dalit priest from the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Corridor ceremony was glaring evidence of the Hindu upper-caste efforts to rewrite the history of India in their image.