Hinduism - What Is The Krishna Janam Bhumi?


Krishna Janam Bhumi is a site in Mathura considered to be the birthplace of the Hindu divinity Krishna.

The current temple was built in the 1960s, although the site is much older.

The new temple abuts the Shahi Idgah, a mosque erected on the foundation of an ancient Krishna temple, making it one of India's most religiously contentious places.

According to one legend, Muslim iconoclasts demolished four successive temples on the site where the mosque currently stands, commemorating the precise place of Krishna's birth.

Since the mosque was erected in 1661, and the temple it is alleged to have replaced was demolished by the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb in 1669, this claim seems dubious.

Along with the Vishvanath temple in Benares and Ayodhya's Ram Janam Bhumi, the activist Vishva Hindu Parishad chose the Krishna Janam Bhumi as one of three locations to be recovered as a Hindu holy place in the 1980s.

Mosques were said to have been erected on the site of an important Hindu temple at each of these locations, albeit only the first two have historical evidence of this.

Several attempts to recapture the Krishna Janam Bhumi have been launched during the 1990s, but they have received little support to yet.

Following the public outcry following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, the government has been significantly more restrictive in the activities it permits at such sensitive sites.

Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, 1996, is a good source of information.



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