Members of a right-wing group on Tuesday recited the Hanuman Chalisa outside the Qutub Minar complex and staged a protest demanding that the iconic monument here be renamed ‘Vishnu Stambha’. At least 30 demonstrators have been detained and taken to a police station, from where they will be released later, a senior official said.
“They were detained because they cannot protest in the middle of the road causing traffic snarls, thereby creating inconvenience for commuters,” the police official said. International working president of the United Hindu Front, Bhagwan Goyal, claimed that the Qutub Minar is the ‘Vishnu Stambha’, which was built by the “great king Vikramaditya”.
“But later, Qutubuddin Aibak claimed credit for it. There were 27 temples in the complex and those were destroyed by Aibak. Proof of all this is available as people can find idols of Hindu gods kept in the Qutub Minar complex. Our demand is that Qutub Minar should be called as Vishnu Stambha,” he told PTI. The protestors chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’, recited the Hanuman Chalisa and displayed placards reading “Qutub Minar should be called Vishnu Stambha”, after the Hindu God Vishnu.
Goyal claimed that idols are kept at different spots in the complex and demanded that they should be kept at one place and “we should be given the right to worship there”. “We have given a memorandum of our demands to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy,” he said.
Today’s move comes amid demand by the right-wing groups to remove the idols from the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque located inside the Qutab Minar complex.
Goyal had earlier called other Hindu groups to join the chanting of Hanuman Chalisa in the complex and said that they should be given permission for praying in the mosque or the idols should be removed from the mosque.
The right wing group said that the idols of Lord Ganesh inside the mosque is hurting the sentiment of the community. The right wing groups have recently been claiming that the structure was built with materials obtained after demolishing 27 Hindu-Jain temples.
Last month, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad spokesman Vinod Bansal had said that Qutub Minar was actually ‘Vishnu Stambh’.
“Qutab Minar was actually ‘Vishnu Stambh’. Qutub Minar was built with materials obtained after demolishing 27 Hindu-Jain temples. The superimposed structure was built just to tease the Hindu community,” Vinod Bansal was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Qutab-ud-din Aibak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi, had started the construction of the Qutab Minar in 13th century but could only finish the basement. His successor, Iltutmush, added three more storeys, and in 1368, Firoz Shah Tughlak constructed the fifth and the last storey, according to the data on the website.
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