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Introduction
The Fourth Annual Report of the Minorities Commission submitted to the President of India through the Ministry of Home Affairs on April 19, 1983, carries an account of a dispute over the Jãmi Masjid at Sidhpur in the Mehsana District of Gujarat. The account raises some significant questions about certain aspects of Islam as a religion and the character of Muslim rule in medieval India. We have to go to primary source materials in order to find satisfactory answers to these questions.
Sidhpur is a Taluka town, sixty-four miles north of Ahmadabad. It is situated on the left bank of the river Saraswati, fifteen miles upstream of ANhilwãD PãTan, the old capital of Gujarat before Ahmadabad was founded in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. In a part of the town, says the Commissions Report, is located what is known as Rudramahãlaya complex. This complex was built by Siddhraj Jayasimha in the 12th century This temple seems to have been destroyed partly by Ulugh Khan in AD 1297-98 and partly by Ahmedshah in AD 1415. Some of the cubicles and a number of pillars on the Western side of the temple it would appear were later converted into a mosque.1
At the dawn of independence in 1947, Sidhpur was in the territory of Baroda, the princely state ruled by the Maratha house of the GãekwãDs. The princely state of Baroda, proceeds the Report, had treated the complex consisting of the mosque and the remnants of the temple as a monument of historical importance. Subsequently, by virtue of an agreement between the Trustees and the Archaeological Survey of India on 31st March, 1954, the mosque was declared as a national monument and its maintenance and protection were taken over by the Archaeological Survey of India. One of the terms of this agreement was that the mosque would continue to be used by the Muslims for offering prayers .2
Author : Shri Sita Ram Goel
Foot Notes
1 Fourth Annual Report of the Minorities Commission for the Period 1.1.1980 to 31.3.1981, New Delhi, 1983, p. 130.
2 Ibid., pp. 130-31.
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