It is well known and clearly recorded that the Kashi Vishwanath mandir was destroyed upon the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. This fact stands out clearly in Aurangzeb’s chronicles and does not require any further perseverance to unearth. However, the study of history demands that we attempt to unearth more than just this fact using the sources at our disposal. Are there aspects to this destruction that lie as yet unaddressed in the historical sources? This question is appropriate in light of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report made public on January 25, 2024; that concludes that “..it can be said that there existed a large Hindu temple prior to the construction of the existing structure (mosque)”.

Date the order to destroy Kashi Vishwanath was issued

The precise date the order to destroy Kashi-Vishwanath was issued is known from the chronicles of the Maasir-i-Alamgiri.
The Maasir records that the order was issued in the 12^th regnal year of Aurangzeb (year 1079 in the Al-Hijri calendar), and the precise date was the 8^th of April, 1669.  We know this because the following paragraph starts the chronicle for the following date, viz., the 9^th of April.  This is fortuitous for the history scholar, because there are many cases where successive dates of chronicles are not recorded.  However, in this case, they are, and so we can furnish the precise date the order was issued.  The chronicle also records that this day happened to be an eclipse, and prayers were said as per Islamic customs for such an occasion.  By looking up the dates of solar eclipses in 1669, we find that the only solar eclipse around this date was on the 30^th of April, 1669. Therefore, we can conclude that the eclipse was a lunar (not a solar) eclipse.

It should also be noted that orders were given to destroy Hindu temples at three locations on this date: Thatta, Multan, and Kashi (Benaras). This fact will be used later in this paper.

Approximate date the demolition was completed

Now we come to the portion of the Maasir-i-Alamgiri that speaks of the report to Aurangzeb that the temple has been destroyed.  It has been overlooked in previous research on this subject that such reports were not at all common. We have mentioned that orders to destroy the Hindu temples at Thatta and Multan were issued simultaneously with the demolition at Benaras; however, no such report is recorded upon the completion of the destructions at Thatta and Multan. Indeed, there is no other such report of the completion of destruction of a temple whose orders had been given earlier during the entire chronicle of the twelfth regnal year in the Maasir. This suggests that the temple destruction at Benaras was:

1. viewed as very important, because of the sanctity of the Kashi Vishwanath jyothirlinga among the Hindus, and
2. might have encountered significant resistance during its completion, as we shall argue later in this paper.

Returning to the discussion of dates; we do not have a precise date on which this destruction was reported as complete.  The best we can do is look at the previous date on which a chronicle is present and the immediately following date on which also a chronicle is present.  This way, we obtain the following date ranges. This demolition was reported to Aurangzeb between 2^nd September (Thursday) 1669, and 18^th September (Saturday) 1669, both dates not included.  This gives us a 15 day period during which Aurangzeb was informed that his ordered destruction had been completed.

Time taken to demolish the temple, and plausible reason

We can now analyze a question which has hitherto not found any research attention as far as we are aware.  Namely, how long did it take to destroy the Kashi Vishwanath temple, and what may be inferred from the answer to this question?

From the preceding sections, we further our analysis as follows.  It took a few days to few weeks for the start of the destruction.  Thus, we can say, under fair assumptions, that the actual destruction teams began their work of destroying the temple sometime in the second half of April 1669. 

The news of the completion was reported to Aurangzeb in the first half of September.  Assuming that it took 1-2 week(s) for the news to travel by qasid (courier) or military messengers given the short distance from Benaras to Aurangzeb’s court, and that a news of such importance to Aurangzeb would not be unduly delayed, we can say that the destruction was actually completed early in September 1669.

This gives us the time taken to actually carry out the destruction: Between 4 and and 4 ½ months.

This immediately raises the question: why did it take so long for the destruction to be carried out? This is especially curious since a good part of the original temple was left standing and incorporated into the mosque built in its place: a fact that is easily visible to the naked eye even today.  The entire back wall of the mosque is easily seen to be part of the original temple, as seen in the pictures below.

At this time, while having raised a question, we may provide only circumstantial evidence for a hypothesis.  Our hypothesis states that the destruction took 4 months to complete because of Hindu resistance to this destruction.  We do not have Hindu histories that deal with this event in detail in published form; there may be some oral records present as bardic tales told in the region of Benaras. It is always the case in Muslim chronicles that the Hindu resistance to their acts of iconoclasm are rarely mentioned.  However, it seems incredulous to believe that the local Hindus would simply “allow” a Muslim force to come and destroy the temple that was so sacred to them, with no resistance.
Indeed, such has usually not happened in Indian history: take for example Mahmud Ghaznavi’s destruction of Somnath – another jyotirlinga that ranks close to the Kashi-Vishwanath in importance. We know even from the Turkic records that the local Hindus of the town (not an organized trained military, but civilians) put up such a stiff resistance that the Turkic cavalry, one of the best in the world at that time, was unable to enter the temple premises for two to three nights.  It seems, therefore, incredulous that there would be no resistance to Aurangzeb’s force sent to destroy the Kashi-Vishwanath. On the contrary, one would expect stiff and fanatical resistance.

It is this resistance that we hypothesize led to the long period of 4 months taken to complete the destruction.  This would also explain why the destruction was not completed but seems to have been abandoned midway and the rest of the temple incorporated into the upcoming mosque in the most awkward, visible manner.  Once again, we present this hypothesis as a further avenue of research: do local bardic tales or local records preserved in the custody of chieftains and other clans corroborate this hypothesis? 

References:
The Maasir-i-Alamgiri of Saqi Mustad Khan, translated and annotated by Sir Jadunath Sarkar.  Available on internet archive at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62691
Op. Cit. p. 51-52 (Ch. 12)
Op. Cit. p. 55 (Ch. 12)
ASI report on Gyanvapi mosque discussed: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/large-hindu-temple-existed-at-the-site-of-gyanvapi-mosque-asi-report/videoshow/107156166.cms