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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