Union Culture Minister GK Reddy has denied media reports which said that the Archaeological Survey of India has been asked to conduct excavation in the Qutub Minar complex.
The Qutab controversy erupted after a former ASI regional director Dharamveer Sharma claimed the minaret was built by Hindu king Raja Vikramaditya and not by Qutb al-Din Aibak. Sharma had further disputed the claim that Qutab was intended to be a sun observatory.
On Saturday, the Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Govind Mohan, visited the heritage monument with three historians, four ASI officers and researchers. ASI officials reportedly informed him that the excavation work at Qutub Minar complex had not been done since 1991. The Ministry, however, insist that it was a regular site visit by its officials and no such decision has been taken so far to dig-in the complex “to ascertain the facts”.
Officials at ASI were not available for a comment.
The visit to the monument has come on the heels of 0several Hindu groups demanding renaming of Qutub Minar as ‘Vishnu Stambha.’
International working president of the United Hindu Front, Bhagwan Goyal, claims the monument was originally built by the “great king Vikramaditya;" later, it was appropriated by Qutubuddin Aibak who claimed credit for it.
Giving the minaret a Gyanvapi kind of a twist, Goyal further claims that 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 in the Qutub complex. Our demand is that Qutub Minar should be called as Vishnu Stambha," he told PTI.
