Charminar, built in 1591 CE, landmark and the iconic monument that symbolizes Hyderabad, will remain shut for the next two days to visitors, authorities informed on Wednesday. The city police have thrown an unprecedented security blanket in the Old City on the 20th Babri Masjid demolition anniversary.
The decision to shut down Charminar comes two days after the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi, delivered a fiery speech to mark the Babri Masjid demolition, and urged people to protest "peacefully" on Friday if the police restricts movement of namazis in the area. The MIM has also called for a 24-hour statewide shutdown to protest the mosque demolition at Ayodhya in December 1992.
On 6 December 1992, at noon, a teenage Kar Sevak was "vaulted" on to the dome and that signaled the breaking of the outer cordon. Palaeographic evidence of an older Hindu temple on the site emerged from an inscription on a thick stone slab recovered from the debris of the demolished structure in 1992. Over 260 other artifacts were recovered on the day of demolition, and many point to being part of the ancient temple. The inscription on the slab has 20 lines, 30 shlokas (verses), and is composed in Sanskrit written in the Nagari script. The 'Nagari Lipi' script was prevalent in the eleventh and twelfth century. The crucial part of the message as deciphered by a team comprising epigraphists, Sanskrit scholars, historians and archaeologists including Prof. A.M. Shastri, Dr. K.V. Ramesh, Dr. T.P. Verma, Prof. B.R. Grover, Dr. A.K. Sinha, Dr. Sudha Malaiya, Dr. D.P. Dubey and Dr. G.C. Tripathi.
The first twenty verses are the praises of the king Govind Chandra Gharhwal (AD 1114 to 1154) and his dynasty. The twenty-first verse says the following; "For the salvation of his soul the King, after paying his obeisance at the little feet of Vamana Avatar (the incarnation of Vishnu as a midget Brahmana), went about constructing a wondrous temple for Vishnu Hari (Shri Rama) with marvelous pillars and structure of stone reaching the skies and culminating in a superb top with a massive sphere of gold and projecting shafts in the sky - a temple so grand that no other King in the History of the nation had ever built before."
