Chandigarh: There is no let up in the controversy over the statue of the 9th-century king Mihir Bhoj unveiled in Haryana’s Kaithal earlier this week. With 29 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members quitting in protest against the inscription on the statue referring to the king as a ‘Gurjar’, CM Manohar Lal Khattar is likely to hold a meeting soon with leaders of both the Gurjar and Rajput communities to resolve the matter, ThePrint has learnt.
Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gurjar told ThePrint Saturday, “The chief minister has called leaders of both communities to his residence. The meeting is likely to be held soon.”
Among functionaries who quit the party in protest was BJP’s Kaithal district president Sandeep Rana who told ThePrint Sunday that him and his supporters were protesting peacefully on 19 July but the police resorted to lathi charge.
“We never demanded that Rajput be written on the plaque instead of Gurjar. But we wanted Hindu Samrat to be written before Mihir Bhoj’s name. We will not take back our resignations till the state BJP president or the CM address our grievances,” he said.
Reacting to protests by members of the Rajput community, Haryana BJP president O.P. Dhankar had told ThePrint Friday that “great men aren’t identified by their caste”.
“We don’t ask the caste of martyr Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, or Chandra Shekhar Azad. They belong to the nation. Likewise, Mihir Bhoj belongs to the entire nation. These national heroes should not be turned into topics of controversy,” he said.
However, state BJP spokesperson and Rajput leader Suraj Pal Amu said the situation could have been averted. “For me, a controversy over the caste of a national hero is unfortunate. Ideally, statues should not be installed on roads and chowks. Even if it was necessary to do so, our community could have been taken into confidence,” he told ThePrint Saturday.
Amu claimed that several members of his community were injured in police lathi charge against protesters a day ahead of the unveiling of the statue. “The issue of Mihir Bhoj is already being heard by the Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court. It would have been better for our party’s Gurjar leaders to wait for the court’s verdict,” he said.
Meanwhile, a senior BJP leader from the Gurjar community, who did not wish to be named, claimed Mihir Bhoj was described as a “Gujrar Samrat” in school textbooks in the state till 1982. He added that statues unveiled earlier also refer to him as “Gurjar Samrat”.
“Several leaders, including those belonging to the Rajput community, such as General V.K. Singh, have unveiled the statue of Mihir Bhoj, all describing him as Gurjar Samrat. So have UP CM Yogi Adityanath, and former Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Rawat,” he said.
The kingdom of Mihir Bhoj, who ruled parts of northern India for over 50 years, is said to have spread from Multan in the west to Bengal in the east and from Kashmir in the north to Karnataka in the south.
His lineage though been hotly debated for some time now. The Rajput community contends that he belonged to the Pratihara-Rajput dynasty, and the prefix Gurjar has nothing to do with the Gurjar community but is a reference to the region that was part of his empire — current-day southern Rajasthan and northern Gujarat.
Who is Mihir Bhoj
A statue of the 9th-century king first became a bone of contention between the two communities when it was installed in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior on 8 September 2021 with the inscription ‘Samrat Mihir Bhoj’. Later, the prefix Gurjar was added to the name, leading to opposition from the Rajputs. The matter is pending before the MP High Court.
Later that same month, on 22 September, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath unveiled a statue of Mihir Bhoj at Dadri, Greater Noida, again leading to controversy. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal too unveiled a statue of 9th-century king in Delhi in 2019. A bridge on NH-24 at Ghazipur and a road in the national capital is also named after him. The then Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Rawat also unveiled a statue of Mihir Bhoj in Haridwar in 2019.
The latest controversy stems from a statue of Mihir Bhoj unveiled at Dhand Road in Haryana’s Kaithal town Thursday by local BJP MLA Lila Ram Gurjar. It was to be unveiled by
state School Education minister Chaudhary Kanwar Pal Gurjar. However, the day before the unveiling, people from the Rajput community mounted a protest against Mihir Bhoj being referred to as “Gurjar Samrat” and not “Hindu Samrat” in the inscription.
Heavy police force was deployed in Kaithal and some were taken into custody. Rajput leaders also alleged that some protesters were injured. With the situation turning tense, the minister didn’t grace the occasion and MLA Lila Ram Gurjar unveiled the statue instead.
The legislator was later quoted by local media outlets as saying, “Mihir Bhoj was an ancestor of the Gurjar community. We unveiled his statue. The entire Gurjar community is happy with it. There is no reason for any controversy.”
ThePrint reached BJP MLA Lila Ram Gurjar for comment but calls to him went unanswered.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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