Is there proof that Aurangzeb razed Kashi Vishwanath temple?

The Answer Lies In Records Of The Official Mughal Chronicler

- Vaibhav Purandare

The controversy surrounding the Gyanvapi mosque has put the focus squarely on Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who is said to have demolished the temple of Lord Shiva in Kashi or Benaras to build a masjid there.

But archaeological evidence in the form of a surviving wall and the nandi bull apart, is there any contemporary evidence to suggest that Aurangzeb did indeed raze the temple or ordered the temple to be razed? Contemporary evidence, and especially that of the literary kind, becomes critical because in the Ayodhya case, a great deal was made of the fact that there was no contemporary written record of the Ram temple’s demolition as several pages of Babur’s diary from April 2, 1528, onwards – the day he entered Ayodhya – had gone missing. His diary then resumes only in September 1528, by which time Babur had already left Ayodhya. One of the key arguments put forward at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation was: the Hindu nationalist side might be citing apparent archaeological evidence and epigraphic evidence and even the 17th-century accounts of travellers, most notably the record left behind by an Austrian priest, Joseph Tieffenthaler, who visited Ayodhya circa 1770, but there is simply no literary record about the temple demolition from Babur’s times.