None of the petitions pleading for surveying the mosques should have been entertained by the judiciary, for the Places of Worship Act, 1991, freezes the religious character of sacred places as it existed on August 15, 1947
Devotees leave after offering prayers at the Shahi Jama Masjid amid tight security, in Sambhal, on November 29. Pic/PTI
A darkled future awaits India, and particularly Muslims, as a segment of the judiciary facilitates Hindutva to appropriate mosques claimed to have been built over temples after these were demolished by Muslim rulers centuries ago. Righting the “wrongs of history” has been one of the defining attributes of Hindutva. This process has been given a fillip because of judicial orders permitting surveys of mosques for determining whether these were originally temples.
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It was thought the building of the Ram Temple where the Babri Masjid once stood in Ayodhya would end the culture of manufacturing disputes over places of worship. The Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah in Mathura have always been in Hindutva’s crosshairs. But what is happening now, courtesy of judicial orders, is that little-known mosques in nondescript districts have become targets to be reclaimed as temples.
The most recent example of this tendency is the Jama Masjid in Sambhal. On November 19, a civil court admitted a petition claiming Mughal emperor Babur built the Jama Masjid after destroying the Hari Har Temple. The judge violated legal morality—not the law though—as he appointed an advocate commissioner to survey the Jama Masjid, without even hearing its managing committee. The survey was started the same day. India’s notoriously laggard system was in overdrive.
At the next round of the survey, on November 24, the police and protesters clashed. Five people died. The Supreme Court has stayed the proceedings in the civil court over the Jama Masjid, and asked it to place in a sealed cover the advocate commissioner’s report. Nevertheless, yet another dispute over a mosque has been seeded.
Soon after the Sambhal incident, a plea was filed in Ajmer’s civil court for carrying out a survey of the mausoleum of revered Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti there. The reason: the petitioner claimed that a Shiv temple had stood at the site where Chishti is buried. People of all faiths flock to the mausoleum, an example of India’s syncretic tradition that is gasping to stay alive under Hindutva’s onslaught.
Sambhal and Ajmer are the latest additions to the surveys the judiciary ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct, over the last two years, at Varanasi’s Gyanvapi Masjid and Dhar’s Bhojshala temple-cum-Kamal Maula Mosque. The courts have already received the two ASI reports, which are said to bolster Hindutva’s claims that temples were likely turned into mosques in Varanasi and Dhar. On yet another petition, a district judge allowed puja to be conducted in the Gyanvapi mosque’s basement on the day he was retiring! Even the Shahi Idgah in Mathura would have been surveyed but for the Supreme Court staying the Allahabad High Court order granting permission for it.
It seems a virus of mosque surveys is afloat in India.
None of the petitions pleading for surveying the mosques should have been entertained by the judiciary, for the Places of Worship Act, 1991, freezes the religious character of sacred places as it existed on August 15, 1947. Since no relief could be granted to the petitioners under the law, it made no sense for the courts to determine whether the mosques were built over temples.
It was former Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud who concocted the virus of surveying mosques. Listening to an appeal against Varanasi’s district court asking the ASI to survey the Gyanvapi mosque, Chandrachud, in 2022, observed that the Places of Worship Act does not debar the ascertainment of religious character of a place of worship—it only prohibits a change in its religious character. It was this logic the lower judiciary invoked to permit the subsequent surveys. Chandrachud now has all the time in his retirement to mull his role in the death of five men in Sambhal.
Chandrachud was one of the five judges who delivered the Ayodhya judgment, which handed over the Babri Masjid site for building the Ram Temple. In their judgment, they hailed the Places of Worship Act: “In preserving the character of places of public ownership, Parliament has mandated in no uncertain terms that history and its wrongs shall not be used to oppress the present and the future.” Chandrachud has
certainly contributed to oppressing our present.
Surveys of mosques furnishing evidence that temples were destroyed to build mosques cannot lead to their restitution. For one, the veracity of such surveys will have to be judicially tested. For another, the obstacle of the Places of Worship Act will have to be surmounted. A constitutional challenge to this Act is pending before the Supreme Court. It can either dismiss the challenge or strike down the Act. The second outcome will lead to a rash of disputes over places of worship.
The ASI survey reports on the Gyanvapi mosque and Kamal Maula Mosque have already deepened the narrative that these had earlier been temples. These narratives can be exploited à la the Ram Temple movement to mount pressure on Muslims to relinquish their control over them. It could also become a pretext for the Modi government to annul the Act. Either way, India is set to witness social conflict, for which a reason would be the judicial kar seva or voluntary service for Hindutva.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste.
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