Abdul Bari Masoud analyses the efforts of the Hindutva brigade to challenge the Places of Worship Act of 1991.
The ruling BJP appears to be desperate to create another Ayodhya-like controversy ahead of the general election in 2024, which is just one year away. As a result, Hindutva activists and groups have filed a flurry of petitions in Varanasi, Mathura, and Agra, asking for the right to worship at the old mosques located in these cities. They also challenged the validity of the Places of Worship Act in the Supreme Court.
The similar type of petitions argued that prominent Muslim sites of worship were built after demolishing old temples, and, therefore, Hindus must be given the right to worship at these sites.
Curiously, the courts are still entertaining these petitions despite the Places of Worship Act of 1991 being in force, and the BJP-led Union government is reluctant to state clearly where it stands on this Act.
On May 15, a little-known Hindutva outfit Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Sanrakshit Sewa Trust, through its president Piyush Pandey of Agra and two others, filed a petition in the court of the civil judge (senior division), Agra, seeking excavation of the stairs of a mosque that stands on the Agra Fort premises. The petitioners argued that there were idols of Lord Krishna buried under the structure that needed to be recovered.
The petition made a ridiculous claim that idols of Krishna were brought to Agra by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
The excavation is sought at the mosque known as Chhoti or Begum Sahiba mosque at Diwan-e-Khas at Agra Fort and conserved by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
Earlier, their ilk used the same phony reasoning to target the Shahi Eidgah mosque in Mathura and the Gyanvapi mosque.
It is a well-known fact that, according to Islamic teachings, a mosque cannot be built on disputed land or the land acquired after destroying another religion’s place of worship.
Using the services of women, they filed a petition in September last year, seeking the right to prayer for Hindus at the Gyanvapi mosque complex in the Varanasi district court. While granting the permission, the district court also directed ASI to carry out videographic survey of the mosque which in its findings dubbed “the fountainhead” of the ablution tank as “shivling”. Then they moved Allahabad High Court which permitted carbon dating on the fountainhead.
However, the Supreme Court deftly frustrated the radical Hindutva brigade’s political gameplan in the matter of Gyanvapi mosque. The Apex Court directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) not to conduct carbon dating of the so-called ‘Shivling’ inside the Gyanvapi mosque till the next hearing on the matter. The brigade referred to the ablution tank’s fountainhead as a “shivling” because they could uncover nothing to support their fictitious assertion about the mosque. The court deferred the implications of an earlier order by the Allahabad High Court that had permitted carbon dating on the fountainhead.
The Supreme Court ruled that the implementation of the orders in question in the Allahabad High Court ruling must be postponed till the next hearing date since the ramifications of the order deserve further examination.
Expressing satisfaction over the court judgment, Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee (AIMC) of Gyanvapi Mosque secretary S M Yasin told Radiance that the Masjid Committee is fighting as many as 13 cases in lower and higher courts. It is a blatant lie that the mosque was built by Aurangzeb after demolishing a temple; in fact, it was SharqiSalatins (rulers) who built the mosque.
The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board is fighting as many as 24 cases in different courts of the state. Teele Wali Masjid in Lucknow, Jama Masjid Shamsi in Budaun and other mosques were facing similar- type litigation.
Besides targeting mosques, aslew of petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court against the 1991 Act, contending that the law has barred Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs from approaching courts to “re-claim” their places of worship which were “invaded” and “encroached” upon by “fundamentalist barbaric invaders”.
These petitions claimed that in order to protect the nature of sites of worship or pilgrimage from encroachment by “fundamentalist-barbaric invaders and law-breakers,” the 1991 law established an “arbitrary and irrational retrospective cut-off date” of August 15, 1947.
While the Union Government yet again sought time in the Supreme Court to clarify its stand on the validity of the Places of Worship Act.
On November 14 last year, the court gave the government time till December 12, 2022 to file its affidavit clarifying its position on the issue after the latter had submitted that “detailed consultations” were required at a “particular level”.
On January 10, the court heard the matter again. Senior attorney Kapil Sibal, appearing for the AllIndia Muslim Personal Law Board, argued during the hearing that the court must first decide whether a Public Interest Litigation petition challenging the Places of Worship Act of 1991, a piece of Central legislation, would be admissible, especially in light of the fact that a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court upheld the Act’s legality in its Babri Masjid- Ramjanmabhoomi case judgment.
According to the Ayodhya judgment, the 1991 Act spoke “to our history and to the future of the nation… In preserving the character of places of public worship, the Parliament has mandated in no uncertain terms that history and its wrongs shall not be used as instruments to oppress the present and the future”.
It is well-known that the ruling party is hell-bent on using a twisted version of history to harm minority communities. It has long been a part of the party’s political strategy to inflame religious feelings and manipulate them for communal ends by claiming that present mosques were constructed on the sites of ancient temples.
Lucknow-based senior journalist, Obaid Naser said UP has become the hotbed of communal politics in the country.
“RSS historians claim that every building and monument built during Muslim era is constructed by destroying temples. However, SC in Ayodhya dispute has rejected all their such claims (it is another thing that the disputed land was handed over for Ram Mandir construction) still their grinding machine of lies works 24×7 and there is no limit of their rumour mongering,” he told Radiance.
Seconding his views, noted activist and author, Dr John Dayal said by chance, he was at the Gyanvapi mosque one day after the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi had helped enlarge the access to the adjoining Kashi Vishwanath Temple, and generally beautified the area which is at the heart of his Lok Sabha parliamentary constituency.
Speaking with Radiance, he said as everyone knows, since Babri Masjid, the mosque and the temple are separated from each other by a strong fence made up of stout steel the size of lampposts, and steel poles on a strong steel mesh. At one spot, curious visitors noticed that the strong steel poles had been parted, as if mechanical power machines were used to create a bit of an opening. It has not been repaired. It could be, one fears, a future hotspot. The Supreme Court has stayed the so-called carbon dating of a contested stone item which Hindu groups think is a Shivling, and the Muslims say is a mere part of the water font structures.
On the carbon dating issue, he opines that it is not about carbon dating to find out which part of a congested mosque is a former Hindu structure.
“What confuses law experts and general religious minorities is the light-hearted casualness with which the Sangh, and the government, now seem to be interpreting, or rather fully annihilating, the intent of the Places of Worship Act which was enacted in 1991 when the Ram Mandir agitation was at its full stream, but the Babri Mosque was still intact.”
The intent of the law was to cool tempers across the country where Sangh groups have laid claim to scores, if not hundreds, of mosques as having been built in the “Moghul period” on the ruins of destroyed temples, he added.
The Sangh’s narrative about historic wrongs is influencing the Buddhist community as during the Brahmanical rule in the medieval period Buddhist places of worship were destroyed on a large scale.
Prominent historian D.N. Jha, an expert in India’s ancient and medieval past, asserts that Buddhist shrines were ‘massively destroyed’ by Brahmanical rulers.
According to his new book, “Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History”, Jha said “Other early evidence of the persecution of Shramanas comes from the post-Mauryan period, recorded in the Divyavadana, a Buddhist Sanskrit, which describes the Brahmin ruler Pushyamitra Shunga as a great persecutor of Buddhists. He is said to have marched out with a large army, destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing monks as far as Sakala, now known as Sialkot, where he announced a prize of one hundred dinars for every head of a Shramana.”
Dr. Dayal points out that there have been sporadic voices from the Buddhist community that several major temples are built on the ruins of Buddhist sites, but the community is not politically powerful or even numerous enough to even get support from the media or academic circles.
For the Muslims, it is important that the sanctity of the 1991 law be maintained, and the government’s commitment to enforce it is a clear political commitment. As the county moves towards the heady environment of the campaign for the 2024 general elections, there is little doubt that Hindutva will be the main campaign force in all its hydra-headed dimensions. Civil society has tried hard, as in Karnataka, to stand in the way of this hate tsunami, but with only limited success. Religious minorities cannot dare go into a confrontation mode. Hatemongers may have a field day in the coming months. One only hopes the campaign will remain at hate, and not mutate into targeted violence, he adds.
While Naser fears that before the announcement of general elections next year, the Modi government may even scrap the 1991 law which will open a Pandora Box of such disputes.