oppn parties What Will Court-Monitored Surveys Of Religious Places Achieve?

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
What Will Court-Monitored Surveys Of Religious Places Achieve?

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-12-18 14:22:02

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

When the Places of Worship Act was enacted in 1991 just before the Babri Masjid was brought down, it was as much to assuage the feeling of the besieged Muslim community as to prevent other disputes over religious places from cropping up, especially in light of the slogan 'Ayodhya toh jhanki hai, Kashi, Mathura baki hai'. It sought to do this by keeping the Ayodhya dispute out of the ambit of the Act since it was already the subject of legal suits and freeze the character of all other religious places to as they existed on 15th August 1947. But that was not to be. Karsevaks, egged on by supposedly responsible politicians, illegally brought down the Babri Masjid even though the case about the ownership of the land was pending in the courts. Emboldened by their success, they started hankering for Kashi and Mathura.

The recent Allahabad HC judgment that has allowed a court-monitored survey of the Shahi Idgah (which is allegedly built on Hindu-owned land and at the exact place where Lord Krishna was born in jail) in line with Supreme Court judgments which have allowed such surveys as the Places of Worship Act does not expressly prohibit it. A similar survey has been allowed (and completed) for the Gyanvapi Moasque adjoining the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. This is a grey area in the Act that is being exploited by interested parties to foment trouble.

For, the only reason to conduct a survey to ascertain the character of a place of worship is to take it from there and press for destroying it if it was found to have been built either on land whose ownership is in dispute or by razing another place of worship. The discovery of the structure being called a Shivling in the Gyanvapi survey is a pointer to this. But wasn't the Places of Worship Act enacted to preserve places of worship as they existed on the day of India's Independence in 1947? Then how would surveying them help in anything? Even if they were built on the remains of a place of worship, they will remain what they were on that date. So why allow such surveys and open doors for further trouble? The courts will have to apply the law as much in the letter as in spirit, put their foot down and preserve them.