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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. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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. 

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