The year is 1991. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement is kicking up a duststorm across the Hindi heartland, corralling more people to join the decades-long demand for a Ram Temple in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. LK Advani’s Rath Yatra has added an edge to the movement, leaving a trail of violence and communal flare-ups in its wake. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s political fortunes are looking up, and other parties are trying to contain its rise.
Against this backdrop, general elections are announced after a short-lived coalition government collapses. In its election manifesto, the Congress party offers a controversial new way out of the sectarian maze – a Central law that locks the religious character of holy sites (with the exception of the Ayodhya case), so that future disputes such as the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute can be avoided.
When it is introduced in Parliament that autumn, there is uproar. The Congress government says the bill – now called the 1991 Places of Worship Act – will forestall any attempts to stoke communal tensions over a holy site. But the BJP calls it an attempt at appeasement. The bill clears Parliament in September.
Two decades later, it is in the public eye again, courtesy a clutch of petitions in local courts in Uttar Pradesh that demand worshipping rights inside mosques in Varanasi and Mathura. The Supreme Court is set to hear pleas on the law later this year. The government has to tell the court whether it plans to review the law, or defend it.
What is the law?
Section 4 of the law says that the religious character of a holy site “shall continue to be the same as it existed” as it was on August 15, 1947, the day of independence. It also says that legal proceedings about the conversion of the religious character of a place of worship pending before any court will end, and no fresh suit will be instituted.
But it carves out one notable exception. Section 5 says that “nothing contained in this act shall apply to the place or place of worship commonly known as Ram Janma Bhumi-Babri Masjid situated in Ayodhya in the State of Uttar Pradesh and to any suit, appeal or other proceeding relating to the said place or place of worship.”
Offences are punishable with a jail term of up to three years and a monetary penalty. Under Section 6, even attempting to change the character of a place of worship, abetting it, or being party to a conspiracy to do so could invite a jail term.
The case got a further boost from the Supreme Court in its landmark 2019 judgement that paved the way for a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The five-judge bench endorsed the 1991 law and said it protects and secures the fundamental values of the Constitution.
“The law addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen of the nation. Its norms bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level. Those norms implement the fundamental duties under Article 51A and are hence, positive mandates to every citizen as well. The State, has by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalised its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution,” said the verdict.
So, why is the law in the news again?
This is due to a raft of new petitions that have been filed in lower courts in Varanasi and Mathura since 2020. The most important among them are the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi Masjid case and the Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Eidgah case. The claims made by Hindu petitioners in both cases are similar – that portions of already existing Hindu temples were razed by medieval Islamic rulers to build mosques, and worshipping rights should be allowed to Hindus to pray to deities located within the mosque complex.
The petition that has made the most waves, and had the most impact, is one by five Hindu women who demanded the right of unhindered worship at the Maa Shringar Gauri Sthal – located inside the Gyanvapi mosque complex – which houses idols of Hindu gods. In April last year, the local court ordered a controversial survey of the complex, which quickly ran into protests. The survey was finally completed in May, but not before the Hindu side claimed that a shivling was found in the final hours of the exercise. The court clamped security on the entire complex even as the Muslim side argued that the structure found was a ceremonial ablution fountain.
The case finally reached the Supreme Court, which on May 20, 2022, transferred the suit from the Varanasi civil judge to the district judge and ordered the district judge to first decide on the maintainability of the suit filed by the Hindu women. The apex court also ordered the site to be protected.
In September of that year, the district court ruled that the pleas by the Hindu women were maintainable and could be heard. The Muslim side had argued that the Hindu women’s plea was barred under the 1991 law. But the court said that since regular prayers were already allowed at the site between 1947 and 1993, it did not constitute a change in the religious character of the site.
In addition, several petitioners also approached the apex court to challenge the 1991 law directly. This includes Lucknow-based Vishwa Bhadra Pujari Purohit Mahasangh which said the law was unconstitutional and a hindrance in the path of legally reclaiming disputed religious structures, such as Kashi and Mathura.
The Jamiat-Ulama-I-Hind, an Islamic clergy body, opposed the petition in the apex court and said any tinkering with the law posed a threat to the secular fabric of the country.
A second petition challenging the validity of the 1991 law was filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in June 2020. Swamy, in his plea, said that the Places of Worship Act is a barrier, depriving his right to pray at a place where, due to foreign oppression and invasion, a Hindu temple was or is converted.
BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay also filed a petition against the 1991 Act in October 2020. His petition alleged that the legislation was biased against Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains as it curbed their rights to seek restoration of their holy places of worship destroyed before “an arbitrarily fixed cut-off date”.
Why is this important?
Because judicial interpretation of the Places of Worship Act will determine the course of the dozen-odd petitions in the Gyanvapi and Mathura cases. Some petitioners believe the law should go. If it does, it is likely to open the floodgates for similar demands at other places of worship across the country in the future. If the law is upheld, it remains to be seen what impact it has on the cases that are already at various stages of hearing in the lower courts, and whether it bars such future claims.