Categorical view: On temples, mosques and historical past, a welcome order

The Supreme Court docket Thursday barred district courts throughout the nation from registering recent fits difficult the possession and title of anywhere of worship or ordering surveys of disputed non secular locations till additional orders. Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna’s directive to trial courts to not move any “efficient orders” is a really welcome choice. This intervention, which comes simply two weeks after 4 lives had been misplaced in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal within the violence that adopted the survey of the city’s medieval mosque, was lengthy overdue. On Could 21, 2022, an oral statement by then CJI D Y Chandrachud {that a} survey wouldn’t violate the 1991 Locations of Worship Act, successfully, grew to become the premise for a number of such fits and surveys, together with the one in Sambhal.

Because the courtroom now frames the problem to the 1991 Locations of Worship Act, the fraught historical past that led to its enactment is inescapable. The legislation was introduced in by the then Congress authorities of Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao at a time when the Ram temple motion was at its peak. The promise it held was {that a} various nation wouldn’t permit the ghosts of historical past hijack its future. When it was handed and, subsequently, the BJP has criticised this legislation as being a instrument of appeasement. In 4 weeks, the Centre must now inform the SC whether or not it’s going to defend or oppose the legislation, or what its interpretation is. The political faceoff between the BJP and the Congress was, in fact, the prime mover behind the 1991 legislation however the SC was proper in making certain that it can’t be bypassed by means of majoritarian communicate or swiftly propped up — and infrequently choreographed — battles in decrease courts.

One of many judges on the bench Thursday, Justice KV Viswanathan, prudently identified that the 1991 legislation is barely an “efficient manifestation or a reiteration of the already embedded constitutional ideas.” In 2020, whereas deciding the Ayodhya dispute, the SC had stated that the legislation embodied a constitutional dedication to “equality of all religions and secularism which is part of the fundamental construction of the Structure.” The ruling had additionally recognised “non-retrogression” as a foundational characteristic of the structure. On this, the seventy fifth 12 months of the Structure, the guiding gentle for the republic, what occurs to the Locations of Worship Act may very effectively resolve the position of historical past in shaping this various nation’s future. The Supreme Court docket’s keep is the popularity that core constitutional values — a dedication to equality and the appropriate to freedom of faith — want a better bar and safety. Clearly, the courtroom’s job, because the political debate over the legislation gathers tempo, is minimize out.

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