Written by : Disha Tomar, 3rd Year B.A.LL.B , Indore Institute of Law
In a spiritual context, worship means to act or show the devotion to the god of the particular religion by praying, singing hymns, performing rituals and offerings, reading texts and scriptures, etc. In a broader sense, worship is the respecting, admiring, and revering of something or someone according to beliefs. Is it fine to accept that the act is not applicable to the Babri Masjid and that there cannot be any conversion of the places existing, not even in another religion and not even in the sects of their own religion? The Places of Worship Act was adopted in 1991, after which, in this act, it was said that there can be no changes in the religious or sect conversion of the worship places after 1991. On the date of independence, the mosque will remain a mosque, temples will remain temples, churches will remain churches, etc., respectively, of the religions in India.
No one can challenge the existence of the place or even convert the place. But is this okay and acceptable, as there are around 40,000 sites found as the demolished temples on which the mosques were created? Is this not against the sanatan dharmas? As there was the temple of their god, and now after independence in this secular country, Hindus cannot even claim their Mandir.
According to the government, after 2022-2024, there are 6 major sites case filed in the Supreme Court by Hindus claiming their rights on certain temples and the sites, out of which major cases are the Gyanwapi Masjid, Sahi Eidhgah, Shambal Masjid, Mathura case, etc.
After the Ram Mandir, which was an exception, no other cases judgment has been given; even the Supreme Court has asked for a stay on these cases. In 1992, when the conversion of places had been done unconstitutionally, the process is now constitutional. By the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India, the judgments will be passed, and then the court is not listening to the plea. As the mosques in that time were made by the demolition, which is not current according to the Hindu rituals, as according to Hindu ritual, at the time of Pran-Prathishta, which is the establishment of the life force, the ritual is performed to invoke the divine presence and energize the idol or deity. This clarifies that the gods presence is there in the temple by the aawahan. Now, to release that energy from that particular temple, the deconsecrating of the idol is done, but here in these cases either they used to remove the idols from the temple or else used to build the mosque over the temples so that the presence of the temple will be nullified, but as they used to build these mosques on the pillars of the temple, the survey team used to find out the proofs of the presence of the temple here.
This is not the case with all the temples, but in certain cases of temples as well as mosques, we can believe the fact that now there is the mosque in the present situation where Hindus are claiming, and this will hurt their sentiments too, but they can provide us with the places of our major pilgrimage sites only and the sites mentioned in the Purana and Vedas. Hindus are not asking for the names of the peoples who demolished their temples; they are asking for their rights in those places, which were established by their ancestors. And with all this, the government should provide the alternative for the mosques to be built in any other places as they wish. There are various texts of various religions in which there are different temples mentioned, and now either there is no temple or there is a mosque or something else.
As section 4[2] of the Places of Worship Act says that there will be no trial on the cases related to the timeline before 15 August 1947. Section 5 of the Places of Worship Act says that there are only two exceptions to Section 4, which are the Ram Mandir and the Babri Masjid.
Why is Mathura, the case where Shri Krishan was born, not the important site for Hindus? As Ganga-Yamuna Sabhayata of the country needs to be preserved by not infringing on each other's rights to worship, there is no fault in all these of the present generation living as they didn’t build these masjids, and neither were these temples built by the present generation, which states this all matter is all about the religion and the spiritual sentiments as Hindus think that their god was here, they were worshiped here, and this was built by their ancestors. Same as with the Muslims, these mosques were built by their ancestors; now they use them to perform their rituals. This will be hurtful for the Muslim community as well. To leave their mosque, the government should provide the alternatives. If the Hindus succeed in proving that this mosque was the temple, then there should be no conflict, and the evidence must be given, and if the Hindus failed to prove that, then there should be no conflicts from either of the sides. The government should come out with the solution to this particular issue.
It has been said that if we open one, then other issues will also arise for the floodgates. Floodgates for what and for whom? That’s the question that arises. As they have enough property, though waqf, if they wish to retain a fully occupied site even after knowing that it is already occupied and knowing that the site has a fully contentious history and history that goes against you. It’s not one organization anywhere, as in the case of the Ram Mandir with VHP; now the whole Hindu community is wholly raising these issues, and if the centralized command system also means that you will not challenge more than this, then it curtails the rights of the community. But there a point that can be said as all these instances took place in the past how are we now claiming for it so there should be certain date for these as in the book of senior advocate of Supreme Court J. Sai Deepak that is India that is Bharat there he clearly mentions that its not from the time of Christian’s invasions its from the time of with the invasion of Sindh its because India has went thorough different waves and shades of colonisation therefore Bharat must have two different yardsticks for this as Americans have . If once the pran-prathistha took place, we have invited the energy, and we can also ask it to go as we do in every yagya and puja. It says once a deity is placed, always a deity is placed until or unless it is sent back through puja or yagya, but it didn’t happen. I’m on the fundamental question of the origin: why should one person who has built a certain thing with his Aastha give it up on what anvils and for whom? What is this audience that we are expected to get her to give? There are many more sites just as Ram Janmabhoomi where there were continued waves of resistance. The problem of understanding the Ram Janmabhoomi case is that we think of it as an exceptional case, but no, that’s not the case, and if it is, then what is? Kashi Mathura.
Let’s not speak numbers as a target and get into the facts and solutions, as solutions do exist. There’s a clear methodology that the Supreme Court has shown through the Ayodhya judgment, and if they don’t even want that, then it's a serious problem where, on the one hand, the Places of Worship Act will not allow us to reclaim and, on the other, the Waqf Act will efficiently enable expansionism. What are we exactly enabling? There's Sitaram Goyal. He says that 2000 temples are the tip of the iceberg, and all these temples, Atala and everything, have been specifically mentioned in the opening chapters of these books in both volume 1 and 2. He says that Ghazni robbed and burned down the thousands of temples in Mathura and 10,000 in Kannauj, and one of his successors demolished a thousand temples in each in Hindustan, which is Ganga Yamuna Daub and Malwa. Muhammed Gori destroyed another thousand at Varanasi, Aibak employed an elephant to destroy the temples, and Ali Adil Shah of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka, and Sufi Kayam Shah destroyed 12 temples in the south. Let's assume even 50 percent of them were completely destroyed, and of the rest, pillars remained, and on that the mosques were created even on. These were the parameters that we have and what about those temples who existence is still not discovered.
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