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Islam in court in India – Kashmir observer

Islam in court in India – Kashmir observer

Islam in court in India – Kashmir observer
File photo of the Indian Muslims

From Shashi Tharoor

At the beginning of January, the Supreme Court of India confirmed the guideline of a lower court to consolidate 15 complaints from Hindu activists who are looking for the right to examine the possible existence of Holy Hindu places under the Shahi Eidgah, a mosque in Mathura. The court emphasized that the move benefits all parties by avoiding several procedures and reducing the risk of contradicting judgments. In principle, however, the court seems to try to protect judicial stability in a time of the distribution of religious disputes and prevent the escalation of tensions.

India is full of mosques that were found in times of Islamic rule between approximately the eleventh and the 18th century. Many Indians believe that Muslim rulers, including the mogul empire, were often deliberately built mosques over Hindu temples and shrines that were looted and destroyed. The topic is a more sensitive in Indian politics, and the organizational family, known as the “Sangh Parivar”, a movement that is associated with the cause of the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) has actively inspired the passions.

In the first four decades after independence, the problem was largely boiling in the background. In the 1980s, the tensions cooked when a popular movement was created to regain Ram Janmabhoomi – the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Rama – in Ayodhya. A long campaign by the agitation culminated in December 1992 with the destruction of a 16th century mosque, Babri Masjid, through a raging amount of Hindutva fanatic.

In 2019 after a lengthy Legal proceedingsThe Hindu side was given permission to build a temple on the Holy site that was consecrated last year, while the Muslims received a token with five acres of land elsewhere to build a new mosque. In other words, a land dispute in which the criminal destruction of property was enclosed in favor of the culprits. The verdict also demanded that the religious feelings of the Hindus are respected – even apparently at the expense of the religious feelings of minorities. But those who lost the Muslims of the area in the judgment kept their peace.

For most Indian Muslims, such disputes are not about certain mosques, but about their place in Indian society, and the destruction of Babri Masjid felt like a betrayal of the compact that underpinned the pluralistic democracy of India. However, the Muslims also hoped that the restoration of RAM Janmabhoomi would buy peace, close a dispute that had poisoned the Hinduem Muslim relationships for a generation throughout North India and had marked the end of the efforts to restore prominent Hindu temples who supposedly destroyed.

No luck. Hindu chauvinists regarded Ram Janmabhoomi’s decision as a triumph for a reinterpretation of the Indian national idea. Instead of evaluating her appetite for the destruction of mosques, the judgment of the court increased.

The Babri Masjid was expressly excluded from the law on adversity (Special Commission), which was issued in 1991 to prevent the development of more movements such as that in Ayodhya. In order to maintain the religious character of all places of worship in India, such as those on August 15, 1947 – at the time of independence – the law prohibits the conversion of any worship place and prohibits all associated legal proceedings.

Despite the express provisions of the law, his implementation faces challenges. For example, a court order 2022, which approved a video test by the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, has unleashed a flood of imitators in which inspections of different mosques were required. The legal disputes argue By preventing the courts from preventing cases in connection with the religious character of worship, the law limits access to the judiciary. This has fueled debates on the constitutionality of the law and the effects on the rights of individuals and communities.

William F. Buckley famous wrote These conservatives “stand in history that scream history”. But India’s Hindutva nationalists give history a different guideline: “Back!” You do not do this out of a deepweight before the past, but out of the desire to co -opt the story in order to re -shape the present. As the Supreme Court recognizes, the demands that this temple will be restored if it turns out that a demanding mosque is built on a torn temple. Each restored temple would mean a brick for the construction of a new Hindutva version of India.

The ideal of interreligious coexistence has already been effectively thrown, with the Muslims being pushed on the edges of the national narrative. The celebrations in Ayodhya, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the state machinery were openly involved, concerned a huge step to explain a state religion. “Hindu Rashtra” is built before our eyes.

The story was often controversial in India, but the revival of historical disputes today is a threatening sign. With his decision to consolidate the Mathura lawsuits, the Supreme Court has taken one step to contain this trend. The Court of Justice has also held the deep courts from maintaining new complaints that try to regain religious places – especially through the alignment of mosques and dargahs, which are allegedly built via temple ruins – and the issuing of arrangements about pending cases.

But the Supreme Court has to go on. The replacement of old mosques with new versions of older temples is not right. It commits new ones. Faded scars become gaping wounds. If the judiciary is not determined by these disputes, the Muslims could start resisting themselves. A new wave of municipal violence will only produce new hostages in history, whereby future generations will be taught more errors that you have to do correctly.

The Hindutva movement is happy to use history as a cannon feed. But their obsession to undo the past is the future of India.


  • Shashi Tharoor, MP of the Indian National Congress, was re -elected in the Lok Sabha for a fourth in each other, who represented Thiruvananthapuram. Syndicate project, 2025.

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