Supreme Court docket to take up right this moment validity of Locations of Worship Act | India Information – Instances of India

NEW DELHI: A day earlier than the Supreme Court docket listening to on a batch of petitions difficult the validity of Locations of Worship Act, residents from numerous walks of life, together with famous academicians, historians, former IAS and IPS officers, MPs and political events have filed purposes in help of the regulation, saying it was meant to safeguard secularism and to make sure communal concord.
They advised the courtroom that the petition in search of scrapping of the regulation was primarily based on full ignorance of historical past and glossed over the truth that Hindu kings too demolished Hindu temples, Buddhist shrines and Jain temples of conquered territories and put in their very own constructions of their place.
Countering submission that many non secular constructions have been taken over and transformed to mosques when Mughals invaded the nation, a number of the candidates mentioned even when it was assumed that sure mosques have been constructed after demolishing Hindu temples by invaders, then such claims might haven’t any finish, as many Hindu temples have been erected on ruins of Buddhist stupas and Buddhists might declare a proper to revive such temples to stupas. They mentioned the Act was dropped at put an finish to the controversy and to keep up peace and communal concord.
A few of the outstanding individuals who approached SC individually or in teams included former Punjab DGP Julio Ribeiro, former chief info commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, former Delhi LG Najeeb Jung, former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi, Lt Gen Zamiruddin Shah (retired), former dwelling secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai, famous historians Romila Thapar and Mridula Mukherjee, and MPs Manoj Jha of RJD and Thol Thirumavalavan of VCK. The frequent theme of their pleas was that the 1991 Act was meant to protect India’s social cloth and foster communal concord and opposed reopening of settled points regarding spiritual websites.
Purposes have additionally been filed in help of the petitioners to scrap the Act. Delhi-based NGO Hindu Shree Basis, which claims to symbolize pursuits and rights of Hindu devotees each domestically and internationally, mentioned the Act was arbitrary and there was no justification to repair a deadline of Aug 15, 1947. It mentioned there was no rational nexus between political independence and creation of Republic of India and settling the civilisational battle emanating from colonial erasure of Hindu identification and an imposition of cultural hegemony by Islamic invaders.
Former MP Chintamani Malviya, too, filed an software alleging that the regulation itself was violative of secularism and must be finished away with. “The Act is void and unconstitutional for a lot of causes. It offends rights of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs to wish, profess, observe and propagate faith. It deprives them from proudly owning spiritual properties belonging to deity misappropriated by different communities. It takes away their proper of judicial treatment. Centre has transgressed its legislative energy by barring treatment of judicial evaluate which is a fundamental function of the Structure. SC, in a catena of choices, held that proper to judicial treatment can’t be taken away by the state,” he mentioned.
A joint plea filed by Ribeiro, Habibullah, ex-IFS officer Deb Mukharji and ex-IAS officer Kamal Kant Jaswal mentioned the questions raised on this case by the petitioners stemmed from a “robust majoritarian and anti-minorities bias” which is an anathema to the Structure.
“The petition reveals a whole ignorance of historical past, because it glosses over the truth that rulers demolished locations of worship of subjugated dynasties and kingdoms throughout Indian historical past and throughout spiritual sects. Vital historic scholarship reveals that within the pre-Islam period, a number of conditions of non secular battle existed between Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu sects,” they mentioned.
The joint software filed by Jung, Quraishi, Pillai and others mentioned, “This nation has been the cradle of not solely one of many oldest human civilisations however a number of religions and spiritual denominations. Additionally it is a matter of document that there have been struggles for supremacy and propagation of faith all through the historical past of this nation. Within the above circumstances, the Act was enacted with the avowed goal of not letting previous acts/omissions on the a part of one spiritual group or the opposite, destroy the future of future generations and, therefore, the Act is pivotal for sustaining communal concord and stopping conflicts that will come up from disputes having historic trappings.”