Islam On Trial In India

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)
File photo of Indian Muslims

By Shashi Tharoor

In early January, India's Supreme Court upheld a lower court's directive to consolidate 15 lawsuits by Hindu activists seeking the right to investigate the possible existence of sacred Hindu places of worship beneath the Shahi Eidgah, a mosque in Mathura. The Court emphasized that the move benefits all parties, by avoiding multiple proceedings and reducing the risk of conflicting judgments. More fundamentally, however, the Court seems to be attempting to safeguard judicial stability at a time of proliferating religious disputes and prevent the escalation of tensions.

India is full of mosques established during periods of Islamic rule, between roughly the eleventh and eighteenth centuries. Many Indians believe that Muslim rulers, including the Mughal Empire, often deliberately erected mosques over Hindu temples and shrines that had been looted and destroyed. The issue is a sensitive one in Indian politics, and the family of organizations known as the“Sangh Parivar,” a movement associated with the Hindutva (Hindu-nationalist) cause, has actively stoked passions.

For the first four decades after independence, the issue largely simmered on the back burner. But in the 1980s, tensions boiled over, as a popular movement emerged to reclaim the Ram Janmabhoomi – the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Rama – in Ayodhya. A long campaign of agitation culminated, in December 1992, with the destruction of a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, by a rampaging mob of Hindutva fanatics.

In 2019, after a protracted court case , the Hindu side was given permission to erect a temple on the holy site, which was consecrated last year, while Muslims were awarded a token five acres of land elsewhere to construct a new mosque. In other words, a land dispute that featured the criminal destruction of property was settled in favor of the culprits. The ruling also demanded that Hindus' religious sentiments be respected – even, apparently, at the expense of the religious sentiments of minorities. Yet those who lost out in the judgment – the Muslims of the area – held their peace.

To most Indian Muslims, such disputes are not about specific mosques, but rather about their place in Indian society, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid felt like a betrayal of the compact that underpinned India's pluralist democracy. But Muslims also hoped that restoring the Ram Janmabhoomi would buy them peace, closing a dispute that had poisoned Hindu-Muslim relations across northern India for a generation and marking the end of efforts to restore prominent Hindu temples the Mughals had allegedly destroyed.

No such luck. Hindu chauvinists viewed the Ram Janmabhoomi decision as a triumph for a Hindutva reinterpretation of the Indian national idea. Rather than sating their appetite for destroying mosques, the court's ruling intensified it.

The Babri Masjid was explicitly exempted from the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, which was enacted in 1991 to prevent the emergence of more movements like the one in Ayodhya. Seeking to maintain the religious character of all places of worship in India as they existed on August 15, 1947 – at the time of independence – the Act prohibits the conversion of any place of worship, and bars any related legal proceedings.

Despite the Act's explicit provisions, its implementation faces challenges. For example, a 2022 court order authorizing a video inspection of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi unleashed a flood of copycat cases calling for inspections of various mosques. The litigants argue that, by preventing courts from hearing cases related to the religious character of places of worship, the Act restricts access to justice. This has fueled debates about the Act's constitutionality and impact on the rights of individuals and communities.

William F. Buckley famously wrote that conservatives“stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” But India's Hindutva nationalists issue history a different directive:“Turn back!” They do so not out of deep reverence for the past, but out of a desire to co-opt history to reshape the present. As the Supreme Court recognizes, if a challenged mosque is found to be built on a demolished temple, demands will inevitably arise for that temple to be restored. Each restored temple would amount to a brick in the construction of a new Hindutva version of India.

Already, the ideal of interfaith coexistence has been effectively jettisoned, with Muslims being pushed to the margins of the national narrative. The celebrations at Ayodhya, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the state machinery were openly involved, amounted to a giant step toward the declaration of a state religion.“Hindu Rashtra” is being built before our eyes.

History has often been contested terrain in India, but the revival of historical disputes today is an ominous sign. With its decision to consolidate the Mathura lawsuits, the Supreme Court has taken a step to rein in this trend. The Court has also restrained lower courts from entertaining new lawsuits that seek to reclaim religious places – particularly by targeting mosques and dargahs that are allegedly built over temple ruins – and from issuing orders on pending cases.

But the Supreme Court must go further. Replacing old mosques with new versions of older temples does not right old wrongs; it perpetrates new ones. Faded scars become gaping wounds. Unless the judiciary puts a firm stop to these disputes, Muslims might start to resist. A new wave of communal violence will only spawn new hostages to history, with future generations being taught about yet more wrongs they must set right.

The Hindutva movement is happy to use history as cannon fodder. But their obsession with undoing the past is imperiling India's future.

• Shashi Tharoor, an MP of the Indian National Congress, was re-elected to the Lok Sabha for a fourth successive term, representing Thiruvananthapuram. Project Syndicate, 2025.

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