Hindus and Muslims must give up rigid positions on contested places of worship

News: In the Ayodhya temple case decided in 2019 by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court. It was projected as a law falling within the parameters of the inviolable basic structure of the Constitution. In the present-day circumstances, other such disputes like Kashi-Mathura disputes have come to the picture.

What are the problems at present?

The masses remember only what a medieval-age despotic Muslim ruler had supposedly done to some ancient shrines in certain holy cities of India. They forgot the tributes paid by India’s spiritual figure of one community to holy places of another community. For example, Freedom-fighter Hasrat Mohani once went to Mathura on Janmashtami and pleaded with Lord Krishna to accept his pilgrimage to Mathura.

The ongoing developments on the places of worship in India goes against the nation’s professedly secular Constitution.

At present, the nationalists are reading the provisions of the statutes in accordance with their ideology. They do not go by jurisprudential discourses on interpretation of statutes. For example, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991 has acquired an inferior status in present discourse.

Way Forward

We should go by the Constitution’s prefatory terminology — “We the people of India” should join hands to preserve peace in our beloved nation, no matter what cost is to be paid for it. Both minority and majority community should amicably settle the disputes in the interest of peace in the country.

There is not solution in obstinacy and fanaticism. Each community whether minority or majority should respect the freedom of religion. Both have to find together a viable roadmap to nationwide peace. The perennial fighting over a few chosen shrines situated in each other’s vicinity is irrational and indefensible.

The judiciary has a role to balancing competing claims in religious disputes of large magnitude. It forms part of the judiciary’s Constitutional obligations. For example, the Ayodhya dispute Judgment 2019.

The nation’s top court decisions in earlier disputes as mentioned above and in the future disputes like the Kashi-Mathura disputes have been/would be in the interest of peace and harmony. This should not raise eyebrows.

Source: The post is based on an article “Hindus and Muslims must give up rigid positions on contested places of worship” published in the Indian Express on 28^th May 2022.