India’s controversial Places of Worship Act

India’s top court is hearing a number of petitions challenging a decades-old law that preserves the character and identity of religious places as they existed at the time of the country’s independence in 1947.

The law, introduced in 1991, prohibits converting or altering the character of any place of worship and prevents courts from entertaining disputes over its status, with the exception of the Babri Masjid case, which was explicitly exempted.

The Babri Masjid, a 16th-Century mosque, was at the heart of a long-standing dispute, culminating in its demolition by a Hindu mob in 1992. A court verdict in 2019 awarded the site to Hindus for the construction of a temple, reigniting debates over India’s religious and secular fault lines.

The current petitions, including one from a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), argue that the 1991 law infringes on religious freedom and constitutional secularism.

The hearing comes against the backdrop of Hindu groups filing cases to challenge the status of many mosques, claiming they were built over demolished Hindu temples.

Many, including opposition leaders and Muslim groups, have defended the law, saying it is crucial to safeguard the places of worship of religious minorities in a Hindu-majority India. They also question the nature of historical evidence presented by the petitioners in support of their claims.

They say that if the law is struck down or diluted, it could open the floodgates for a slew of similar challenges and inflame religious tensions, especially between Hindus and Muslims.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court barred courts from registering fresh cases challenging the ownership of places of worship or ordering surveys to establish their character and identity until further notice. It is next set to hear the issue in February.

The law says that the religious character of any place of worship – temples, mosques, churches and gurdwaras – must be maintained as it was on 15 August 1947, when Indian became independent.

The Place of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 was brought in by the then-Congress party government while a movement – led by members of the Hindu nationalist BJP – to build a temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in the northern town of Ayodhya was getting stronger. The aggressive campaign triggered riots in several parts of the country and, according to some estimates, left hundreds dead.

The violence was a painful reminder of the religious strife India had witnessed during partition in 1947.

While introducing the bill in parliament, then home minister SB Chavan expressed anxiety about “an alarming rise of intolerance propagated by certain sections for their narrow vested interests”.

These groups, he said, were resorting to “forcible conversion” of places of worship in an attempt to create new disputes.

The BJP, then in the opposition, strongly opposed the bill, with some lawmakers walking out of parliament. An MP from the party said he believed the bill was brought in to appease the minorities and would only increase the rift between Hindus and Muslims.

Apart from archaeological sites – whether religious or not – the only exception to the law was the Babri Masjid, as a legal challenge against the structure existed even before independence.

Hindu mobs, however, demolished the mosque within months of the enactment of the law. In 2019, while awarding the disputed land to Hindu groups, India’s Supreme Court said that the demolition of the mosque was an illegal act.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the law will be crucial to the fate of dozens of religious structures, especially those of Muslims, that are contested by Hindu groups. These include Gyanvapi and Shahi Eidgah, two disputed mosques in the holy cities of Varanasi and Mathura.

Critics also point out that the historical nature of the sites will make it hard to conclusively establish divergent claims, leaving scope for bitter inter-religious battles and violence.

While the hearing is being closely watched, the law also makes news whenever there is a fresh development in cases challenging mosques.

Two weeks ago, a court in Rajasthan issued notices to the government after admitting a petition claiming that the revered Ajmer Sharif dargah – a 13th-Century Sufi shrine that attracts thousands of visitors every day – stood over a Hindu temple.

And last month, four people were killed in Sambhal town in Uttar Pradesh state when violence broke out during a court-ordered survey of a 16th-Century mosque. Muslim groups have contested the survey in the Supreme Court.

There have been tensions over other court-ordered surveys earlier, including in the case of the Gyanvapi mosque. Hindu groups said the 17th-Century mosque was built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on the partial ruins of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Muslim groups opposed the survey ordered by a local court, saying it violated the 1991 law.

But in 2022, a Supreme Court bench headed by then chief justice DY Chandrachud did not stop the survey from going ahead. He also observed that the 1991 law did not prevent investigations into the status of a place of worship as of 15 August 1947, as long as it did not seek to alter it.

Many have criticised this since then, with former civil servant Harsh Mander saying that it “opened the floodgates for this series of orders by courts that run contrary to the 1991 law”.

“If you allow the survey of a mosque to determine if a temple lay below it, but then prohibit actions to restore a temple at that site, this is a surefire recipe for fostering resentment, hate and fear that could detonate for years in bitter feuds between people of diverse faiths,” Mr Mander wrote.

Thursday’s Supreme Court order means that these surveys and ongoing court cases remain on hold for now.

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