How Judicial Orders Are Fueling Communal Tensions and Eroding India’s Secular Ideals
The dishonest “sleight of hand” by former Chief Justice of India Chandrachud in permitting “surveys” of mosques and dargahs, despite the Places of Worship Act, 1991, has effectively opened the floodgates for the destruction of Muslim shrines.
This act exposes the complicity of the largely compromised Indian judiciary with the BJP—who stand to be the main beneficiaries of this sordid affair—and the equally dishonest police force. These developments threaten to tear apart India’s social fabric and reveal the secularism enshrined in the Indian Constitution as a mere facade.
A hurried order by a court in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, to survey the Jama Masjid (without even hearing the mosque’s management) and the entertainment of a suit requesting a survey of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah mark only the beginning.
It is foreseeable that scores of such suits will follow, each claiming “discoveries” of remnants of Hindu temples on these sites. This trajectory may ultimately culminate in the destruction of these shrines. A suit with a similar prayer has also been filed relating to a mosque in Badaun, UP.
After CJI Chandrachud’s retirement, Justice Sanjiv Khanna assumed the role of Chief Justice. Subsequently, an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court challenging the Sambhal court’s survey order. The Supreme Court issued an interim stay on the proceedings and directed the mosque’s management to approach the Allahabad High Court.
While this intervention temporarily halts the survey, I am deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s approach.
The Court should have promptly sought a response from the respondents, asking why the suit was not barred under the Places of Worship Act, 1991, and stayed proceedings during that period. Within a week, the suit should have been dismissed outright, as the Jama Masjid in Sambhal was clearly built long before August 15, 1947, making the suit unequivocally barred by the Act.
It is shocking that the Sambhal court even entertained the case. The Jama Masjid, built approximately 500 years ago, predates the cut-off date stipulated by the Act.
Moreover, the Supreme Court’s direction for the mosque’s management to approach the High Court only enables further escalation of similar disputes. Instead of definitively enforcing the Act and resolving the matter, the Court’s inaction risks an exponential increase in such cases.
I fear that the new CJI, despite his illustrious lineage—his uncle Justice H.R. Khanna is one of my heroes for his brave dissent in the ADM Jabalpur vs. Shivakant Shukla case—may be hesitant to declare these suits in Varanasi, Mathura, Sambhal, Ajmer, and elsewhere as barred by the Places of Worship Act.
This hesitancy may stem from apprehensions about displeasing the BJP government. Nevertheless, we must await further developments. 
Also Read: Keep the Communal Pot Boiling
Markandey Katju
Justice Markandey Katju is former Judge, Supreme Court of India and former Chairman, Press Council of India.
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