Hindu Rashtra, ‘compulsive’ Mandir-Masjid politics, and quest for justice

Close on the heels of trouble at Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh over a medieval-era mosque following a court order, and a similar trajectory unfolding at a prominent place of worship in Ajmer, the Supreme Court has set up a special three-judge bench. It is going to be led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and will hear petitions questioning the validity of Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991.

The statute gives protection to the identity, nature or character of religious sites as these existed on August 15, 1947, with the sole exception of Ayodhya as it was under litigation when the Act was passed. Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice KV Viswanathan are two other judges assigned to the bench. The first hearing of the case is billed for December 12.

A clutch of petitions challenging the legality of the Act are before the Supreme Court. Several pleas have also been filed to counter the petitions and the intentions behind these.

Also read: 'Unhealthy trend': Chelameswar slams SC's 'flip' on Places of Worship Act

Why litigation over mosques?

This is so because recently district courts have been allowing surveys of some of the historic shrines controlled by Muslims. The surveys cast a shadow on the 1991 law but the local civil courts are able to skirt this and order surveys because of an observation made by former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud in May 2022.

Chandrachud had said that although one could not “alter or convert the nature of the (religious) place” under the 1991 law, the “ascertainment of a religious character of a place… may not necessarily fall foul of the provisions of Sections 3 and 4 (of the Act)”. This amounted to saying that an inquiry into the religious identity of a place as it stood on August 15, 1947 was legally possible.

A bar is imposed under Section 3 of the Act on the conversion of a place of worship of any religious denomination. Section 4 sets the cutoff date for the enforcement of the bar on conversion as August 15, 1947. The section also deals with shrines of archaeological importance.

Fresh religious disputes

Obviously, the main purpose of the 1991 Act was to avoid recurrence of a dispute like Ayodhya anywhere in the country at any point of time under any circumstance.

But sadly, the precedent set by the long-drawn dispute over Ayodhya has once again been dusted out and replayed from Sambhal to Ajmer.

This has also been the case with Kashi and Mathura which is dragging. Again, the idea is to reset the public view about the past without bothering about the future. All these moves palpably betray the underlying political and electoral motives that the civil suits pending in local courts may well have.

Also read: ‘Ideological assault’: Ex-bureaucrats write to PM opposing Ajmer Dargah survey

Does India deserve this?

Significantly, it is so despite the fact that politics could do without squeezing frenzy out of history for several decades after independence.

Thus, besides legal intricacies, the question is can’t politics be left to its own means so as to shape as it may without being burdened by the kind of sectarianism which was kicked off with the going down of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya a good 32 years ago?

The question cries out before today’s politicos. They need to look within and come up with the right answers. Silence over it or passing the buck to courts alone proves that collective history is wilfully being turned into a communal or divisive project with utter disregard to its consequences.

Using religion to win votes

Through the recent times some of the active practitioners of the new kind of Mandir-Masjid politics have often talked of “compulsions” of one kind or the other to justify what may well defy common sense. Another term gaining currency of late is “transitional phase of politics” where the purpose is again to rationalise some of the strange or even bizarre turn of events.

Yesteryears had compulsions of caste politics or that of coalition politics. This has been followed with incidents of lynching and plunging bulldozers into homes to raze. These are dubbed as being part of a transitional phase. Nonetheless, both these betray the replacement of straight electoral contests with more expedient or easier ways where caste and faith could come into play like seldom before to decide the fate of over a billion people.

Politics of Hindu Rashtra

But in election after election, neither caste nor faith could be turned into cent per cent fixed entities to turn elections a one-time or even more lasting than the usual five-yearly affair. Nor the same political outcome could be expected every time. Thus, the legal and political battle once fought over Ayodhya is now being resurrected in Sambhal and Ajmer and may well go on to find more such hotspots to win over electoral compulsions, besides lengthening the so-called transitional phase.

Yet, now this seemingly endless and not just transitional phase is said to be the part of a larger project that was cobbled up by some of the protagonists of Ayodhya or other Mandir movements to turn India from a nation or Rashtra to a Hindu Rashtra. So, it will be worthwhile to examine the Hindu Rashtra, and its likely outcomes, a bit more closely than what has thus far been the case with most analysts.

The concept of Hindu Rashtra, howsoever latent, has been there since before independence. But it is a fact that this could never catch the imagination of most Indians or their leaders during the freedom struggle. Yet, it went on to justify and reinforce the demand for partition by a section of Muslims led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Also read: Digging up the past to bury the future

Lessons of East Pakistan

The partition in turn refurbished the hope for Hindu Rashtra among the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha cadres through this side of the border. But it looked like a farfetched idea as the Congress was firmly in control right from the time of partition to much later and it enjoyed an overwhelmingly popular support.

This was quite unlike the other side. The Muslim League struggled hard to hold its flock together as the then East Pakistan became wary of accepting Urdu as national language and eventually fell out due to the West Pakistan’s overbearingly dominant status.

So, besides other things, linguistic identity surpassed over religious to give way to the birth of what is today Bangladesh. If this doesn’t ring the bell back home to forewarn about Hindu Rashtra, what else can? As for the current turmoil, Bangladesh reverting from what gave it up once and for all freedom can simply be too perilous, to say the least.

Hindu Rashtra or Hindi Rashtra?

Closer home, whether the penchant for turning mosques into temples or toying with the idea of Hindu Rashtra myriad identities like linguistic, racial or tribal can well compete with religious in case of tinkering with what is simply the Rashtra and which has robustly been in place ever since August 15, 1947.

Hindu Rashtra has mainly its advocates, appeal and support in the Hindi belt and not so much in large parts of the West, South and Northeast or in places like Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and West Bengal.

Thus, taking Hindu Rashtra forward with the kind of frenzy which is on and gaining momentum day by day can well expose it as linguistic or ‘Hindi Rashtra’ which virtually it is. This can further deepen reservations about it — which non-Hindi speaking states already have — and ultimately it may turn out to be detrimental for Hindi-speaking states.

Also read: Chandrachud didn't quite play the boy who stood on the burning deck, but then, who has?

Do we need this muck?

Besides, there is hardly any need for a Hindu Rashtra when people of diverse persuasions are quite comfortable with the kind of Rashtra they have even after continuing with it for over seven decades. It has so far ensured political, linguistic, ethnic and religious accord and equanimity that they have; and, thus, it stands tried and tested out with the ability to keep them in good stead also in the foreseeable future and even beyond that.

Yet, this little reference to otherwise big and vexed issues dealt with so far here cannot be complete without looking at Muslims as also the plight of other minorities (like in the case of Manipur) who have rather been at the receiving end of the ruling dispensation’s desperate attempts to forge a Hindu Rashtra.

At the cost of Muslims

Whether Ayodhya, or Sambhal or in the case of Ajmer Sharif Dargah, the idea seems to exclude Muslims from the larger constitutional scheme of things which now has just and firm safeguards for everyone. And this signifies a disastrously dated, historically detrimental and flawed view taken about any section of society anywhere in the world at any point of time. Unjust discrimination, or selective approach, always leads to unnecessary strife for there can be no peace without justice. It defies logic and can make things all the more absurd.

So much so that the Hindi belt has already been turned into hotbed of narrow communal and caste sectarianism and is languishing behind Southern and Western parts of the country. The orchestration of Hindu Rashtra on its behalf can only worsen this and may well push it deeper into isolation without any hope for redemption.

English versus Hindu/Hindi Rashtra

Thus, to undo the damage already done, the Hindi belt should try to become bilingual or Hindi-English belt by reviving use of English in schools, colleges, offices and wherever else it is possible. This can help reconnect it with the world and win back its modern instincts at a collective level. More so since these have been enfeebled in recent times by turning to and getting virtually possessed by the dated parochialism of yore in the name of Hindu Rashtra.

Judiciary alone cannot restore public morality but it can well show the way in times as rife as today. Thus, all eyes are going to be on the Supreme Court as it hears the case regarding the Places of Worship Act passed by parliament in 1991 to put religious, communal and divisive frenzy to an end so as to safeguard, protect and uphold the rule of law.