When the Supreme Court of India passed its verdict in November 2019, in what is popularly known as the Babri Masjid case, it was a slight beacon of hope for all backers of the idea of India. Though the Court ended up giving the plot of land to the party that was responsible for the desecration and demolition of the mosque, the Court’s glowing reference to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 was like applying a little balm to an embattled soul. It promised to shut the door with a finality on further contentions of other places of worship, notably the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah in Mathura.
The unanimous view of the five-judge Bench was, “In providing a guarantee for the preservation of the religious character of places of public worship as they existed on 15 August 1947 and against the conversion of places of public worship, Parliament determined that independence from colonial rule furnishes a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing the confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved and that their character will not be altered. The law addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen of the nation…The Places of Worship Act imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism under the Indian Constitution....Non-retrogression is a foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles of which secularism is a core component. The Places of Worship Act is thus a legislative intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values.”
