- For the uninitiated, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act is enacted to prohibit conversion of any place of worship and to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August 1947, and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. A sole exception was made to this Act for the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, already in courts by then. Now, the Supreme Court has moved to examine the validity of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act which had won high praise from the 2019 SC bench that awarded the disputed land in Ayodhya to Hindus.
PC: Akrita Reyar
- The Act noted that it addresses itself to the state as much as to every citizen and its norms bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level. In an irksome move, the law praised by SC has been challenged by a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which is anything but proving to be a spoke in the wheel of the smooth functioning of the judiciary bogging the system in matter with no constitutional or justiciable issues at stake. In the PIL, the petitioner has opposed the Independence Day cutoff as arbitrary, irrational, and retrospective which prohibits Hindus and others from approaching courts to reclaim worship places invaded and encroached upon by fundamentalist barbaric invaders.
- As can be observed, the petition itself is guilty of much arbitrariness and irrationality, which should have been dismissed forthwith by the judiciary. Note that much of ancient and medieval history was nothing but barbaric and sacrileges galore were perpetrated much before India was founded as a modern, secular nation on 15th August 1947. How can anybody expect a modern Republic to retrospectively entertain grievances lost over time? It is commonsense that neither the nation can be struck in 1192 nor can it undermine its Constitution established rule of law to correct history or its many versions witnessed over the years.
PC: sporcle
- Needless to mention, the Republic must be future-oriented, accountable to its citizens fulfilling their aspirations of development and material prosperity in the present day rather than raking up events of the past millennium. The Supreme Court is held in high esteem by the common people and as a last resort to uphold their Rights and fair adjudication. As such, entertaining frivolous PILs unwittingly opens Pandora’s box defeating the very purpose of constitutional commitment and obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the Constitution’s basic structure.
- Harking back to historical occurrences and connecting events of the past to the present severely undermines the law enacted to precisely preempt and/or avoid any such moves. Therefore, it is incumbent the learned judiciary and the Supreme Court in particular, peremptorily disallows the opening of potential minefields with no major constitutional issue at stake. No tangible purpose is served to look back at the past as what matters is the present and the future, nothing else!
