KARACHI: The Indian Supreme Court has directed trial courts to refrain from registering any new suits against places of worship until further orders are issued by the top court, Dawn.com reports.

The directive came on Thursday as the Supreme Court began hearing petitions challenging the Places of Worship Act, 1991, which prohibits the conversion of any place of worship and maintains “the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August, 1947.”

According to a bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K.V. Viswanathan, in pending cases, courts are also to refrain from passing any “effective interim or final order” until further instructions are given by the Supreme Court.

“We are examining the vires, contours and the ambit of 1991 Act,” the bench said, according to the Press Trust of India. The court has given the central government four weeks to file its reply to the petitions.

Top court steps in as Hindu groups challenge mosque sites

The SC order came as Hindu groups have been increasingly filing petitions in courts alleging that prominent mosques were built on the sites of demolished temples. Recently, a local court accepted a petition to conduct a survey of a famous 13th-century shrine of a Muslim saint located in Ajmer, in western Rajasthan.

Similarly, last month, a court ordered a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal, northern Uttar Pradesh, following a petition claiming that the mosque was built on the site of a Hindu temple. The survey triggered communal clashes in the region, which resulted in at least five deaths and several police injuries. However, the Supreme Court intervened and halted further proceedings on the matter.

Additionally, a Hindu group has called for a survey of the iconic Jama Masjid in New Delhi, claiming that statues of Hindu deities were buried within the mosque.

The emboldenment of Hindu nationalist groups comes in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration of a grand new Hindu temple in Ayodhya earlier this year.

The temple was built on the site of the centuries-old Babri mosque, which was demolished in 1992 by members of Modi’s party in a campaign that led to widespread sectarian violence across India, killing approximately 2,000 people, the majority of whom were Muslims.

Some Hindu nationalists see Modi as an ideological patron, and calls for establishing Hindu supremacy have grown louder since his ascension to power in 2014. This has heightened anxiety among India’s Muslim minority — which numbers around 210 million — about their future in the country.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2024