NEW DELHI: BJP Friday said Congress moving Supreme Court in support of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act was a declaration of “open war against Hindus” and the party was now the “new Muslim League“. “Congress has approached SC seeking to deny Hindus their fundamental constitutional right to legal remedies for addressing historical injustices. It has urged the top court to dismiss petitions challenging the Places of Worship Act, 1991, under the pretext of ‘safeguarding secularism’,” BJP’s IT department head Amit Malviya said on X.
BJP had opposed the Places of Worship Act right since the Narasimha Rao-led govt’s move to enact it in the face of the movement for construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. The bill, passed amid vehement opposition from BJP, sought to freeze the character of all places of worship, save the disputed site in Ayodhya, as it existed on Aug 15, 1947. It was meant to pre-empt a Sangh Parivar bid for Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque and Mathura’s Shahi Eidgah.
But this is a first in recent times that BJP has reiterated its stance: something which raises the excitement over the stand the Centre might take in SC over the law.
Congress has moved SC to oppose pleas challenging the Act claiming that it is violative of Articles 14 (equality before law and equal protection), Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on the ground of religion), Article 25 (right to profess and practice one’s religion), Article 26 (right of a community to manage their religious affairs) and Article 29 (protection of cultural rights of citizens) as well as on the basis of the argument that neither Hindu law nor Shariat allows for construction of mosques on sites of temples that were destroyed by invaders.
The petitioners and Sangh Parivar have maintained that the Varanasi mosque was built after demolishing the legendary Kashi Vishwanath Mandir, site of one of the 12 Jyotirlings, and the Mathura Eidgah has come up on the birthplace of Lord Krishna.
BJP’s stand is interesting also because of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s caution that there was no need to look for temples under every mosque – a stand which has been rejected by prominent Hindu religious figures and appears to be at odds with Uttar Pradesh govt’s effort to “reclaim” properties and temples belonging to Hindus which they were forced to abandon after losing many lives in the 1978 riots.
“Congress consented to India’s Partition along religious lines. Following this, it introduced the Waqf law, enabling Muslims to claim properties at will and establish mini-Pakistans across the country. It later enacted the Places of Worship Act, effectively denying Hindus the right to reclaim their historical and religious sites. Now, Congress has declared an open war against Hindus,” Malviya said.
Congress moved SC in support of the Places of Worship Act and said the law was “essential to safeguard secularism in India” which was a basic feature of the Constitution and was needed to ensure communal harmony.