Litigating the Sacred: Legal, Memory, and Spatial Dynamics in Worship Conflicts in Contemporary India

Abstract

This study critically examines India’s secularism through an interdisciplinary analytical framework that explores the complex intersections of religious dynamics, legal structures, and political contestations. Sites of worship, functioning as sacred spaces, legal entities, and political symbols, have become focal points for multifaceted power dynamics. The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 (hereinafter the Places of Worship Act) aimed to resolve historical disputes by institutionalizing a “status quo” as of 15 August 1947. However, the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid dispute is widely seen as marking a shift in adjudicatory emphasis, with archaeological reports and scriptural materials accorded heightened probative weight vis-à-vis the Act’s status quo principle. In its wake, appeals to “historical justice” have helped channel controversies over sacred sites into legal forums, where disputes are increasingly framed through evidentiary and procedural lenses rather than solely as property conflicts. Subsequent litigation has, at times, been mobilized within broader ideological projects that center Hindu identity in national politics, with the potential to reshape sacred space and public memory through legal–administrative pathways and to recalibrate the practice of secular adjudication in India.

1. Introduction

The contests over sacred sites in India—encompassing both structures and the lands on which they stand—condense a complex interplay of religious identity, political mobilization, and property rights within a plural social order. Émile Durkheim’s account of religion as a system of “collective representations” undergirding social solidarity highlights how sacred places can function as institutionalized foci of group cohesion, even as competing claims to sanctity sharpen intergroup fault lines (Durkheim 1995). Mircea Eliade’s analysis of hierophany and axis mundi likewise emphasizes how certain locations are experienced as thresholds between transcendent and mundane realms, so that territorial disputes over specific sites easily acquire cosmological weight (Eliade 1959). Clifford Geertz’s reflections on “local knowledge” and fact–law distinctions (Geertz 1983), together with Henri Lefebvre’s theorization of the “production of space,” invite attention to the ways in which legal, ritual, and political practices jointly constitute sacred space as both a symbolic and a juridical object (Lefebvre 1991). Studies of ritual and religious architecture further underscore how places of worship operate as arenas of ritual practice, repositories of religious property, and focal points for the regulation of religion by the modern state. Against this backdrop, contests over worship sites are rarely reducible to ordinary property disputes: they are also struggles over memory, legitimacy, and the spatial terms of coexistence, situated within broader debates on religion, conflict, and the prospects for reconciliation (Gort 2002).

Existing scholarship on Ayodhya and related episodes has richly documented how campaigns around sacred sites have become instruments of electoral mobilization and communal violence (Qiu 1993; Wilkinson 2004; Brass 2003). Work on Hindutva ideology has further shown how temples and pilgrimage centers are deployed as material anchors of a majoritarian political imagination (Hansen 1999; Sharma 2016). Legal–historical analyses of the Babri Masjid dispute and the Places of Worship Act have traced how colonial governance and post-independence constitutionalism have progressively juridified conflicts over places of worship, with the 1991 Act often interpreted as a key statutory settlement (Noorani 2003; Srikantan 2020; Srivastava and Gaurha 2021).

However, much of this literature either focuses heavily on Ayodhya or treats subsequent disputes only briefly, and tends to foreground political mobilization while paying less attention to the legal and institutional techniques through which such projects are pursued. In contrast, this article combines legal–doctrinal analysis, spatial theory, and case-based comparison to trace how legal procedures, evidentiary practices, and spatial imaginaries interact across post-2019 cases, and how the Ayodhya “template” has been adapted and normalized in a wider field of worship–place litigation.

This article makes three main contributions. First, building on work in legal history and the anthropology of space, it advances the notion of judicialized sacred space to analyze how long-standing places of worship are reworked through litigation into juridical objects and political stakes, rather than being treated merely as discrete property disputes. Second, it moves beyond Ayodhya by offering a comparative analysis of three high-salience post-2019 disputes—Gyanvapi in Varanasi, the Krishna Janmabhoomi–Shahi Idgah complex in Mathura, and the Jamia Masjid (also referred to as Jama/Jumma Masjid in some reports) in Srirangapatna—showing how these cases adapt elements of the Ayodhya “litigation playbook” while testing the scope of the Places of Worship Act and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (hereinafter “AMASR Act, 1958”) in distinct regional settings. Third, by tracing how archaeological surveys, narrative reconstructions of a site’s past, and procedural innovations are mobilized across these disputes, the article highlights an emerging institutional configuration in which the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI, an agency under the Ministry of Culture) and the higher judiciary play an increasingly central role in structuring contemporary worship–place conflicts.

Methodologically, the article combines doctrinal legal analysis with qualitative interpretation of public discourse. It draws on primary legal materials, including Supreme Court and High Court judgments, trial-court orders, pleadings, and petitions in selected worship–place disputes, as well as parliamentary debates on the Places of Worship Act and the AMASR Act, 1958. These are supplemented by media reports, public statements by litigants and religious organizations, and secondary scholarly literature in law, political science, and anthropology. The three focal cases were selected through purposive sampling as high-salience disputes that have generated substantial higher-court litigation since the Ayodhya judgment, that directly or indirectly test the scope of the Places of Worship Act, and that exhibit discernible patterns of interaction between archaeological evidence, statutory interpretation, and political narratives. The analysis is interpretive rather than quantitative and does not purport to represent all worship–place disputes in India; rather, it seeks to identify institutional logics and recurrent legal techniques within a bounded set of influential cases.

I.

The Generative Logic of Judicialization in India’s Worship–Place Disputes

A. The Ripple Effect of the Ayodhya Verdict

Ayodhya, a town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has for centuries been revered by many Hindus as the birthplace of the deity Ram, while also housing the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid. From the nineteenth century onwards, overlapping patterns of worship, colonial attempts to regulate access, and a succession of civil suits turned the site into a focal point for Hindu–Muslim contestation. The placement of Ram idols inside the mosque in 1949, the demolition of the Babri Masjid by kar sevaks on 6 December 1992, and the ensuing nationwide riots not only reshaped local religious geography but also firmly embedded Ayodhya in India’s constitutional and political imagination (Noorani 2003; Rao 2006; Jha and Jha 2016). Against this longer historical backdrop, the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment in M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das and Others marked a new phase in the legal management of the dispute (Supreme Court of India 2019).

In November 2019, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark judgment in the Ayodhya case, resolving a prolonged legal dispute over a 2.77-acre site in Uttar Pradesh. The Court ordered that the disputed land be allocated to Hindu devotees for the construction of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir (Ayodhya Ram Temple) and directed the provision of an alternative 5-acre plot to the Muslim community for the establishment of a new mosque (Supreme Court of India 2019). This decision concluded one of India’s most protracted property disputes (Yang and Zhang 2022, pp. 12–20).

Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the Ram Mandir on 5 August 2020 (Hindustan Times 2020) and presided over its consecration on 22 January 2024 (Hindustan Times 2024). The participation of the country’s secular head of government underscored the ceremony’s unusual salience in India’s political landscape. The temple’s reconstruction has long figured on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda and has been a prominent campaign commitment of the Modi administration. It has also been widely interpreted as symbolically significant within broader ideological projects that foreground Hindu identity in national politics, though its implications for party competition and public narratives remain a matter of debate.

Compared with the large-scale communal violence surrounding Ayodhya in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the period culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment saw a comparatively orderly, court-centered resolution of the long-running dispute, with public order largely maintained through judicial direction and coordinated state administration. At the same time, scholars differ on the implications for India’s constitutional secularism: while some view the outcome as an instance of legal closure within a rule-of-law framework, others caution that the jurisprudential reliance on archaeological evidence and devotional narratives may, in certain contexts, heighten sensitivities around religion–state relations, with uncertain downstream effects.

B. The Inalienability and Perpetuity of Places of Worship

This subsection sketches, in broad terms, how sacred space is constructed and experienced within certain traditions, in order to clarify how specific worship sites later come to be treated as inalienable and perpetual in legal argument. Places of worship, as multidimensional entities, not only embody the faith and devotional practices of particular religious communities but also mediate the dense entanglement between religious sanctity and secular power. The integrity, boundaries, and value of sacred space together create conditions for what Hassner terms an “indivisible” conflict over territory that is regarded as holy. Because such sites are thought to embody religious ideals, divine presence, and absolute, transcendent values, the contested space is often seen as non-substitutable and inseparable from a particular tradition of worship. Forced divisions of sacred space, however, tend to be unstable, unsatisfactory to all parties involved, and highly sensitive to changes in the status quo (Hassner 2003, p. 33).

For Mircea Eliade, the “religious human being” (often rendered as “religious man”) experiences a sacred space, endowed with existential value, as a fixed point—the center—that re-enacts or parallels the creation of the world. This cosmogonic value manifests through both ritual orientation and architectural construction (Eliade 1959). The intrinsic function of a place of worship exceeds its practical value as a physical structure, insofar as it is taken to embody the “Divine Presence.” As a material manifestation of religious cosmology, architectural design encodes a vision of cosmic order and facilitates a transition from the mundane realm to the sacred dimension. This spatial “coding” mechanism transforms cosmological narratives into an embodied experiential model by sacralizing built space. It allows devotees, through bodily movement, to experience—often without explicit reflection—the narrative logic of religious myths, engaging in a kind of cosmic practice of “divine–human alignment” (Bell 1992). In this sense, places of worship function as “ontological interfaces” linking metaphysical and physical worlds.

This spatial encoding system is exemplified by the gate towers (gopuram)—prominent structures in many South Indian temples that mark the entrance to the main complex. These towers act as portals, signaling the passage from the secular world to the sacred realm and bridging the experiential gap between profane and holy space. The innermost sanctum of the temple, where the main deity resides, represents the heart of the complex. Movement from the outer courtyard into the garbhagriha follows a gradient of increasing sanctity that, in effect, theatrically enacts religious cosmic order (Lopez 1995). The spatial arrangement of a place of worship thus often forms a symbolic map of a spiritual journey, separating the site from the surrounding secular environment and transforming it into a qualitatively “other” space. At the same time, the bodily practices of devotees become embodied processes of spiritual elevation. In this way, worship places come to be experienced as interfaces for divine–human interaction and mechanisms for spiritual transformation. These features of sacred spatiality help to explain why particular sites of worship are frequently regarded by devotees as non-substitutable and bound up with the continuity of a given religious tradition—an assumption that later surfaces in legal claims framed in terms of inalienability, perpetuity, and historical continuity of worship.

Places of worship have also evolved into engines for the production of community identity. Through periodic collective rituals (such as Friday prayers and temple festivals), they help constitute the “imagined community” of religious groups and fulfill the public dimensions of religious life for the faithful (Anderson 1991; Srivastava and Gaurha 2021, p. 282). On the one hand, places of worship act as nodes within community networks, maintaining communication and continuity within and across religious groups. They play crucial roles in preserving collective memory, reinforcing group identity, and facilitating political integration. On the other hand, as “devices of cultural sovereignty,” they materialize the existence and legitimacy of particular belief systems and religious traditions, functioning as visible declarations of outward assertion.

Contests over worship sites are, in part, contests over cosmology and collective memory. Shifts in control or use of these places can re-anchor communal remembrance, altering how communities situate themselves in sacred time and space. In disputes such as those over Gyanvapi and Mathura, mosque committees, waqf boards, and Muslim organizations have at times portrayed archaeological or textual attempts to reinterpret a site’s past as challenging both the material fabric of Islamic architecture and established mnemonic anchors; supporters, in contrast, frame such efforts as historical clarification. Because worship sites are bound up with belief, ritual, and group identity, disputes rarely remain narrow questions of civil property. They implicate distinctive legal doctrines that many traditions attach to sacred property—often framed in terms of inalienability and perpetuity.

Once a site is asserted to be inalienable or perpetual in its sacred character, related property claims frequently extend beyond ordinary temporal horizons and draw on long historical narratives. This creates a recurrent legal tension in India’s worship–place litigation: how to balance arguments about alleged historical wrongs and the continuity of worship with contemporary constitutional commitments and statutory status quo arrangements. Analysts differ on the broader implications. Some interpret mobilization around select sites as aligning with Hindu-nationalist narratives (e.g., Jaffrelot 1998; Brass 2003), while others emphasize the judiciary’s role in mediating competing claims within a constitutional framework (e.g., Jacobsohn 2003; De 2018). In what follows, the analysis concentrates on the legal–institutional techniques through which these disputes are litigated and adjudicated, rather than on providing a definitive reading of their broader political meaning. In contemporary India, religiously inflected notions of sacred inalienability intersect with statutory frameworks such as the Places of Worship Act and with constitutional commitments to equality and secularism, sharpening the stakes of litigation over sites such as the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid complex.

Drawing these strands together, the article treats places of worship as (i) indivisible sacred spaces (Hassner) whose perceived non-substitutability underpins claims of inalienability and perpetuity; (ii) produced spaces (Lefebvre) in which legal, ritual, and political practices jointly constitute the site as a juridical object; and (iii) mnemonic anchors for competing historical narratives and group identities. This tripartite framework underlies the subsequent case analysis: it informs how we read litigants’ invocations of “historical justice,” courts’ reliance on archaeological evidence, and the broader political projects within which these disputes are embedded.

C. Political Mobilization Dynamics in Litigation Processes

The interaction between religious places of worship and political power has been a constant thread throughout human history, exhibiting a pronounced symbiotic character. In many pre-modern polities, sacred spaces were not only central venues for ritual but also key hubs within wider networks of social power. Through ritual activities, these sites integrated community members, allocated material resources, shaped value systems, and mediated conflicts, thereby performing complex functions of social organization and governance. In certain historical settings, places of worship also formed part of rulers’ defense systems and strategies of territorial expansion (Bakker 1992, pp. 163–68). This intertwining of sacred and secular authority often produced a structural symbiosis between religious spaces and political power, with the roles of worship sites and political institutions frequently operating in complementary or even fused ways within the community.

As human societies gradually transitioned into nation-states, the relationship between religious institutions and the state underwent a systematic transformation, closely intertwined with changing forms of nationalist state-building in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Chatterjee 1986). Modern states incorporated religious spaces into the rule of law through legislative processes, establishing sovereign authority over sacred spaces. By setting legal boundaries, religious activities were in many contexts increasingly framed as belonging primarily to the private realm of belief, while public governance powers were consolidated within the state’s administrative system. In this process, the public functions historically performed by worship places—such as judicial arbitration and military defense—were gradually separated and redefined as specific institutions and organizations within the modern state’s governance structure. Disputes related to places of worship were increasingly adjudicated within the secular judicial system.

Since the British colonial authorities established the modern legal framework in the Indian subcontinent, the governance of places of worship has been a crucial component of broader processes of secularization and state-building. From the early twentieth century, legislation such as the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904 brought certain temples, mosques, and other sites used for public worship within a heritage-protection framework, authorizing state oversight over “ancient monuments” and setting out duties to prevent their misuse or desecration. After independence, this basic template of juridified oversight persisted and was gradually reworked through constitutional guarantees, statutory schemes, and administrative practice, so that disputes concerning places of worship increasingly traveled through secular courts and bureaucratic channels rather than being resolved solely within religious or local community fora.

Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)–led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, state institutions—including the courts—have played a visible role in the governance of disputes over places of worship. The Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment in the Ayodhya land dispute reframed a long-running property conflict as one engaging constitutional guarantees, including religious freedom and equality. In doing so, the Court drew on long-established Indian legal doctrines that recognize Hindu deities as juristic persons, and articulated a rights architecture differentiating the interests of the deity, managers or priests, and worshippers. This legal technique has been presented as formally consistent with the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom under Article 26, while at the same time reinforcing the State’s supervisory authority over religious property through judicial confirmation of rights. On one reading, this approach can be seen as vindicating constitutional protections while supplying a structured basis for the administration of sacred property; on another, it has been criticized for entrenching majoritarian narratives and expanding judicial oversight over religious autonomy (Bindal 2020).

These developments illustrate the intricate interaction between religious sites and political authority in India, showing how sacred places can become focal points for identity politics, electoral mobilization, and negotiations over secular–religious boundaries within the state’s governance architecture (Chatterjee 2004). Under the Modi government, the visibility of this dynamic has increased. The reconstruction of the Ayodhya Ram Temple has been widely interpreted as symbolically significant within Hindutva (Hindu-nationalist) politics, while litigation in Varanasi and Mathura has drawn on archaeological and cultural narratives in ways that elevate the political salience of religious symbols. It is illustrative that, in May 2022, former Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister K. S. Eshwarappa claimed that 36,000 temples were destroyed under Mughal rule and would be legally reclaimed by Hindus (FP Explainers 2022)—a contested assertion often cited in public debate. Statements of this kind highlight the continuing politicization of disputes over places of worship, where invocations of historical grievance intersect with contemporary legal and electoral strategies.

II.

Notable Cases of Judicialization in Worship–Place Disputes

A. Comparative Analysis of Worship–place Disputes

As summarized in Table 1, the The following three high-salience disputes—the Gyanvapi Mosque proceedings in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, the Shahi Idgah Mosque dispute in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, and litigation concerning the Jamia Masjid in Srirangapatna, Karnataka—offer insight into recurrent adjudicatory patterns in disputes over places of worship in India. These three disputes are not intended as an exhaustive survey of all ongoing conflicts over places of worship. Rather, they are illustrative cases chosen for three reasons. First, they rank among the most visible and legally consequential post-2019 disputes, each generating sustained litigation in the courts and extensive public debate. Second, taken together they span different statutory regimes—Gyanvapi and Mathura directly implicate the Places of Worship Act, while Srirangapatna foregrounds the AMASR Act, 1958—thereby allowing a comparative view of how different legal frameworks are mobilized. Third, in each case litigants explicitly invoke, or are read through, the lens of Ayodhya, treating it as a template or a counterpoint for their own strategies. The aim here is therefore not to map all contested sites, but to analyze a set of legally and politically influential disputes that illuminate broader patterns of judicialization.

Table 1. Comparative Analysis of Worship–Place Disputes.

Case	Gyanvapi Mosque	Shahi Idgah Mosque	Jamia Masjid
Brief description of the dispute	The Gyanvapi dispute in Varanasi centers on Hindu claims that the present mosque incorporates a destroyed Kashi Vishwanath temple, generating overlapping suits over title, worship rights, and court-ordered surveys of the shared complex.	The Mathura dispute challenges a 1968 compromise over the Krishna Janmabhoomi–Shahi Idgah complex, as Hindu petitioners seek to invalidate the settlement, remove the mosque, and assert exclusive temple control over the putative birthplace of Krishna.	The Srirangapatna Jamia Masjid dispute turns on Hindu litigants’ efforts to recast a protected Tipu-era mosque as a former Hanuman temple, pressing courts and the ASI to reclassify and re-investigate the site under heritage and waqf law.
Legal Framework	Engages the scope of the Places of Worship Act, through district-court orders directing an ASI survey (FP Explainers 2022).	Suits seek removal or alteration of the mosque and restoration of the Krishna temple (Sabrang India 2022; PTI 2024).	Invokes AMASR Act, 1958 to allege misuse and unauthorized alterations of a protected monument and to seek ASI-supervised inspection or excavation (Organiser 2024).
Key Evidence	ASI’s report (Jan 2024) suggests that a Hindu temple predated the present mosque and was altered in the seventeenth century; a 2022 videographic survey of the wuzukhana recorded a cylindrical object that Hindu petitioners describe as a shivling, while the mosque committee maintains it is a fountain.	Alleges that the mosque stands on a demolished temple, citing features such as lotus carvings and serpent (Sheshnag) reliefs on pillars.	Alleges temple remains lie beneath the mosque; public-interest petitions cite new structures (madrasa, toilets, gates) and broken compound walls as violations of AMASR protections and as evidence of damage to a protected monument.
Procedural posture and judicial approach	Trial court has allowed limited Hindu worship in a cellar and appointed the district magistrate as receiver, creating a new interim status quo; the ASI report has been filed and relied on by Hindu petitioners, but there is no final ruling yet on title or the mosque’s religious character (Supreme Court Observer 2023).	Allahabad High Court has held key suits maintainable and allowed a representative suit on behalf of Krishna devotees to proceed; a commissioner-led survey of the complex has been stayed by the Supreme Court and the merits remain pending.	Karnataka High Court has issued notice to the Union and State governments and the ASI on PILs alleging AMASR violations; the case remains at an interlocutory stage, with no survey or excavation ordered and no final determination of the monument’s status (The Hindu 2024).

India’s religious landscape also features high-profile contestations involving Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, and indigenous traditions—for example over Jain pilgrimage hills such as Sammed Shikharji/Parasnath and Shatrunjaya, over shared Hindu–Sufi shrines such as Baba Budangiri/Datta Peetha, or over Buddhist control of Bodh Gaya/Mahabodhi. These conflicts, however, are embedded in somewhat different legal constellations, including forest and environmental regulation, tourism and heritage law, waqf and dargah legislation, and statutory temple or gurdwara boards. They raise important, but analytically distinct, questions about minority–state relations, indigenous land claims, and the management of multi-tradition sacred landscapes. In contrast, the present analysis focuses on Hindu–Muslim disputes because these are the primary context in which the Places of Worship Act has been directly invoked and contested, and where appeals to “historical justice” and “correcting past wrongs” have been most systematically channeled through litigation in the wake of the Ayodhya judgment. Other configurations pose distinct questions that deserve separate, more targeted treatment.

B. Analytical Evaluation of the cases

Building on the foregoing case summaries, this subsection draws out several cross-cutting patterns in how these disputes are litigated and decided.

Taken together, the three disputes show how religious-site litigation in contemporary India involves a multifaceted interplay of legal strategies and sociopolitical dynamics. By reframing conflicts as claims to historical rights or prior religious character, rather than as direct confrontations over religious identity, Hindu litigants and aligned organizations in cases such as Gyanvapi and Mathura have sought to navigate—and, in some readings, to narrow—the scope of the Places of Worship Act, making use of interpretive ambiguities in the statutory framework.

This strategy is reinforced by the judicial system’s growing dependence on archaeological evidence, particularly reports of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In cases like Gyanvapi, courts retrospectively authenticate temple narratives through material remnants, sometimes appearing to place tangible heritage above contemporary communal relations. A tactical pattern can also be seen in the creation of new, difficult-to-reverse arrangements at contested sites—for example, by permitting Hindu prayers in the Gyanvapi basement—thereby producing a “fait accompli” that progressively reshapes site functionality. At the same time, organizations aligned with Hindutva politics make sustained use of judicial and quasi-judicial forums to advance their objectives (Aswani 2022). By entertaining and structuring such claims, courts can inadvertently lend procedural validation to these efforts, generating a mutually reinforcing interaction between legal processes and electoral agendas.

These developments carry significant constitutional and societal implications. The judiciary’s evidentiary preference for archaeological documentation risks institutionalizing majoritarian historical perspectives and may place cumulative pressure on the secular commitments enshrined in India’s constitutional framework. This risk is heightened by the increasing normalization of worship–place litigation through orders and rulings in matters such as Gyanvapi and Shahi Idgah, which help establish templates that can be replicated across similar disputes, potentially triggering cascading claims. Perhaps most consequential is the emergent reconfiguration of the ASI—from a statutory heritage custodian into an evidentiary arbiter for faith-based assertions—a shift that raises concerns about institutional neutrality and recalibrates the relationship between archaeological expertise and the adjudication of religious-site disputes.

III.

Judicialization of Sacred Spaces: Constitutional Dilemmas in Secular Adjudication

A. Re-Examining India’s Constitutional Secularism: Legal Frameworks Governing Worship Sites

The historical roots of India’s worship–place disputes trace back to colonial-era legal frameworks and post-colonial identity politics. During British rule, the governance of places of worship acknowledged religious communities’ autonomy over their sites, while the judiciary intervened to maintain an inter-sectarian balance in control and management (Srikantan 2020, pp. 94–95). The basic policy adopted by the British colonial government from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth century is often described as one of “religious neutrality.” According to Rajeev Bhargava, the colonial administration presented itself as fair, impartial, and secular, for instance by providing grants for Hindu temples and Muslim mosques while, at least in certain phases, discouraging Christian missionary proselytization (Bhargava 1998, p. 189).

India’s post-independence nation-building process has followed a distinctive path of secular development. While the 1949 Indian Constitution does not explicitly use the term “secularism” in its original text, it effectively embeds secular principles through provisions on equality before the law, freedom of religion, and the prohibition of religious discrimination. Together, these provisions weave secularism into the constitutional fabric, seeking to preserve the historically rooted religious and cultural plurality of Indian society while also establishing a minimal political consensus necessary for a modern nation-state.

A milestone in this constitutional trajectory was the Forty-second Amendment to the Constitution in 1976, enacted during the period of Emergency. This amendment formally added the word “secular” (along with “socialist”) to the Preamble. It also inserted Part IVA on Fundamental Duties, including Article 51A(e), which calls on citizens “to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities.” Taken together, these changes marked a shift from largely implicit secular commitments to an explicit constitutional vocabulary of secularism.

This model of secularism, based on legal equality and characterized by state engagement with, rather than strict withdrawal from, religious communities, seeks to avoid both excessive religious intervention in politics and undue political interference in matters of faith. It also steers clear of radical, religion-excluding secularism that would sever ties with traditional culture, thereby offering a context-sensitive framework for India’s modern state governance. At the same time, in the decades following Independence and Partition, Hindu and Muslim extremist factions have repeatedly instrumentalized disputes over places of worship, turning them into focal points for advancing competing cultural and social projects and, at times, for inciting violence and sharpening identity-based politics (Six 2021, p. 11).

B. Sacred Sites as Contested Juridical Entities: Between Religious Symbolism and Secular Regulation

Building on the discussion of India’s constitutional secularism above, this subsection examines how places of worship are translated into juridical objects: sites that are experienced by devotees as sacred symbols, yet treated by the state as units of secular regulation. While continuing to recognize the authority of religious traditions over ritual practice, Indian law has progressively drawn many such sites into a dense framework of legislation and judicial oversight.

At the constitutional level, Articles 14 to 16 of the Indian Constitution enshrine principles of equality and non-discrimination, limiting the scope for the state to differentiate between religious communities in its treatment of comparable institutions. Article 25 affirms “freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion,” subject to public order, morality and health, while Article 26 protects the rights of religious denominations to manage their own affairs in matters of religion and to own and acquire property. Taken together, these provisions provide a constitutional basis for the internal governance and proprietary management of temples, mosques and other places of worship, even as they allow for state regulation on specified grounds. Article 28, which restricts religious instruction in state-funded educational institutions, further situates religious activity within a broader architecture of state–religion relations rather than as an entirely private domain. In this way, places of worship are indirectly but significantly positioned within a network of fundamental and derivative rights that both protect and discipline their operation.

Beneath this constitutional layer lies a specialized legislative framework that regulates sacred sites in different legal registers—as cultural heritage, as religious endowments, and as bearers of a protected “religious character.” As the core statute for cultural heritage, the AMASR Act, 1958 brings historically significant religious sites onto lists of protected monuments, subjecting them to compulsory preservation by the ASI. In this regime, a temple, mosque or dargah is primarily treated as an “ancient monument”—a material object of conservation—rather than as a living site of worship.

A parallel regulatory strand operates through religious endowment law. The domain of religious personal law—particularly in relation to property—has been supplemented by legislation such as the Waqf Act, 1995, which regulates Islamic religious properties (including mosques, cemeteries and dargahs), establishes boards for their supervision, and sets out procedures for registration and management. In practice, this means that the same site can fall simultaneously within the jurisdiction of heritage law and of religious-endowment law. Where a functioning place of worship is also notified as a protected monument, the AMASR Act’s emphasis on structural conservation and control over alterations can sit uneasily with the everyday ritual, congregational and infrastructural needs of the community using the site.

A third, and more directly religion-facing, layer of regulation is provided by the Places of Worship Act. Enacted against the backdrop of escalating mobilization around the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute and wider communal tensions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Act mandates the preservation of the “religious character” of all places of worship as it existed on 15 August 1947, and expressly prohibits the conversion of any such site from one religious denomination or sect to another (Government of India (Lok Sabha) 1991). Unlike heritage and endowment statutes, which focus, respectively, on the fabric and management of religious property, the 1991 Act takes the site’s religious identity itself as the object of legal protection. Notably, Parliament carved out a specific exception for the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid site, leaving it outside the Act’s ambit and ultimately subjecting it to separate adjudication by the Supreme Court. This layered framework underscores how sacred sites in India occupy a dual position: they are loci of religious symbolism and devotion, yet are simultaneously objectified in law as regulated entities within overlapping constitutional and statutory regimes.

IV.

Secular Adjudication Under Strain

A. The Secularism Paradox: How Judicial Decisions Amplify Sectarian Tensions

Building on the layered constitutional and statutory framework outlined above, this Part turns from the design of legal regimes to the practice of adjudication. It asks how courts navigate disputes over sacred sites within structures that both protect and regulate religion. Under contemporary India’s legal framework, places of worship—functioning simultaneously as material cultural heritage and as carriers of spiritual belief—present distinctive institutional tensions in terms of their legal standing. In order to implement the principle of equal treatment, the state must determine religious rights through a modern property-law framework that is historically shaped by theological categories and is therefore not normatively neutral (Srikantan 2012). When intensified by religious nationalism and polarized public debate, these structural features can transform symbolic religious structures—such as temples and mosques—into focal points for contests over historical narrative, spatial legitimacy, and the scope of secular regulation.

A central site of this tension is the Places of Worship Act. As noted earlier, the Act “freezes” the religious character of places of worship as of 15 August 1947, seeking to stabilize disputes rooted in long and contested histories. Rather than eliminating conflict, however, this statutory baseline has become a recurring point of reference and contestation in litigation. Critics warn of “exception creep,” arguing that prominent carve-outs may encourage attempts to revisit the status quo (Srivastava and Gaurha 2021; Srikantan 2020), while others maintain that the Act’s core rule remains intact absent legislative or constitutional change (Supreme Court Observer 2025). In subsequent cases, parties have tested the scope of the statute through suits for determination of religious character, petitions for access to worship, and applications for archaeological or court-commissioned surveys, producing a body of case law that shapes how the status quo rule is managed in practice. Different stakeholders have invoked the Act in divergent ways—some petitioners seeking to reopen historical questions, others relying on the statute as a safeguard against alteration—thereby crystallizing a broader challenge for postcolonial constitutional orders: how to reconcile competing historical claims with contemporary secular legal commitments.

An alternative strand of commentary contends that the judiciary should minimize, or avoid, adjudication of religious disputes in India. Despite its legal expertise, the courts’ reliance on statutory and doctrinal frameworks when evaluating sectarian conflicts may be ill-suited to the dense socio-cultural and historical dimensions of such matters. This institutional limitation stems from the nature of many religious disputes, which are deeply intertwined with community identity, collective memory, and transcendental beliefs that often resist conventional legal parametrization. Empirical work suggests that judicial intervention in faith-based controversies can carry a heightened risk of inadvertently inflaming sectarian animosities, potentially escalating into civil disturbances that undermine communal harmony and public order (Nair 2022, p. 451). Media reports from recent survey-related clashes, followed by allegations of encroachment and counter-mobilization by affected communities, illustrate how quickly worship-site litigation can spill over into street-level confrontation (The Observer Post 2025).

At the same time, the recent pattern of worship-site cases has raised questions about how far judicial techniques themselves may shape the field of contestation. Courts frequently describe their role in such disputes in a vocabulary of procedural neutrality and statutory fidelity, yet critics note a dual dynamic: a methodological register of technical legality and a normative register in which value-laden choices may surface. At the methodological level, courts have accorded elevated probative weight to archaeological surveys and expert reports, often framing fact-finding through a language of scientific verification that can obscure the institutionally mediated character of legal “facts” (Latour 2010). At the normative level, however, commentators caution that the evidentiary uptake can be subtly conditioned by the surrounding political environment—for example, through administrative control over approvals for archaeological exercises, the narrative templates used to describe “historical facts,” and the ambient pull of “mainstream public opinion.” In this view, these channels may, at times, structure incentives within adjudication and shape both process and outcome.

These dynamics highlight several tensions within India’s practice of secular adjudication. First, while technical and archaeological methods are invoked to clarify contested histories, their uptake can narrow interpretive space when aligned—rightly or wrongly—with a single overarching civilizational narrative (Srikantan 2020, pp. 94–95). Second, judicially generated “new facts” (for example, findings that a site overlies an earlier structure) may not map neatly onto the justice needs of a contemporary, plural society, and can be experienced by different communities in divergent ways (Geertz 1983; Hassner 2003). Third, when courts are positioned as authoritative arbiters of historical characterization, adjudication itself can become a site of renewed contestation: each ruling reorders interim rights and may prompt further litigation. On the one hand, the potential downside of this trajectory is a self-reinforcing cycle in which attempts to resolve disputes through technical means are perceived as privileging particular narratives and thereby deepen mistrust. On the other hand, a more optimistic reading emphasizes that evidentiary procedures and multilayered appellate review are precisely the instruments through which a constitutional system seeks to manage highly sensitive claims and maintain a baseline of legality amid political disagreement. Against this background, this article does not attribute intent or motive to any institution, but foregrounds the institutional trade-offs at stake: how to balance historical claims with constitutional commitments, preserve pluralism in interpretation, and avoid escalating social tensions beyond the courtroom.

B. Beyond the Courtroom: Worship–Place Disputes as a Litmus Test for India’s Secular Future

As the institutional cornerstone for maintaining the status quo of places of worship, the Places of Worship Act is facing sustained and high-profile constitutional challenges. Hindu nationalist advocates, such as the Akhil Bhartiya Sant Samiti, have filed a series of lawsuits questioning the validity of the Act, with the public interest litigation in Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. Union of India often cited as a representative example. In that case, heard by the Supreme Court of India in 2020, the petitioner, Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a BJP politician from Delhi, filed what was described as a public interest petition seeking a declaration that key provisions of the 1991 Act are unconstitutional and ultra vires the basic structure.

The challenge to the Places of Worship Act proceeds along several axes. First, it contests the legitimacy of the Act’s “freezing date” of 15 August 1947, arguing that any principle of “historical justice” should reach back to the establishment of Muslim rule in north India in the late twelfth century. Second, the petitioner invokes Articles 32 and 226 of the Indian Constitution, alleging that Section 4 of the Act violates due process and access to justice by closing off litigation pathways. Third, from a federal perspective, the petition refers to Schedule VII of the Constitution in an effort to cast doubt on the legislative competence of Parliament to enact the statute. Finally, it reframes the Hindu doctrinal notion of the deity’s eternal existence into a modern property claim, asserting that temples, as “divine property,” possess an eternal and inalienable proprietary character (Supreme Court Observer 2025). In public debate, therefore, the constitutionality of the Act has come to symbolize wider questions about how far post-independence secular settlements can be revisited in the name of redressing historical wrongs.

These constitutional contests are embedded in a broader set of ideological and narrative projects that seek to reframe the relationship between religion, nation, and law. Disputes over religious space increasingly transcend traditional property-rights conflicts and have been interpreted by a range of commentators as important arenas in which certain strands of Hindu-nationalist politics articulate projects of a “Hindu nation” (Hindutva) and relate Hinduism to the foundations of the secular legal order (e.g., Jaffrelot 1998, 2021; Sharma 2016). Within this broader field, one influential line of argument centers on the status of sacred sites and on competing accounts of India’s religious past. Domestically, through a contemporary discourse of “Dharma Rajya” (rule based on Hindu dharma), some proponents portray constitutional secularism as historically contingent and in need of re-specification, at times suggesting that it sits uneasily with India’s civilizational self-understanding (see, for example, discussions of Hindu-Right re-interpretations of secularism in Bhargava 1998). Internationally, related claims are sometimes situated within a wider narrative of the “sovereign independent state,” in which specific architectural disputes are presented as symbolic acts of casting off “colonial shackles” and recovering an allegedly prior cultural order (for analysis of Hindutva-inflected decolonization rhetoric, see Dhingra 2023). Terms such as “Judicial Hindutva” appear in parts of this discourse, signaling concerns that judicial interventions may, in some contexts, be perceived as reinforcing rather than constraining majoritarian narratives, although such labels remain contested in scholarly analysis (Jaffrelot 1998).

Within this strand of narration, historical Muslim rulers are often depicted as “foreign invaders” and “temple destroyers,” a framing that may be read as questioning the indigenous status of Indian Muslim communities and as generating a legitimacy discourse grounded in memories of historical trauma (Jaffrelot 2021). A central claim in these accounts is that certain existing Islamic religious buildings were constructed as replacement symbols of Islamic space following the destruction of Hindu temples, and that contemporary campaigns to “reclaim” sites such as Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura are therefore efforts to rectify historical wrongs. Drawing on long-standing Hindu legal-theological ideas that a deity’s property is eternal and inalienable, proponents argue that temples, as “residences of the divine,” possess perpetual property rights. They deploy scriptural exegesis and doctrinal hermeneutics, and recast modern judicial procedures as contemporary enactments of classical Hindu ritual logics. In this framing, appeals to “historical justice” operate as a legal narrative architecture for religious nationalism.

Once this distinctive religious-jurisprudential discourse is established, the political mobilization mechanisms of Indian religious nationalism increasingly acquire a judicial inflection. Through a dual-track strategy of street politics and judicial litigation, historical memory and religious identity are systematically reworked into legal instruments of power contestation (see, e.g., Six 2021; Nair 2022). This operational paradigm manifests both in the public sphere—where symbolic performances such as religious processions and ceremonial archaeological activities reinforce the reproduction of collective memory—and in the judicial sphere, where legal techniques such as the standardization and judicialization of historical–archaeological evidence and the litigation of ownership and management of sacred sites create institutional advantages. The resonance of these efforts, together with coordination between central and local authorities in some contexts, means that disputes over places of worship can move beyond the register of discrete legal conflicts to become central sites for the reconstruction of national narratives and the reconfiguration of ethnic and religious political identities.

Against this discursive and institutional backdrop, recent legislative and judicial developments further indicate a shift in the relationship between religious nationalism and India’s secular legal architecture. From challenging the former special status of Jammu and Kashmir to advocating the abolition of the Muslim “triple talaq” system, themes advanced in such petitions resonate closely with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s declared political objectives. This trend of politicizing and judicializing religious questions has become more visible since the Modi government came to power, interacting with a series of developments, including the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the amendments to the Waqf Act, 1995 through the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, debates over a nationwide Uniform Civil Code, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017), together with the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which render instant triple talaq legally impermissible. Taken collectively, these developments suggest an ongoing reconfiguration of the relationship between religious nationalism and India’s secular legal framework, in which worship–place disputes operate as a litmus test for the durability and future trajectory of constitutional secularism.

2. Conclusions

Places of worship are simultaneously sites of ritual, repositories of religious property, and focal points for state regulation of religion. This multi-layered role makes them a revealing lens for examining interactions between religious and secular authority. The Supreme Court’s judgment in the Ayodhya dispute has been widely regarded as an influential precedent, and elements of its reasoning and litigation pattern appear in subsequent cases—though their contexts and outcomes vary. In several matters, courts have entertained historical reconstructions supported by archaeological or expert materials, thereby shaping a normative framework for assessing claims; at the same time, judicial review, party politics, and public debate can interact in ways that heighten the political salience of interim and final orders. The Places of Worship Act—originally designed to freeze the religious character of sites as of 15 August 1947—has itself become the subject of constitutional scrutiny, illustrating an evolving cycle of historical narrative, judicial decision, and potential legislative revision. These dynamics highlight design tensions within India’s secular constitutional order. Some scholars worry that recent trajectories may tilt institutional practice toward majoritarian preferences and narrow the protections available to minorities; others emphasize appellate guardrails and statutory constraints that aim to preserve neutrality. Rather than reaching a definitive political judgment, this article focuses on how legal processes structure the governance of sacred spaces and on the trade-offs involved in balancing historical claims, statutory status quo rules, and minority-rights guarantees. The analysis is therefore confined to a bounded set of influential post-2019 disputes and does not seek to offer a comprehensive account of all contestations over sacred sites in India.

India’s experience offers cautious lessons for governing religious diversity in plural societies. The durability of secular arrangements depends not only on technically sound institutional design but also on a constitutional value consensus that can command acceptance across communities. Recent developments suggest that when courts are asked to translate very long and contested religious histories into modern rights adjudication, the formal apparatus of the rule of law may—under certain conditions—heighten sensitivities and social mistrust rather than resolve them. Efforts to pursue “historical justice” through adjudication can produce a temporal–spatial mismatch: new legal findings reshape present-day claims even as older conflicts are being recalibrated, sometimes prompting further rounds of contestation. The turn to archaeological and expert evidence to reconstruct rights underscores a broader tension between tradition and modern constitutionalism in post-colonial settings. Taken together, these patterns function as a cautionary note: constitutional projects that are perceived as converting majoritarian preferences into retrospective redress risk eroding confidence in secular guarantees, whereas transparent procedures, narrowly tailored remedies, and sustained attention to minority protections can help preserve institutional legitimacy.