rewrite this title Who Benefits from Temple-Mosque Disputes in India?

Places of Worship Act, 1991Prohibits the conversion of any religious place as it existed on August 15, 1947. This law was made to maintain communal harmony amid the Ram Mandir movement. However, loopholes and conflicting interpretations have repeatedly led to challenges.

The law allows investigation of a site’s historical nature, but critics argue that such surveys encourage unrest without producing constructive results. If no changes can be made to a religious place, what is the purpose of these investigations?

This debate is not limited to mosques. Claims have also been made about Hindu temples built on Buddhist sites. For example, Rameshwar Dham and Sabarimala temple in Kerala have been disputed by tribal groups alleging historical injustice.

In 2018, PK Sajeev of Aikya Mala Arya Mahasabha said, “The government should return the temple to us and correct the historical wrongs. It is time to atone for past atrocities.”

These claims expose complex layers of history and belief, raising uncomfortable questions about how we preserve and interpret our heritage.

Even leaders of the Hindutva movement have expressed caution about the increasing number of such controversies. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said during speech in Nagpur in 2022

Despite such comments advocating restraint, the campaign to locate temples beneath mosques continues unabated. What do these actions represent in the larger socio-political context?

Protests against religious places often turn into violence. Police responses generally blamed “unknown shooters” within the crowd. But two important questions remain:

1. Why are these incidents so common during protests involving a particular community?

2. Why did the police not make a strategy to stop such violence?