The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 is a law 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’.

This is an unusually phrased law which says temples, mosques, churches, stupas, gurudwaras and so on will remain as they were in 1947. Meaning that the religion that was practiced in that structure would continue to be practiced. Why was it legislated? To prevent more incidents like the Babri Masjid demolition. It could not be more clear in phrasing or in intent.

However laws have rarely stopped things from happening in India, even in the courts.

In 2019, following the Supreme Court's verdict handing over the Babri site to a temple, a petition was taken up in an Uttar Pradesh court regarding the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. The court directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct a survey, though historians have clearly recorded that the mosque was built over an existing temple razed by Aurangzeb in 1669. The Places of Worship Act was meant to avoid precisely such medieval history from becoming current affairs.

The matter went to the Supreme Court in 2022. Here, D.Y. Chandrachud, who had authored the Babri judgment, made an observation that would prove to be devastating. He said the ‘ascertainment of the religious character’ of a place........

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