Fatehpur Vandalism: Is Hindu Patience With The Courts Running Out?

Uttar Pradesh's (UP) Fatehpur became a communal flare point when a group of people led by various Hindu organisations and a few local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders allegedly vandalised a mausoleum on 11 August, claiming that a thousand-year-old temple exists beneath it.

The opposition, primarily the Samajwadi Party, was quick to accuse the ruling Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government of protecting the culprits. The SP's charges are not completely unfounded.

One, though the UP Police filed a First Information Report (FIR) the same day against 10 accused, including BJP and VHP leaders, and 150 unidentified men, and even formed teams to arrest them, not a single arrest has been made so far.

Two, despite the local BJP leaders, specifically, the Fatehpur district president, Mukhlal Pal, announcing their plans to offer prayers at the disputed structure on the said date a week ago, the police were unable to prevent the alleged vandalism.

A few accounts even say that the mob of nearly 2,000 people damaged a few parts of the mausoleum despite the presence of a police force, and the police intervened only after people from the Muslim community started retaliating.

Third, a viral video shows BJP leader Pal speaking on the phone with Fatehpur Superintendent of Police (SP) Anoop Kumar Singh, exuding confidence that no aggressive police action would be taken against the accused.

Pal is seen as saying, "This is not the Mulayam Singh government, that you will fire upon us," in a reference to firing on the kar sevaks during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1990, and challenges the SP to do so.

The above mentions might lead the readers to think that a Hindu majoritarian rule exists under Yogi Adityanath in UP where, as Asaduddin Owaisi says, there is permission to attack "anything connected to Muslim culture, or history, any religious place."

However, more vigilant readers might know that this was a rare incident involving Hindu leaders and the Hindu society at large has waited patiently for decades to reclaim its religious sites through the due judicial process.

Is This Patience Waning Though?

The Babri structure demolition on 6 December 1992 was a turning point in India's history, where Hindus, for the first time, took aggressive action to reclaim their revered land, in this case, the janmabhoomi (birthplace) of Lord Ram.

But what was noticeable was that the BJP, which is accused of politicising the Ram Mandir issue for its Hindutva politics, and the BJP leaders like Lal Krishna Advani, who were leading the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, distanced themselves from the demolition and expressed grief over it.

Then UP Chief Minister and BJP leader Kalyan Singh, who expressed "no sorrow, no grief, no regret, no repentance," over the event, also resigned from his post, taking constitutional responsibility for the demolition.

This shows that while some Hindus may favour aggressive means to reclaim what they see as theirs, Hindu leadership has consistently demonstrated a firm commitment to pursuing such reclamations through institutional and constitutional channels.

That is why the Hindus waited for nearly three decades to get ownership rights of the Ram Janmabhoomi after the Babri demolition. Only after the Supreme Court (SC) ruled in favour of Hindus on 9 November 2019, a grand Ram Mandir was inaugurated at the place on 22 January 2024.

The SC ruling also rekindled hopes among Hindus for reclaiming other places of worship. In its wake, multiple petitions were filed in courts concerning Varanasi’s Gyanvapi complex, Mathura’s Krishna Janmabhoomi, the Jama Masjids of Sambhal and Budaun, and Jaunpur’s Atala Mosque, among others.

The Achievements Since Then

While many cases have been disappointing for Hindus, their biggest success has been in the Gyanvapi dispute, where daily pooja resumed after being halted in December 1993.

A Varanasi court recognised the Vyas family's right to worship under Article 25 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution and allowed the pooja by appointing the Varanasi District Magistrate (DM) as “receiver” of the southern cellar (Vyas ji ka tehkhana).

The Allahabad High Court (HC) upheld the order by considering the stoppage of the pooja by state authorities in December 1993 without any written order as “illegal” and a “continuous wrong.”

Similarly, the SC ruled in Hindus' favour by recommending maintaining the status quo, after pooja had begun, to enable both Hindus and Muslims to offer worship at Gyanvapi.

"Bearing in mind the fact that the Namaz is offered by the Muslim community unhindered after the Varanasi court orders and the offering of pooja by Hindu priests is confined to the area of the tehkhana, it is appropriate to maintain the status quo," the SC Bench noted.

However, this is not real progress for the Hindus, since it only takes them back to what was being practised three decades ago. The actual sign of progress was that a survey by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was allowed for the Gyanvapi structure.

This verdict weakened the Places of Worship Act 1991 by exploiting legal loopholes, holding that a survey is purely evidentiary and does not alter a site’s religious character, and that Section 4’s freeze on such character does not prevent a court from ascertaining facts relevant to a dispute.

By upholding the Varanasi court’s order for an ASI survey of Gyanvapi, excluding the wuzukhana where a Shivalinga is believed to have been found, the Allahabad HC and the SC paved the way for more petitions seeking to determine the religious character of other disputed sites.

Since then, ASI surveys have been ordered by courts for the Bhojshala complex in Madhya Pradesh's (MP) Dhar and the Sambhal Jama Masjid in UP. At the same time, the constitutionality of the Places of Worship Act was also challenged.

The Limited Success

The progress in the above-mentioned cases has come to a halt since then. For instance, in the Gyanvapi case, the ASI submitted its report to the Varanasi court in January and made it available to both parties, but the report was not made public due to the SC directive.

While the Hindu side has claimed that the ASI survey report found that a large Hindu temple existed at the Gyanvapi site before the construction of the existing structure, neither the proceedings are going on at a fast pace, nor the ASI survey of the controversial wuzukhana area has been allowed due to the SC directive.

Similarly, the ASI survey report of the Bhojshala complex, which was submitted to the MP HC in July 2024, has not been made public yet. However, the report is said to have found enough idols of Hindu gods and goddesses in the complex to establish the Hindu character of the place.

The case of Sambhal Jama Masjid has been grimmer than the above two. A court-ordered survey faced violent backlash in November 2024, resulting in the death of four civilians and injuries to dozens of policemen. UP Police claimed to have unearthed a criminal conspiracy behind these riots.

While the Allahabad HC has affirmed the trial court's decision to carry out the survey of the disputed Shahi Jama Masjid and trials will continue in the Sambhal mosque case, the survey report has not been made public yet.

Apart from these limited successes, a major setback for Hindus has come in the Krishna Janmabhoomi case, where the Allahabad HC refused to declare the adjoining Shahi Masjid as a disputed structure. However, other cases related to the dispute are being heard in the court. The ASI and the Centre have also been made parties in the case.

Many of the temple-mosque dispute cases are in their preliminary stages in courts, even after a considerable amount of time. For instance, a suit was filed against Lucknow's Teele Wali Masjid in 2013, but its maintainability is yet to be decided by the Allahabad HC.

The maintainability of pleas against the Ajmer Sharif dargah in Rajasthan, Budaun's Shamsi Jama Masjid, Jaunpur's Atala mosque, Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque at the Qutub Minar complex in Delhi and Malali Juma Masjid in Karnataka's Mangalore are yet to be decided, among others.

Thus, the legal route to reclaiming Hindu places of worship is marked by prolonged delays, frequent setbacks, and rare successes, with the Places of Worship Act 1991 remaining the foremost legal hurdle. Even if the Hindu character of the disputed sites is established in surveys, the courts can at most allow worship there, rather than full reclamation due to this Act.

The Fatehpur Vandalism

In this context, it appears that local activists from the Math Mandir Sanrakshan Sangharsh Samiti, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Mahasabha, and other groups saw force as the quickest way to secure what they perceived as their right to worship at the disputed mausoleum.

The support of local BJP leaders, since the BJP is the ruling party in the state, further emboldened their action, reinforcing the belief that no strong police action would follow, particularly with Hindutva icon Yogi Adityanath at the helm.

The Hindu activists claim that beneath the mausoleum exists a temple dedicated to Thakurji (Lord Krishna) and Lord Shiva, while Muslims claim that the site contains the tomb of Nawab Abdus Samad, a Mughal subedar.

The site is officially registered under Khasra number 753 in government records as Maqbara Mangi, but Hindu activists claim that the existence of Hindu icons like trishul (Lord Shiva's trident) and lotus flowers inside the tomb's walls proves that it's a Hindu place.

Based on these claims, Hindu leaders gave a memorandum to the Fatehpur DM on 8 August and sought permission to worship at the place on 11 August. While the DM denied them permission, anticipating their aggressive action, the police force was deployed at the place beforehand.

After the vandalism, the district administration was quick to repair the affected parts of the mausoleum before midnight of the same day to prevent any escalation of tensions. The deployment of a heavy police force also prevented any escalation between the two groups and peace was maintained.

Notably, no petition has been filed against the disputed mausoleum so far, but an aggressive action was taken, posing a question of whether this indicates a loss of faith of Hindu activists in the judicial process.

The Way Forward

To be clear, Swarajya does not endorse any violent action, but it must be acknowledged that there has to be a legal and institutional framework in place that allows Hindus to at least express their claims on a religious site and seek justice in a timely manner.

For this, the Places of Worship Act 1991 is the biggest hindrance because it creates an arbitrary cut-off date of 15 August 1947, effectively blocking the reversal of historical wrongs, done mainly by Islamic invaders and rulers.

Hence, the challenges to the Act argue that it violates fundamental rights like Articles 14, 15 (right to equality), 25, and 26 (right to freedom of religion). The case is pending before the SC.

This Act was brought by the then Congress government in light of the Ram Mandir movement, to prevent any such future demands for Kashi and Mathura, among others.

An exception was given to the Ram Mandir because the movement had grown too big by then.

As of now, the SC is not entertaining any new petitions in the case and the hearings will proceed by clubbing several petitions.

However, despite setting 1 April as the date to hear the case by a three-judge bench, the SC has not heard the case yet.

The delayed judicial process also gives the legislature an opportunity to use its power to revoke the controversial Act and replace it with another Act which facilitates Hindus to reclaim their places of worship through set legal and institutional procedures.

Ultimately, political will is also an important factor. If the Narendra Modi government is not moving forward on the issue fearing backlash by the minority community, then it should also be ready for probable backlash from the majority community, because ultimately, anger finds an outlet.