Dear reader, On May 18, Fahad Zuberi, an architecture scholar, wrote a searching piece in the Express Opinion pages. His article ('We Ask the Wrong Question') began thus: "What was being searched for (again) since the violent slogan 'Ayodhya to jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura baaki hai' (Ayodhya is a trailer, Varanasi and Mathura are yet to come) was exclaimed, has been found. No, not the Shivling that the petitioners of the lawsuit filed in a Varanasi civil court allege to have found in the wuzu khana of the Gyanvapi Mosque. What has been found, or rather, created, is a rupture in the wall that separates the modern constitutional democracy of India from its ancient and medieval polity - the polity characterised by expansionist warfare and legitimised by the divine instead of the values of modernity." The judiciary, including the apex court, is now hearing petitions that may seem to be an attempt to settle a conflict in architectural history. A process to identify the true character of the Gyanvapi mosque at Varanasi, which some Hindu groups have staked claim to, is on. It has now been sanctioned by the judiciary. The process has been questioned on the grounds that it violates the provisions of the Places of Worship Act, 1991, which was enacted by Parliament in the backdrop of the Babri Masjid dispute. The aim of the Act, which exempted the Babri Masjid from its purview, was to ensure status quo at religious sites as they existed on August 15, 1947. The Babri Masjid was thereafter demolished by a Hindutva mob. Later, the Supreme Court, which described the demolition as a criminal act, ordered that the disputed site be handed over to the Hindu party. On Friday, the apex court, while hearing a challenge to the survey at Gyanvapi mosque ordered by a Varanasi court, said that 'ascertainment of the religious character of a place is not barred by... the Act'." In his article, Zuberi claims that "we - the courts, the prime time shows and the people in general - are debating the wrong question". He writes: "This is not a question of secularism or that of minority rights, the question is, how will the 'true nature' of our conflicted architectural sites be defined, and who has the power to define it. Reading architecture with political philosophy tells us that that depends on what values we adopt in state formation." Zuberi proceeds to look at the 1991 law, The Places of Worships Act, in the context of the values ingrained in the making of the post-independence Indian state. He writes: "Why did an Act passed in 1991, set the date to define the status quo of religious sites to the date of India's independence? The reason is quite profound, and for a multi-cultural and diverse society such as India, it provides a resolution to the debate around conflicted architecture. "The Act does so in the spirit of a modern nation-state. It means that since we resolved to become a modern nation on August 15, 1947, and realised it on January 26, 1950, we shall cut our ties with the systems of politics that defined our past. On the 15th of August 1947, we resolved to create a break from the past and redefine our values of political legitimacy. From that day onwards, India was to be defined by, and courts were to judge conflicts using the values of a modern state enshrined in the constitution. Not against the values of the systems of politics or mythology that existed before. "This also means that we define the 'true nature' of our architectural sites against the values of modernity and not those of mythology or medieval warfare. The philosophical and practical resolution to that, as understood in the Act, is to not entertain mythological claims to historical sites and to not investigate their archaeology for claims of possession. By ordering a survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque, the courts have done exactly the opposite. "By conducting such investigations into religious sites, the courts have, like they did in the case of Babri Masjid, legitimised the values of an anti-modern polity. They have acted against the values that they are supposed to uphold. Courts cannot be acting on claims of mythology or those of medieval capture. They must leave buildings for what they are - complex sediments of history that we decided to resolve by proclaiming a break from the past and giving ourselves modern values." In our fraught times, when the sanctity of India's constitutional values itself is being challenged by right-wing groups and mob vandalism is justified as retributory justice sanctioned by civilisational angst, a rational debate on these matters may have become impossible. The Indian Express editorial ('Caution, Constitution', May 18) revisited the spirit of the Places of Worship Act, 1991. It recalled the Supreme Court's words in its 2019 Ayodhya judgment, where it said that "the State, has by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalised its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution". The Court had also said that the Act is "a legislative instrument designed to protect the secular features of the Indian polity, which is one of the basic features of the Constitution". The editorial warned against any attempt to amend or repeal the Act. It said, "such a move will be nothing short of a challenge to the post-1947 Indian nation-state, where a multitude and different religions have co-existed by respecting each other's space and rights and embracing an identity defined by Constitutional values rather than claims made on behalf of faith or numerical strength". Two batteries that he bought in 1991 had linked A G Perarivalan to the murder of Rajiv Gandhi and fetched him a death sentence and three decades in jail. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered that he be released from prison on procedural grounds. Perarivalan was 19 years old when an LTTE suicide squad killed the former Prime Minister on May 21, 1991. The CBI took him into custody on June 11, 1991. In 1998, a TADA court convicted him and sentenced him to death, which the SC confirmed in 1999. Later, the CBI officer who recorded Perarivalan's statement submitted an affidavit in court where he said the latter told him that he didn't know what the batteries he bought were to be used for, but omitted this confession from the statement. The Supreme Court revisited the case in 2014 and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He was out on parole for the first time in 2017. Perarivalan's freedom is the outcome of a dogged legal battle that his mother, Arputhammal, convinced that her son was innocent, waged against the conviction. The Indian Express Chennai correspondent Arun Janardhanan spoke with him soon after the SC order on his days in jail, which we published in the Opinion section ('My mother was my hope', May 19). A day later Justice K Chandru wrote ('An unkind state', May 20) on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and explained why the decision to release Perarivalan from jail was the right. He writes: "India's penal system is undoubtedly reformatory and not retributive. The SC ruled on this issue by stating 'a barbaric crime does not have to be visited with a barbaric penalty'. Those who speak against the reprieve given to Perarivalan neither understand India's penal system nor are they willing to see the reason behind the SC order. Ultimately, in this country, when an offence has political overtones, it is political considerations rather than criminal jurisprudence that deals with the penalties for it". The next big question is, as Chandru writes, "whether the six other prisoners will receive the same relief or will there be an ugly confrontation between the state government and governor once again". The Indian Express editorial ('Court's Message', May 20) says "the relief provided by the Court was long overdue - Perarivalan's prolonged incarceration was inhuman". It also views the Supreme Court order as a message to Governors who tend to ignore the decisions of the state Cabinet. The editorial says: "The verdict reaffirms a cardinal principle of the country's polity: 'The Governor occupies the position of the head of the executive in the State but it is virtually the Council of Ministers in each State that carries on the executive Government.' This should send a strong signal to governors in several states who have been stonewalling state government decisions." Among the other interesting Op-Eds we ran include 'Capital fire' (N Neetha, May 17) on the fire that killed 27 persons in an industrial facility in Mundra, Delhi, 'Bridge to Buddha' (Yuvaraj Ghimire, May 17) on the Prime Minister's short visit to Lumbini on Buddha Poornima, 'The Beauty Trap' (Divya Spandana, May 20) on the death of an actress during plastic surgery, 'Nothing Sacred about it' (Sarayu Esther Thomas, May 21) and 'A regressive exception' (Chintan Chandrachud, May 20) on the marital rape debate, and 'On sedition, a beginning' (Ravi Shankar Prasad, May 27). Prannv Dhawan and Christophe Jaffrelot ('Not a rainbow', May 20) looked at the composition of the new Adityanath cabinet to conclude that it is not representative of UP society. The Congress party was the subject of two editorials — 'Walk the Chintan' (May 17) and 'Exit Lounge' (May 20), on the chintan shivir in Udaipur and the resignation of Hardik Patel from the party. Both predicted a bleak future for India's GOP unless it opted for radical transformation. Till next week, Amrith Amrith Lal is Senior Associate Editor with the Opinion team | 
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