Allah’s House to Domes of Secularism: Minoritization of Muslims in India

Abstract

Disputes around the Babri masjid have been crucial for understanding the Muslim subject position in India, also because mosques are public expressions of Muslimness. I read the legal proceedings of the Babri masjid dispute leading to the Supreme Court’s controversial judgment in 2019, tracing the life of Babri masjid unfolding as a mosque, a disputed site and, finally, a Hindu temple. Focusing on the theological and secular claims of Hindu and Muslim litigants, I look at the differential approach to belief and historical claims within the legal adjudication. I especially analyse two strategies, disruption and description, that significantly led to the changes in the attributes of the mosque. Comparing the Babri dispute with the case of the Malappuram mosque dispute in the eighteenth century, this article analyses theological claims on a mosque, asking the question why the Muslim narrative shifted from one rooted in religious reverence, Allah’s house, to one anchored in secular symbolism, the domes of secularism? It would discreetly give an idea of the practice of secularism in India which, as different scholars contend, systematically erases Muslim religiosity from the public space. I suggest reading the anchoring of Muslim claims in secularism as pointing to the crucial changes in the Muslim subject position that is decisively framed through excessive powers of the modern nation-state.