Claiming ownership of monuments is fraught with embarrassment as found by Wakf Board
If ever a party to a dispute before the Supreme Court could said to have been hoist with its own petard it is the Sunni Wakf Board which has staked a claim to ownership of the iconic national monument, the Taj Mahal. Asking counsel for the Board a perfectly valid question — who in India will believe it (the Taj) belongs to you — a three-judge apex court Bench headed by Chief Justice Mr Dipak Mishra and comprising Mr Justice AM Khanwilkar and Mr Justice DY Chandrachud directed the claimants to produce title transfer documents bearing the signature of the Mughal emperor Shahjahan, on whose instructions the Taj Mahal was constructed on Wednesday. A rather nonplussed Board, through its counsel, could only seek “more time” to produce the said signature.
In asking the question direct pretty plainly, as it were, the Supreme Court has also indicated its impatience with outlandish claims of this nature which have bedevilled and have clogged up the Indian judicial system. The Sunni Waqf Board, in its wisdom, decided to claim ownership of the UNESECO recognised world heritage monument on the prima facie extremely flimsy grounds that Emperor Shah Jahan, who had the monument to love built in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal who died in 1631, had executed a waqfnama in its favour. (A waqfnama is a deed through which a person belonging to the Muslim faith expresses his/her intention to donate a property for charitable purposes.) In a salutary lesson on the evolution of the Indian nation-state, the Bench held, apart from pointing out that the Emperor was imprisoned in the Agra Fort by his son Aurangzeb in 1658 where he died thereby effectively negating any individual agency he may have had as ruler, that the Mughal Empire gave way to British India which was succeeded by the Indian state after Independence in 1947 and the properties controlled by the state also followed this route of succession. The Archaeological Survey of India, as the duly authorised instrumentality of state of the Government of India, has control over the Taj Mahal which the Sunni Waqf Board has challenged through its ill-advised petition.
The mater has been listed for further hearing next week but the issues it raises on claims to historical monuments by various parties are likely to survive the disposal of this particular case. For example, given the insistence of the Muslim parties to the Ayodhya Ram Janambhoomi dispute, which includes the Sunni Waqf Board, that their appeal against the Allahabad High Court is “purely on the grounds of determination of title” regardless of the feelings on millions of Indians, Babar's general Mir Baqi — who is said to have ordered the construction of the structure known as the Babri Masjid on the very site venerated by millions as the birthplace of lord Ram — may yet be resurrected from the annals of India's medieval past. After all, determination of property suit needs proof of a clean flow of title too. It is a slippery slope.