India, May 18 -- The decision by the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court, declaring the Bhojshala Temple-Kamal Maula Mosque complex in Dhar district a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati, is a landmark in the fast-growing jurisprudence on places of worship in India. It will impact not just the cases where Hindu petitioners have demanded worshipping rights at Islamic sites, but also the country's social fabric and the laws governing any change to a site's religious character. To start with, it is the first case to successfully pierce the veil imposed by a December 2024 directive of the top court that restrained all courts nationwide from entertaining fresh suits or passing any interim or final orders in disputes involving places of worship. Though less discussed than longer-standing disputes in Mathura and Varanasi, the Bhojshala verdict was made possible by a top court bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and comprising justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi deciding this January that the high court could open the sealed report submitted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which had found that the mosque was built on the remnants of an earlier temple. It remains to be seen whether the Shahi Eidgah case or the Gyanvapi Masjid case, both of which reached the apex court previously, will get a new lease of life now. Second, it is the first such major decision by a constitutional court in a case involving a place of worship since the landmark 2019 Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit verdict by the Supreme Court, which paved the way for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. In both judgments, the court floated the idea of providing land at an alternative site to the Muslim community to build a mosque, while allowing the demands of Hindu petitioners. And third, the 1991 Places of Worship Act - which locks the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947, except the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site - is as good as dead. By ruling that the law did not apply to Bhojshala - because the Hindu petitioners sought worshipping rights and not to change the site's religious character, and because the complex was protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, a different law - the high court has effectively bypassed the Places of Worship Act. With challenges to the 1991 law pending before the apex court and the Centre yet to state its position, more such disputes could find their way to courts. Such an eventuality would certainly strain India's social amity....