We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
The country needs less of animosity and more of peace.
The deity is a juristic person. Hindus have praan pratishta puja which is a ceremony pursuant to which the deity becomes a legal person. The deity is owner of the property. Someone stealing that property does not become owner or change the nature of the property. Law of adverse possession does not apply to property owned by the deity.
Secondly, mandirs were not lying around like unclaimed lands as in the case of open pastures or forests. They were worked upon by craftsmen and artisans pursuant to a collective manual and monetary effort.
I'd shudder to think of the clients you represent if you can dare to be so ignorant yet arrogant with your views.
Non-recognition by a sovereign is no basis to rejecting ownership titles. An ownership title is vested by the dint of application of one's labour and not because of recognition by a sovereign or not. The labour has to be justly applied and not through application of force or through an act of theft. I am owner of a car I build because of the above principle - not because the sovereign recognized my ownership. Well, my view is again a philosophy that I subscribe to.
I can bet on my life that my philosophy is what will usher in world peace, and your philosophy will only result in creating a system which is wrested between sovereigns with waxing and waning amounts of force.
I'll also tell you what your line of thinking and what your philosophy entails - Nazism. As per Nazis, jews were sub-humans who had no right of existence. As per your philosophy, it was okay for Nazis to kill jews because the prevailing sovereign of that time did not recognize their right of existence. Congratulations - you just legitimized the holocaust and many others preceding it.
I'd shudder to think of the value systems you have been raised on.
I'd shudder to think of the clients you represent if you can dare to be so ignorant yet arrogant with your views.
I don't think you have though through the ramifications of the doctrine you are proposing. Under your doctrine, any and all dispositions of land made by past sovereigns can be challenged on the grounds of "justice, equity, and good conscience" (which btw is not a ground to challenge land acquisitions even under the current legal framework). This will upend all titles to property and will in all likelihood flood the Courts with a wave of litigation. Furthermore, your doctrine will have severe ramifications for current owners. Anybody can come and claim that the land I hold title over currently belonged to some ancestor of theirs and was appropriated by a past sovereign (Mughals, East India Company, British Crown) without following principles of justice, equity, good conscience and the land should therefore belong to them even though my family might have been occupying the land for generations. This doctrine will lead to chaos and confusion and cause immense hardship and injustice to current owners. Furthermore, the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgement has clearly rejected this doctrine.
Coming to your point about the Nazi comparisons, I am not advocating that the power of the sovereign to acquire property in present times be unchecked. I am saying that past dispositions of property by previous sovereigns cannot be overturned by applying the standards of today. Furthermore, there is a vast, vast gulf between destroying temples and committing genocide.