Ayodhya: Claims of title to land cannot be sustained only on faith/belief, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s long-awaited judgment on the Ayodhya dispute passed on Saturday calls for the coveted land to be vested with Government-administered Trust for the construction of a Ram mandir sought by the Hindu parties. One of the factors considered by the Court to grant the 2.77 acre land at Ayodhya in favour of the Hindu parties was based on the community’s long-standing belief that the area in dispute signified the birth place of Lord Ram..In doing so, the Court also recognised that physical idols made to symbolise the deity Lord Ram (Bhagwan Sri Ram Virajman) fell under the category of a juristic personality or legal personality..However, the Bench has dismissed an additional contention made that the disputed Ayodhya site itself, i.e. Asthan Sri Ram Janam Bhumi, was a juristic personality or a legal person. In this regard, the Court framed the legal question as follows, i.e. whether property of a corporeal nature (in this case land) be ascribed a distinct legal personality? While the question was answered in the negative, the Court clarified,.“A determination by this Court of whether or not the disputed site is a juridical person will not in any manner detract from the significance of the faith and belief of the Hindu community.“.To decide the issue, the Bench delved deep into the reasons why law confers legal personalities to objects and the jurisprudence on treating Hindu deities as juristic personalities. Here we take a look at some of the observations made by the Court on this aspect..History, legal necessity and convenience dictate creation of juristic personality.The Court’s judgment explains that over time, legal or juristic personality began to be conferred on objects due to historical circumstances, legal necessity and convenience. The underlying reason was the foundational principle of a legal system that it must recognise the subjects it seeks to govern..In the case of Hindu deities in India, the Court makes the following observations as far as historical context is concerned,.“The doctrine that Hindu idols possess a distinct legal personality was adopted by English judges in India faced with the task of applying Hindu law to religious endowments… To provide courts with a conceptual framework within which they could analyse and practically adjudicate upon disputes involving competing claims over endowed properties, courts recognised the legal personality of the Hindu idol. It was a legal innovation necessitated by historical circumstances, the gap in the existing law and by considerations of convenience. It had the added advantage of conferring legal personality on an object that within Hinduism had long been subject to personification.”.Further, the conferring of such legal personality of Hindu idols was also necessitated to protect the interests of Hindu devotees when religious endowments were set up. The Bench observed,.“The need to confer juristic personality arises out of the need for legal certainty as to who owns the dedicated property, as well as the need to protect the original intention of the dedicator and the future interests of the devotees. It was open for courts to even confer the personality on the community of devotees in certain situations, but the idol is chosen as a centre for legal relations as the physical manifestation of the pious purpose.“.Limitations on conferring juristic personality on Hindu deities.The Court goes on to point out that there are limitations in conferring legal personality to Hindu deities. Notably, such legal personality cannot be conferred on Hindu divinity itself, given its abstract and omnipotent nature. As noted in the judgment,.“… it is important to understand that the conferral of legal personality on a Hindu idol is not the conferral of legal personality on divinity itself, which in Hinduism is often understood as the Supreme Being‘ … Hinduism understands the Supreme Being as existing in every aspect of the universe. The Supreme Being is omnipresent. The idea of a legal person is premised on the need to identify the subjects‘ of the legal system. An omnipresent being is incapable of being identified or delineated in any manner meaningful to the law and no identifiable legal subject would emerge.” .Rather, legal personality is conferred on identifiable Hindu idols, in furtherance of carrying out the purpose behind the idol i.e. to allow devotees to experience the divine..“… it has often been stated that legal personality is conferred on the purpose behind the idol’ .. In Hinduism, physical manifestations of the Supreme Being exist in the form of idols to allow worshippers to experience a shapeless being. The idol is a representation of the Supreme Being. The idol, by possessing a physical form is identifiable.“.Juristic personality not extinguished if Idol is destroyed or absent.In matters concerning the conferring of legal personality on Hindu deities, it is the purpose behind the idol that assumes significance, the Court has held. The destruction or absence of an idol would not extinguish the legal personality. As elaborated in the judgment,.“The idol constitutes the embodiment or expression of the pious purpose upon which legal personality is conferred. The destruction of the idol does not result in the termination of the pious purpose and consequently the endowment. Even where the idol is destroyed, or the presence of the idol itself is intermittent or entirely absent, the legal personality created by the endowment continues to subsist..In our country, idols are routinely submerged in water as a matter of religious practice. It cannot be said that the pious purpose is also extinguished due to such submersion. The establishment of the image of the idol is the manner in which the pious purpose is fulfilled. A conferral of legal personality on the idol is, in effect, a recognition of the pious purpose itself and not the method through which that pious purpose is usually personified.“.On why juristic personality cannot be conferred on land claimed as religious sites.After establishing that Hindu deities could be conferred legal personalities through their idols (prioritising the purpose underlying the idol rather than the idol itself), the Court eventually opined that extending such legal fiction to immovable property is unnecessary, inconvenient and may jeopardise secular interests..Not necessary to extend juristic personality to immovable property.The Supreme Court found that the recognition of religious sites (immoveable property) as a juristic person is unnecessary since the recognition of an idol is sufficient to serve the purpose for which such a legal fiction is created. Further, the Bench opined that conferring legal personality status to the land has no relation to the purpose for which the same is done. As stated in the judgment,.“Where juristic personality was recognised in corporeal property itself such as the idol, it served the larger purpose for which juristic personality was conferred – to ensure the execution and protection of the pious purpose set out by a donor and the ultimate protection of the beneficial interest of the worshippers. However, to confer legal personality on immoveable property leads to consequences that fundamentally have no nexus to the limited purpose for which juristic personality is conferred..Conferring legal personality on land claimed as religious site affects ordinary property rights.The Bench pointed out that conferring legal personality to land claimed as a religious site would strip it of its character as immovable property. This, in turn, may have the unintended affect of immunising it from the ordinary law of the land, besides extinguishing rights claimed over the property by persons outside the religion. As observed in the judgment,.“It sets apart immoveable property on which a juristic character is conferred from all other species of immoveable property. This will lead to the claim that the legal regime which applies to the latter (ordinary immoveable property‘) will not apply to that class of immoveable property which is recognised as a juristic person in and of itself. ….The purpose for which juristic personality is conferred cannot be evolved‘ into a trojan horse that permits, on the basis of religious faith and belief, the extinguishing of all competing proprietary claims over property as well stripping the property itself of the essential characteristic of immoveable property… The conferral of legal personality on corporeal property would immunise property not merely from competing title claims, but also render vast swathes of the law that are essential for courts to meaningfully adjudicate upon civil suits, such as limitation, ownership, possession and division, entirely otiose. “.Claims to title of land cannot be sustained only on the basis of faith to the detriment of secular interests.In this backdrop, the Court also noted that it cannot be expected to objectively decide whether religious sites can be conferred legal personality on subjective, faith-based claims. Pertinent observations of the Bench in this regard include the following..“The elevation of land to the status of a juristic person fundamentally alters its characteristics as immoveable property, a severe consequence against which a court must guard. Nor is it a valid safeguard to postulate that the court will decide on a case to case basis where a particular immoveable property should have a juristic status. Absent any objective standard of application the process of drawing lines will be rendered inherently subjective, denuding the efficacy of the judicial process. ….… Corporeal property may be associated with myriad incidents associated with the human incarnation of a deity each of which holds a significant place in the faith and belief of the worshippers. Where does the court draw the line to assess the significance of the belief as the basis to confer juristic personality on property? In the absence of an objective criterion, the exercise will be fraught with subjectivity.“.With specific reference to the Ayodhya dispute, the Bench remarked,.“Adopting the argument of the plaintiffs in Suit 5 may result in the conferral of legal personality on all such claims to land. This conferral would be to the detriment of bona fide litigants outside the faith – who may not share the same beliefs and yet find their title extinguished. Further, such conferral of legal personality on immovable property would be on the basis of the faith and belief of the devotees, which is fundamentally subjective and incapable of being questioned by this Court… If the contention urged on the behalf of the plaintiffs in Suit 5 is accepted, it results in a position in law where claims to absolute title‘ can be sustained merely on the basis of the faith and belief of the devotees.”.Such an approach would also violate the spirit of secularism envisioned in the Constitution, the Court noted. On this aspect, the judgment observes,.“Religious diversity undoubtedly requires the protection of diverse methods of offering worship and performing religious ceremonies. However, that a method of offering worship unique to one religion should result in the conferral of an absolute title to parties from one religion over parties from another religion in an adjudication over civil property claims cannot be sustained under our Constitution. This would render the law, which ought to be the ultimate impartial arbiter, conferring a benefit on a party with respect to her or his legal claims, not on the basis of the merits of a particular case, but on the basis of the structure or fabric of the religion to which they belong. If the contention urged on behalf of the plaintiffs in Suit 5 is accepted, the method of worship performed by one religion alone will be conferred with the power to extinguish all contesting proprietary claims over disputed property….... The adjudication of civil claims over private property must remain within the domain of the secular if the commitment to constitutional values is to be upheld … Secularism cannot be a writ lost in the sands of time by being oblivious to the exercise of religious freedom by everyone.”.Conclusion .In view of these observations, the Court proceeded to dismiss the contention made for conferring juristic personality upon the Asthan Shri Ram Janam Bhumi (birthplace of Lord Ram). The contention was also rejected given that it was not until 1989 that the plea was made for conferring the status of juristic personality on the site. The Court observed,.“The litigation over the disputed property dated back to 1885, and at no point, until Suit 5 in 1989 was a plea taken that the land in question was anything possessed of a juristic personality. Apart from the reasons which have been outlined above, it would not be open for the court to treat the property differently now, solely on the basis of the novel plea urged by the plaintiffs in Suit 5 in 1989.“.The Bench concluded that such a claim cannot be extended to immunise the land from title based claims..“At best, the contention urged on behalf of the plaintiffs in Suit 5 would sustain a claim that the specific site is a location of religious significance for the devotees. It cannot however be extended to sustain proprietary claims to the law or to immunise the land from proprietary or title based claims of others by conferring juristic personality on the land itself.”.[Read the Court’s findings on contentions regarding Juristic Personality below]