A temple on contested site of mosque’s destruction departs from judicial counter-majoritarianism | The Indian Express

A temple on contested site of mosque’s destruction departs from judicial counter-majoritarianism | The Indian Express

Written by Ashutosh Varshney |Updated: November 13, 2019 9:31:36 am

The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute. He is a contributing editor for The Indian Express.

A temple on contested site of mosque’s destruction departs from judicial counter-majoritarianism

If Hindu consolidation goes further, Muslims will become electorally even more irrelevant. We can’t still be sure this would happen. But even if Hindu electoral consolidation remains at the current level, India’s Muslims would need the judiciary’s counter-majoritarianism to safeguard their interests.

The Court has held Hindu mobs responsible for an egregious violation of the law on December 6, 1992.

For the first time since Independence, an entirely new electoral prospect has been consolidating itself. This phenomenon can be conceptualised as the political irrelevance of Muslims. It came to life with the 2014 general elections, though some might drag it back further. Its implications, serious in any case, have become even more so after the Ayodhya judgment of the Supreme Court.