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论文丨Xuejiao Zhang, Guang Yang, Chao Chen:Litigating the Sacred: Legal, Memory, and Spatial Dynamics in Worship Conflicts in Contemporary India

时间:2026-03-24

本文(Litigating the Sacred: Legal, Memory, and Spatial Dynamics in Worship Conflicts in Contemporary India原载Religions四川大学陈超副研究员等科研人员创作,系四川大学智慧法治超前部署学科系列学术成果。后续会持续分享四川大学智慧法治超前部署学科系列学术成果,欢迎大家阅读。

This study critically examines India’s secularism through an interdisciplinary analytical framework that explores the complex intersections of religious dynamics, legal structures, and political contestations. Sites of worship, functioning as sacred spaces, legal entities, and political symbols, have become focal points for multifaceted power dynamics. The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 (hereinafter the Places of Worship Act) aimed to resolve historical disputes by institutionalizing a “status quo” as of 15 August 1947. However, the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid dispute is widely seen as marking a shift in adjudicatory emphasis, with archaeological reports and scriptural materials accorded heightened probative weight vis-à-vis the Act’s status quo principle. In its wake, appeals to “historical justice” have helped channel controversies over sacred sites into legal forums, where disputes are increasingly framed through evidentiary and procedural lenses rather than solely as property conflicts. Subsequent litigation has, at times, been mobilized within broader ideological projects that center Hindu identity in national politics, with the potential to reshape sacred space and public memory through legal–administrative pathways and to recalibrate the practice of secular adjudication in India.


Xuejiao Zhang, Guang Yang, Chao Chen*. Litigating the Sacred: Legal, Memory, and Spatial Dynamics in Worship Conflicts in Contemporary India, Religions, 2025, 16, 1561.(论文下载)