‘Dhar Darbar’s masjid proclamation loses legal backing after Constitution came’

Indore: Advocate general Prashant Singh told Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court on Thursday that a 1935 proclamation by the erstwhile Dhar Darbar declaring the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula Mosque complex a ‘masjid’ did not carry the backing of law after the Constitution came into force.

Arguing before Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi on behalf of the state government, Singh walked the court through the background of the ‘Ailan’ issued by Dhar state Dewan Bahadur K Nadkar. He pointed to proceedings dated June 13, 1935, convened after a dispute arose over the word ‘Bhojshala’ appearing in the complex’s name and on a signboard.

The minutes of those proceedings, Singh said, recorded that the building had always included the name ‘Bhojshala’, that its largest portion was Bhojshala — taken over by the state — and that a Muslim petition claiming namaz had been offered there since 1919-20 was noted on record.

The proceedings further recorded that repairs and maintenance of the building were carried out at the behest of British Viceroy George Curzon and the Dhar Darbar, and not by any community. The proceedings had concluded that the name Bhojshala ought to be associated with the site given its traditions and history, thus the signage ‘Bhojshala-Kamal Maula Mosque’.

The subsequent Ailan, Singh noted, declared that Muslims would always be permitted to offer prayers and that the Kamal Maula Mosque ‘..will remain a mosque’.

Singh argued that this announcement could not automatically acquire the standing of law upon the Constitution’s adoption. Invoking Articles 372 and 366(10) and citing Supreme Court precedent, he contended that only measures of a legislative character capable of surviving constitutional tests could continue as enforceable law. Executive proclamations issued by princely rulers, he maintained, could not by themselves extinguish competing religious claims or override constitutional guarantees.

Singh then turned to Archaeological Survey of India’s 98-day survey report, drawing the court’s attention to images of excavated sculptures of Hindu deities — including Narsimha and Vishnu — and to findings suggesting the presence of a pre-existing structure beneath the present monument. He pointed to references in the report concerning Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions, temple architecture, mutilated deity sculptures, and inscriptions said to indicate the conversion of a temple into a mosque structure during the medieval period.

During an earlier phase of his arguments on Wednesday, Singh had told the court that his submissions should not be read as taking sides on religion, stating he was discharging his duty in assisting the court to uphold the Constitution. He had placed before the court a record of communal incidents in Dhar in 2003, 2006, 2013 and 2016, along with the administrative and police responses — FIRs and heavy deployments — that followed each episode.

In Jan 2026, he noted, 8,000 police personnel including eight paramilitary companies housed across 223 buildings were deployed in Dhar to maintain order on Basant Panchami, which fell on a Friday coinciding with namaz prayers.

Singh had told the court: “The Dhar monument is such a flashpoint that can trigger communal clashes and violence which will have impact, not only within Dhar, but whole of the state of Madhya Pradesh and other states in the country.”

He had also referred to the framework laid down in the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment as the lens through which disputes involving faith, continuity of worship, religious character and archaeological evidence ought to be examined.
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