The Supreme Court on Monday reiterated that its order approving the demolition of a 500-year-old Ravidas temple in New Delhi’s Tughlakabad area should not be given a “political colour”, PTI reported.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and MR Shah directed the governments of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi to ensure the protests do not cause law-and-order problems. “Everything cannot be political,” the judges said. “Our orders can’t be given a political colour by anybody on earth.”
Last week, protests broke out in several parts of Punjab’s Doaba region after the temple was razed. The 15th-century temple was pulled down on the basis of the court’s order, which was passed after a petition against encroachment by temple authorities.
The top court had warned against the politicisation of its order last week too, and threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against those provoking people. “You cannot go on and on and make comments and criticism of the judgement,” the bench had said. “This is Supreme Court. Don’t invoke politics here”.
The protests in Punjab were held in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Phagwara, Gurdaspur and Amritsar, and educational institutions in four districts – Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar – were closed.
The members of the Ravidas or Ravidassia community are Dalits, and form an offshoot of Sikhism. They follow Ravidas, whose teachings are also mentioned in the Guru Granth Sahib.
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