Abstract
Disputes around the Babri masjid have been crucial for understanding the Muslim subject position in India. I read the legal proceedings of the Babri masjid dispute leading to the Supreme Court’s judgment in 2019. Focusing on the theological and secular claims of Hindu and Muslim litigants, I look at the differential approach to belief and historical claims within the legal adjudication. I especially analyse two strategies, disruption and description, that significantly led to the changes in the attributes of the mosque. I make a comparative reading of the dispute with the case of the Malappuram mosque in the eighteenth century. It would discreetly give an idea of the practice of secularism in India, which, as different scholars contend, systematically erases Muslim religiosity from the public space. I suggest reading the anchoring of Muslim claims in secularism as pointing to the crucial changes in the Muslim subject position that is decisively framed through excessive powers of the modern nation-state.
