INDIA:Two Hindu gods have been summoned by a judge in India's eastern Jharkhand state in a two- decade old property dispute.
Sunil Kumar Singh has placed adverts in newspapers in the coal-mining town of Dhanbad, northeast of the state capital, Ranchi, asking widely worshipped gods Ram and Hanuman to appear in his court next week to present their side of the argument in the long- running land ownership case.
"You failed to appear in court despite notices sent by a peon and later through registered post. You are hereby directed to appear before the court personally," Judge Singh's notice stated.
The notices were published locally in Dhanbad, in keeping with accepted Indian legal practice after two summons dispatched to the two plaintiff deities were returned as their addresses were "incomplete".
The legal wrangle centres on competing claims over a 1.4-acre plot in Dhanbad by local Hindu worshippers (on behalf of two adjoining temples dedicated to Ram, worshipped as the ideal husband, son and king and the monkey god, Hanuman) and the priest and caretaker Manmohan Patnaik.
Both sides went to court in 1987 and several years later the dispute was settled in the locals' favour.
However Patnaik challenged the verdict in a "fast-track court" set up recently in many states by the federal government in an attempt to dispose of the backlog of nearly four million cases across India, the majority of them property-related.
Judge Singh has summoned the gods as the defence has claimed them as the disputed plot owners.
"Since the land has been donated to the gods, it is necessary to make them a party to the case" said local lawyer Bijan Rawani.
Patnaik's plea is that the land was given to his grandfather by a local king.
Similar property disputes in which Hindu gods are deemed "legal entities" are not uncommon in India, with judgments treating them as such, especially under colonial administration before independence 60 years ago.
One of India's most contentious disputes raging in nearby Ayodhya also involves a Ram temple built over the god's exact birthplace before a Mughal king demolished it in the 16th century and replaced it with a mosque.
In the early 1990s, Hindu zealots razed the mosque and triggered off sectarian clashes in which more than 1,200 people, mostly Muslims, died across the country.
This event changed the course of Indian politics is still in court.
And the deity in this instance too is also treated as a living entity.