SUMAN K. SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, December 18: Rising high above the plains of eastern India in Jharkhand stands Parasnath Hill — known to Jains across the world as Shikharji, the summit of liberation. It is not merely a mountain but a culmination. Jain belief holds that twenty of the twenty-four Tirthankaras attained nirvana here. For centuries, pilgrims have climbed its winding paths barefoot, carrying nothing, believing that the ascent itself mirrors the soul’s final release from attachment.
For Jainism — a faith founded on renunciation — Shikharji is paradoxical. It is the most sacred place, yet it belongs to no one.
What unfolded around Parasnath Hill during the twentieth century was not a simple religious dispute. It was a collision between faith and land reform, tradition and statute, community memory and constitutional authority. The conflict between the Digambars and the Swetambars — two ancient sects of Jainism — eventually required courts to answer a deeper legal question.
A Sacred Hill, a Divided Faith
Despite doctrinal differences stretching back more than a millennium, Digambars and Swetambars shared a common reverence for Parasnath Hill. Both believed it to be the eternal resting place of the Tirthankaras and worshipped at the tonks, temples, and charans scattered across the summit.
Over time, however, management became contested. The Swetambars, through organised institutional bodies, asserted control over the shrines. The Digambars accepted this only to the extent recognised by judicial precedent — most notably the Privy Council decision of 1933, which upheld Swetambar management while guaranteeing Digambars an unfettered right of worship at twenty tonks and the temple of Gautam Swamy.
This uneasy balance endured for decades, until land reform intervened.
The State Enters the Hill
The Bihar Land Reforms Act dramatically altered property relations across the State. Estates vested in the government by force of statute, and Parasnath Hill was no exception. Except for a small enclave of 0.86 acres housing ancient shrines, the vast forested hill — nearly 16,000 acres — is vested in the State.
The Anandji Kalyanji Trust, representing Murti Pujak Swetambar Jains, had earlier acquired rights from the Raja of Palganj and claimed management over the hill. After vesting, instead of effectively challenging the notification, the Trust entered into negotiations with the State. These culminated in a 1965 agreement under which the State purported to return 397 acres to the Trust and agreed to share forest profits, citing respect for religious sentiment.
The Suits and the Storm
Two competing suits followed. The Anandji Kalyanji Trust sought enforcement of the agreement and an injunction restraining Digambar construction or interference. The Digambars countered by asserting that the agreement itself was illegal, unconstitutional, and destructive of both statutory mandate and religious equality.
The State, initially passive, later changed its stance. It argued that the agreement violated the Bihar Land Reforms Act, offended public policy, and breached the doctrine of public trust.
The Trial Court struck down the profit-sharing clause but upheld the rest of the agreement. A Single Judge reversed this view, holding the entire agreement void.
When Faith Entered the Courtroom
For both sides, the dispute was framed not as a struggle for power but as a fight for protection.
For the Swetambar Murti Pujaks, represented primarily by the Anandji Kalyanji Trust, Parasnath Hill was inherited sanctity. Their claim rested on royal grants, colonial-era judicial recognition, and decades of managing pilgrim facilities, temples, and religious practices. They argued that their role was custodial rather than exclusionary, and that without their stewardship the hill’s sanctity would erode under bureaucratic indifference.
The Digambars articulated a different concern. They did not claim ownership of the hill, but insisted that Parasnath belonged to all Jains, not to any single sect or institution. Their fear was that exclusive managerial control would slowly turn shared worship into regulated permission. History, they argued, had already shown how subtle control could become effective exclusion.
Between these positions stood the State — first silent, then complicit, and finally defensive.
The Swetambar Case: History, Possession, and Compromise
In Title Suit No. 10 of 1967, the Anandji Kalyanji Trust asserted title and possession over the entire Parasnath Hill, measuring about 25 square kilometres. It claimed that the hill had never lawfully vested in the State, that the notification under the Bihar Land Reforms Act was defective, and that possession had never been taken.
The Trust placed heavy reliance on the 1965 agreement, arguing that it merely recognised pre-existing religious rights. According to them, the State itself had acknowledged that temples, dharamshalas, and religious lands were outside the scope of vesting, and the agreement simply formalised what history had already established.
They further contended that the agreement was a lawful settlement under forest laws, not an illegal re-transfer of land, since the State continued to manage forests and only shared profits. The Trust also argued that the Digambars were estopped from challenging the agreement, having themselves entered into a later arrangement with the State protecting their worship rights.
The Digambar Response: Vesting, Equality, and Public Policy
The Digambars returned relentlessly to the statute. They argued that vesting under the Bihar Land Reforms Act was absolute. Once an estate vested in the State, all intermediary rights — proprietary, managerial, and possessory — stood extinguished. There was no exception for religious sentiment and no power in the executive to undo vesting by agreement.
They pointed out that the Anandji Kalyanji Trust had failed to challenge the vesting notification in time, having withdrawn a writ petition from the Supreme Court without pursuing remedies before the High Court. Vesting had therefore attained finality.
The Digambars also attacked the 1965 agreement as contrary to public policy. The State, they argued, could not favour one sect of the same religion by recognising it as custodian of a site sacred to all. Nor could it bypass statutory compensation by returning land through executive negotiation.
They denied that the Swetambars were ever in exclusive possession and insisted that Digambar worship at the tonks, charans, and temples had always been independent and judicially protected. Construction of sheds and dharamshalas, they argued, was a necessity of pilgrimage, not trespass.
The Full Bench Steps In
By 2000, the controversy had grown complex enough to be referred to a Full Bench of the Jharkhand High Court. The judgment delivered on August 24, 2004, authored by Chief Justice P. K. Balasubramanyan with Justices Tapen Sen and Hari Shankar Prasad concurring, became a landmark.
The Court held that the entire Parasnath Hill had vested in the State and that possession had been lawfully taken. There was no pleading, proof, or demarcation in the plaint to support the claim that any specific area — including the asserted 397 acres — had been excluded from vesting. Even the alleged half-mile radius around temples had not been identified when the suit was filed.
The Court made it clear that rights extinguished by statute cannot be resurrected by agreement. By 1965, the Anandji Kalyanji Trust had already lost title and possession. Any land “returned” under the agreement could only be understood as an administrative arrangement, not as recognition of ownership or reversal of vesting.
On the date of the suit, the Court held, the Trust had no possession — actual or constructive — over any part of the hill.
The Agreement That Could Not Stand
The Full Bench declared the 1965 agreement null and void. It directly contradicted the Bihar Land Reforms Act. The State lacked authority to bargain away land vested in it under statute. The agreement discriminated between sects at a site sacred to all Jains and operated, in effect, as compensation in kind — something not contemplated by the Act.
The Court further held that civil courts lacked jurisdiction to reopen vesting under Section 35 of the Act. Having failed to pursue constitutional remedies when vesting occurred, the Trust could not challenge it collaterally decades later.
The conclusion was unequivocal: Parasnath Hill belongs to the State, and no private religious trust — Digambar or Swetambar — can claim ownership or exclusive control.
Beyond Sect, Beyond Possession
What distinguished the judgment was its restraint. The Court recognised the profound religious importance of Shikharji but refused to allow sanctity to become a source of legal privilege. In doing so, it shifted the dispute from possession to trusteeship.
A Judgment of Restraint
The High Court handed the hill to neither Digambars nor Swetambars. It restored legal neutrality under State trusteeship while safeguarding the equal right of worship of all Jains. Faith was acknowledged, but statute prevailed. History was recognised, but law was enforced. Worship was protected, but ownership was denied.
A New Threat Emerges
Two decades later, a different challenge arose — not from sectarian rivalry, but from modern development. Tourism, infrastructure, and commercial activity began encroaching upon the hill’s silence. This prompted W.P. (PIL) No. 231 of 2025, filed by Jyot Trust before the Jharkhand High Court.
This time, the adversary was the State’s own policies.
Sanctity Recognised by Law
In a judgment delivered on May 2, 2025, a Division Bench led by Chief Justice M. S. Ramachandra Rao, with Justice Deepak Roshan, reaffirmed that Parasnath Hill is not a tourist destination but a sacred landscape.
The Court relied on the Union Government’s Office Memorandum dated January 5, 2023, issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. The memorandum expressly recognised the hill’s sanctity and prohibited tourism and eco-tourism, alcohol, non-vegetarian food, loud music, harm to animals, and defilement of sacred sites.
The Court held these directions binding and rejected the argument that eco-tourism could coexist with sanctity, observing that tourism inevitably brings commerce, construction, and disturbance. Drawing on precedents from Badrinath, Tirumala, and Vaishno Devi, it reaffirmed that restrictions at sacred sites are constitutionally valid.
From Judgment to Guardianship
The 2025 judgment directed strict enforcement of eco-sensitive protections, increased security deployment, removal of illegal structures, and protection of wildlife. It also acknowledged tribal religious practices, ensuring that protection of Jain sanctity did not erase indigenous faith.
Read together, the 2004 Full Bench decision and the 2025 PIL judgment form a single judicial narrative. The first stripped Shikharji of private claims; the second shielded it from public exploitation.
Awaiting the Final Word
Both Digambars and Śwetāmbaras have carried aspects of this conflict to the Supreme Court, where questions of management, worship, and constitutional balance remain pending.
Shikharji has endured because it demands little — no possession, no spectacle, no noise. In protecting the hill, the law has come to resemble the very philosophy that made it sacred: renunciation over control, guardianship over ownership, silence over claim.
And so the hill waits — unchanged — for the final judgment.