In most cases, "temporary" can mean days, weeks, even months. But for one district of Kerala, a state in southern India, it meant a quarter-century.
Now, 25 years after the authorities in the Kottayam district of Kerala issued a temporary order prohibiting the staging of the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar," which was upheld by the state government, India's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the show can go on.
An adaptation of the enormously successful Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical was to have been performed twice in two days in 1990 by students at Corpus Christi High School of Kottayam. But the second performance was halted - minutes before the curtain was to go up, according to a lawyer handling the case - under a temporary ban ordered by the district administration on the grounds that allowing it could hurt religious feelings and lead to a breach of peace.