English media on babri masjid title case decision - by mediacell.jih@gmail.com

English media on babri masjid title case decision

by mediacell.jih@gmail.com

The reliance of the Allahabad high court on the “faith and belief of Hindus”—that Lord Rama was born in the “area covered under the central dome of the disputed structure”—in trifurcating the Ayodhya title suit, has come in for sharp criticism across the English media.
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The Hindu‘s deputy editor, Siddharth Varadarajan:

“The legal and political system in India stood silent witness to the crime of trespass, vandalism and expropriation [of the Babri masjid]. Eighteen years later, the country has compounded that sin by legitimising the “faith” and “belief” of those who took the law into their own hands.
“The “faith and belief” that the court speaks about today acquired salience only after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a political campaign in the 1980s to “liberate” the “janmasthan.”
“Collectives in India have faith in all sorts of things but “faith” cannot become the arbiter of what is right and wrong in law. Nor can the righting of supposed historical wrongs become the basis for dispensing justice today.”

Former Delhi High Court judge Justice R.S. Sodhi in The Telegraph:

“I think this judgment is useless. It is a statuesque judgment. The court has gone into issues of belief, which it should not have. It has actually decided nothing.”

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan in The Telegraph:

“It is an absurd judgment. No legal right can be declared on the basis of people’s faith. They (the three judges) have decided on all kinds of irrelevant and emotional issues. There is no legal basis to the ruling that the disputed land should be divided into three parts.”

Jamia Milia Professor, Mukul Kesavan, in The Telegraph:

“The court also seemed to endorse the argument from faith in a way that is certain to be controversial. Both decisions, as they stand, might set precedents that could have worrying consequences for pluralism and the freedom of religious belief and practice, especially for disputes between a religious minority and a religious majority.”

Historian Irfan Habib in The Times of India:

“The compromise judgment has come at the cost of history and facts. It is improper (for the court) to accept the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) report on the historical fact. Weight has been given to belief. One should be careful in historical facts.”

The columnist Amulya Ganguli in DNA:

“The claim was based purely on a myth. Lord Ram is not a historical figure. He is a deity in the eyes of only a section of Hindus. All Hindus do not regard him with reverence. In south India, for instance, Ravan, another mythical figure who is Ram’s adversary, is more popular. In Bengal, Michael Madhusudan Dutt‘s Meghnad Badh Kavya is a literary classic extolling one of Ravan’s sons at Ram’s expense.
“Whether a plot of land can be legally awarded to a community on the basis of mere religious belief. The answer will also have to include the fact that claims on behalf of Hindus are being advanced by fundamentalists, not liberals. In fact, the latter regard the movement, which was carried on with two others asserting similar rights on two mosques in Varanasi and Mathura, as a distortion of Hinduism.”

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan in The Hindu:

“If this panchayati solution is to be endured, the degree of Muslim entitlement should have been left intact so that the site belonged to them. The destruction of the masjid was akin to the demolition of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, and people would say that India’s secular justice was majoritarian in nature without lending dignity to India’s minority.”

Constitutional expert and senior Supreme Court advocate P.P. Rao in The New Indian Express:

“It is more like a panchayat justice dividing the disputed property among the three contenders. And it is not clear how after dismissing the suit of the Sunni wakf board, one-third of the property is given to Muslims.”

Former Supreme Court chief justice A.H. Ahmadi in The Indian Express:

“There is no running away from the centrality of answering who has the title. I am not sure on what basis the Sunni waqf suit has been time-barred. But if the title is not theirs, how can one-third be a masjid now, and if the title is theirs, how can two-thirds be divided? There certainly can be a compromise but that should have happened after the verdict. The verdict should not appear like a decision of a panchayat foisted forcibly on all parties.”

Ayodhya verdict - Manoj Mitta - The Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/Ayodhya-verdict/articleshow/6674414.cms

Ayodhya verdict

Manoj Mitta, TNN, Oct 3, 2010, 12.41am IST

Three days after a Ram idol was placed under the Babri Masjid's central dome, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru shot off a letter to UP chief minister G B Pant directing that the mischief be undone. His reason: "A dangerous example is being set there, which will have bad consequences."

But Nehru's concerns were overridden by the local administrator, Faizabad's deputy commissioner K K Nayar. Even as he acknowledged that the installation of the idols was "an illegal act", Nayar refused to remove them from the mosque. His reasoning was that "the depth of feeling behind the movement ... should not be underestimated."

It was against the backdrop of this battle between secular and sectarian views that the first of the four title suits was filed on January 16, 1950. In allowing the idols to remain where they were placed on December 23, 1949, and in placing religious sentiment above the rule of law, the Allahabad high court verdict 60 years later seems to have preferred Nayar's position to that of Nehru.

Though thousands of pages in this verdict have been devoted to quotes from Hindu scriptures, it made little effort to examine the illegality of the 1949 act. The mischief played with the idols, in a bid to convert a masjid into a mandir, was central to the adjudication of the title suits.

Yet, the three judges on the bench, despite delivering separate judgments, adopted the common approach of treating the forcible installation of idols as a fait accompli. They did not dare question its legality or validity. This, despite the fact that the bench had, in May 2009, specially called for and placed on record the original file of the district administration that dealt with the 1949 episode.

The verdict could have been radically different had the judges mustered the courage to analyse this crucial issue. Advocate Anupam Gupta, who grilled an array of leaders on the Babri Masjid demolition before the Liberhan Commission, told TOI: "Since the title suits had derived from the installation of idols, the judges would have had to acknowledge that the Hindu claim was based on a patent illegality and that nothing said about the history of the Hindu belief prior to 1949 would have cured this illegality."

In its anxiety to be pragmatic or conciliatory, the high court also pulled its punches on the demolition of the mosque in 1992 although it was a violent interference with the subject of the title suits. While it dwelt extensively on the Hindu "bent of mind" in the context of the belief about the exact location of Ram's birthplace, the high court did not attempt any such analysis of the mentality that propelled the demolition.

As a result, in a major blow to secularism, the high court allowed the vandals of 1992 to turn into the victors of 2010. This has made a mockery of the Supreme Court's 1994 declaration while reviving the Ayodhya title suits after a two-year limbo: "The Hindu community must bear the cross on its chest, for the misdeed of the miscreants reasonably suspected to belong to their religious fold."

Far from bearing the cross for the demolition, Hindu groups seem to have intimidated the high court into coming up with a solution that provides much cause for concern to Muslims and believers of secularism. By accepting faith as the determining factor for allotting the area under the central dome to Hindus, the system has shown no remorse to the affected community.

The high court's refusal to let the illegality of the 1949 and 1992 events have a bearing on the title suits will mean that there can be no closure to the Ayodhya dispute any time soon. Its partition scheme has ended up vindicating, however unwittingly, those very forces that had so brazenly undermined India's commitment to secularism. As jurist Tahir Mahmood puts it, "What had begun as a title suit ended up with a decree of partition. Religious beliefs and sentiments had triumphed over historical facts and legal precepts. The judicial anxiety reflected in the judgment is understandable but its legal tenability is not beyond reproach."

The consolation is that the verdict could have been worse if the judgment delivered by Justice D V Sharma, awarding the entire disputed site of 2.7 acres to Hindus, did not turn out to be a minority view on the bench. Sharma's judgment is an unabashed celebration of the fundamentalist Hindu perspective on the Babri Masjid.

The Ayodhya verdict actually fits into a pattern displayed by the Indian judiciary to suppress inconvenient facts. The Allahabad high court's failure to examine the implications of the 1949 and 1992 events is reminiscent of an infamous omission by the Supreme Court in its much touted judgment upholding Hindutva.

This ideology of Hindu hegemony received judicial approval because the Supreme Court, while equating Hindutva with the liberal ethos of Hinduism, steered clear of the fact that the term had been coined by Veer Savarkar to suggest that India belonged only to those for whom it is both birthplace and sacred land.

Thanks to this vital omission, the BJP derived much legitimacy from the SC verdict on Hindutva. It remains to be seen how, despite the restraint displayed by it for the time being, the BJP will politically leverage the verdict in the Ayodhya case. It is no coincidence that Nayar who defied Nehru's order to remove the idol from the Babri Masjid went on to become an MP of Jan Sangh, forerunner of the BJP.

The verdict on Ayodhya: a historian's perspective By Romila Thapar - The Hindu

 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article807232.ece

Opinion » Op-Ed

October 2, 2010

The verdict on Ayodhya: a historian's perspective

Romila Thapar

 

It has annulled respect for history and seeks to replace it with religious faith.

The verdict is a political judgment and reflects a decision which could as well have been taken by the state years ago. Its focus is on the possession of land and the building a new temple to replace the destroyed mosque. The problem was entangled in contemporary politics involving religious identities but also claimed to be based on historical evidence. This latter aspect has been invoked but subsequently set aside in the judgment.

The court has declared that a particular spot is where a divine or semi-divine person was born and where a new temple is to be built to commemorate the birth. This is in response to an appeal by Hindu faith and belief. Given the absence of evidence in support of the claim, such a verdict is not what one expects from a court of law. Hindus deeply revere Rama as a deity but can this support a legal decision on claims to a birth-place, possession of land and the deliberate destruction of a major historical monument to assist in acquiring the land?

The verdict claims that there was a temple of the 12th Century AD at the site which was destroyed to build the mosque — hence the legitimacy of building a new temple.

The excavations of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and its readings have been fully accepted even though these have been strongly disputed by other archaeologists and historians. Since this is a matter of professional expertise on which there was a sharp difference of opinion the categorical acceptance of the one point of view, and that too in a simplistic manner, does little to build confidence in the verdict. One judge stated that he did not delve into the historical aspect since he was not a historian but went to say that history and archaeology were not absolutely essential to decide these suits! Yet what are at issue are the historicity of the claims and the historical structures of the past one millennium.

A mosque built almost 500 years ago and which was part of our cultural heritage was destroyed wilfully by a mob urged on by a political leadership. There is no mention in the summary of the verdict that this act of wanton destruction, and a crime against our heritage, should be condemned. The new temple will have its sanctum — the presumed birthplace of Rama — in the area of the debris of the mosque. Whereas the destruction of the supposed temple is condemned and becomes the justification for building a new temple, the destruction of the mosque is not, perhaps by placing it conveniently outside the purview of the case.

Has created a precedent

The verdict has created a precedent in the court of law that land can be claimed by declaring it to be the birthplace of a divine or semi-divine being worshipped by a group that defines itself as a community. There will now be many such janmasthans wherever appropriate property can be found or a required dispute manufactured. Since the deliberate destruction of historical monuments has not been condemned what is to stop people from continuing to destroy others? The legislation of 1993 against changing the status of places of worship has been, as we have seen in recent years, quite ineffective.

What happened in history, happened. It cannot be changed. But we can learn to understand what happened in its fuller context and strive to look at it on the basis of reliable evidence. We cannot change the past to justify the politics of the present. The verdict has annulled respect for history and seeks to replace history with religious faith. True reconciliation can only come when there is confidence that the law in this country bases itself not just on faith and belief, but on evidence.

(Romila Thapar is a distinguished historian of Early India.)

Keywords: Ayodhya verdict

Ayodhya Verdict - Aditi Phadnis: Ayodhya - Lest we forget

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/aditi-phadnis-ayodhya-lest-we-forget/409891/

Aditi Phadnis: Ayodhya - Lest we forget

Though religion is no longer the hot topic, the government should be on its guard

Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi October 02, 2010, 0:19 IST

On September 23, 24 and 25, 1992, P V Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, called a meeting with editors of several national newspapers and magazines. The issue was: what should be done with Ayodhya? Most of them came out of the conference confused and disturbed. They wondered if the prime minister’s idea of a solution to the Ayodhya tangle was to hand over the disputed structure to the Hindus.

Rao was a worried man. Karsewaks were massing in Ayodhya. Earlier in the week, at a meeting with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders, he is believed to have said: “Mandir banega aur bhavya mandir banega (the temple will be built and it will be a grand one).” And as an afterthought, Rao added: “Lekin masjid hatana theek nahin hai (but it may not be proper to move the mosque).”

Rao had set up an Ayodhya cell in his office, headed by Naresh Chandra. In an interview to this reporter in October 1992, Chandra was strongly critical of the attempts made by a team of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professors to prove historically that Ram was not born in Ayodhya. “Progressive historians (like Romila Thapar, S Gopal and others) are more keen to present their modern, secular credentials.They want to sound superior and informed, but we find their writings opinionated and argumentative.”

He added: “We would be rejecting history if we were to say that for the last 400 years (since Mir Baqi, a Shia from Iran, built a mosque at the disputed site), Hindus and Muslims have been living happily and sharing the same building for puja and namaz. There has obviously been a temple here. Whether it belonged to Ram or someone else, we don’t know because there isn’t enough data. But the fact is there have been bitter conflicts over this place, and we cannot brush this aside, as the JNU professors have done.”


The matter came to a head within two months, before Rao’s project could be realised. On December 6 that year, to India’s eternal shame, the government was unable to protect India’s secularism and the “disputed structure” was brought down by mobs while the matter was still being heard by the courts. Recalling that event, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was uncharacteristically cutting about L K Advani’s role. “Unlike the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, I will not be found weeping in a corner while hoodlums tear down a centuries-old mosque,” he commented witheringly last year.


This time around, when the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has given its verdict, the law-and-order management has been exemplary. Not only have there been no incidents, there is a conspicuous build-up of security forces, and “miscreants” have been punished promptly (like the two boys from Kollam, Kerala who were found to have sent incendiary text messages). There is little patience with communal forces, although a Congress government is in power again and the man who was finance minister then is prime minister now.


So what has changed between 1992 and 2010?


Obviously that was a different time, a different atmosphere. Kalyan Singh, who was chief minister at the time of the demolition, visited Ayodhya on September 16, days before the judgment. Singh tried to sound as he did in 1992: “We will not sit quietly in case the judgment goes against the Hindu claim to the disputed site but political parties must stay away from this issue,” he said at a public meeting. The 50 people who attended the meeting heard him disinterestedly and dispersed five minutes later.


The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has realised that even when in power, there are some things that a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government cannot do. On the other hand, the Gujarat government has been unapologetic about pulling the shutters down on the VHP’s business dealings. So, one major stream of Hindu mobilisation has simply been disempowered.


But if we agree that no communal incident in India is ever spontaneous, then it is also true that administrative preparedness can prevent such incidents. In this context, even the Congress organisation concedes that the credit must go to the Uttar Pradesh government headed by Mayawati. Massive police and paramilitary presence was ensured by the UP administration.


In 1992, every jai Shri Ram was captured by TV and radio, anywhere it was uttered. In 2010, when lawyers were addressing the press and claiming credit for “winning” the case, some cries of jai Shri Ram were simply muted by TV channels.


Reactions to the demolition came in March 1993, in the shape of simultaneous bomb blasts all over Mumbai. But between 1993 and 2010, the Shiv Sena has split; and post 23/11, it is a different Mumbai.


So what does it all mean? The biggest difference between 1992 and 2010 is: India has lost the appetite to shed blood over religion. It stands to reason. Hindus have become more religious. But many religious leaders — well-known ones, not some leading shady sect — are facing criminal charges ranging from sodomy to murder. Funding to religious institutions, including madarassas, is under scrutiny,


However, Sun Tsu in the Art of War sounds a warning: Do not press a desperate foe too hard. Whoever the winner or loser in Ayodhya, the government needs to remember this.

Like Jury selection, Judges for Babri Case should be chosen by the litigants on Supreme Court appeal - By Ghulam Muhammed

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Like Jury selection, Judges for Babri Case should be chosen by the litigants on Supreme Court appeal

Ayodhya Verdict as a piece of legal document is held by lawyers and judges as so much flawed when it is tested on the standards of Constitutional fundamentals. The logic and reasoning of all 3 judges smack of extra-legal consideration impacting on their judgments.

Since judges are appointed by State, which is proved to be politically motivated on one side or other, a selection method should be adopted at the next Apex level hearing of the appeal to be filed by the both litigants who should have a stake in ensuring no bias, no prejudice, no politics, no personal agenda is attributed to the selected judges. Both litigants should have the right to veto the candidature of any judge appearing before a specially paneled ‘Selection Committee’ to ensure that case should proceed with mutual trust and confidence in the judiciary. A separate process should be initiated by the Chief Justice of India, to test the bona fides of the judges on their commitment to the Constitution of India, during their past record of delivering judgments.

Since Babri Masjid/ Ram Janambhoomi, title suit is to be considered entirely on the basis of hard facts and documentation, Chief Justice should caution selected judges against inserting extra legal/ philosophical/ ideological/ religious opinions in their judgment.

All such precautions will have to be made at appeal to Supreme Court level, to ensure that such hotchpotch potpourri as presented by Allahabad High Court on Ayodhya, is not coming forth to damage the reputation of Indian Judiciary and drag Indian justice to directions ultra vires of Indian constitution.

Let India not become the laughing stock of the world that is so keenly watching, how India sizes up to the challenges of the modern world.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>