DNA Edit: Ayodhya hearing- A land dispute

Drawing a line, the Supreme Court (SC) has made it clear that it is interested in hearing the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid matter strictly as a land dispute.

Forcefully, the SC has sheared off the long history of communal and political violence surrounding the controversial subject. What’s more, when senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan pleaded that the matter be heard daily, the court shot down his request.

The apex court said that more than 700 litigants are desperately awaiting a fair treatment of their cases and that even those cases can be disposed off if the SC accords them an “hour or an hour and a half”every day. Obviously, this has sunk the hearts of the hardcore elements on both the sides of the fence.

In the same breath, this is a trenchant and a resounding declaration that the SC’s raison détre is not to arbitrate over the bygone feuds of this nation, but to ensure that justice is accessible to the lowest common denominator in the present.

Additionally, the SC’s observation tells the nation to not let its passion prevail over reason. The Babri Masjid demolition and its grisly aftermath is writ large on the Indian collective consciousness. It is an episode that defies resolution.

It is capable of appealing, at once, to the fundamentalist, the pacifist as well as the pragmatist. And that is why its potential to create irreconcilable cleavages in India must be resisted at all costs. With elections due in eight states this year, four of them in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, communal tensions can be stoked to fly high tearing our attention away from deeper issues of institutional and governmental failure.

The SC is deserving of all our respect for decisively side-tracking a dispute concerning ownership of 2.77 acres from being the be-all and end-all of our future.