DNA Edit: Treating Past Wounds

On Tuesday, a day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid, the Supreme Court (SC) took up the seemingly interminable Ayodhya temple dispute and put it up for hearing in February 2018.

Once again, a matter that has animated the Indian political scenario for over two decades has been deferred, partly due to the high number of cases that have piled up before the apex court. However, there is still a silver-lining to the dark cloud. After a wait of 25 years, the SC in February would start hearing the matter and hopefully bring the matter to a reasonable, cordial and acceptable closure.

While the history behind the masjid and the temple is an extremely complicated one, it is lost on no one that a long legacy of appeasement and pseudo-secularism under the Congress rule has corrupted the electoral atmosphere in India. To this day, pockets of the Muslim community are selectively pandered to for political benefits by a slew of political parties.

The unfair treatment doled out to Muslim women, via the Shah Bano judgment, under the Rajiv Gandhi government, is a testament to India’s discriminatory political history. in the mid-80s, Rajiv Gandhi’s government went to the extent of interfering with the wisdom of the SC just to ensure that Muslim hardliners and maulvis were placated, even if this placation was to come at the cost of fair treatment for Muslim women.

It is only recently that the tide has turned. Unlike Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not meddled with the mandate of the SC, which in its wisdom saw fit to ban the ominous practice of Triple Talaq from this country.

Ironically, intellectual and academic circles — once the judgment was released — have acted as though the cat has got their tongue. Not many among them have spoken up against the custom for fear of offending hardline Muslim sentiments. It is not this class alone that has been complicit in accepting the egregious customs of this community.

Even the political class has played along with Muslim extremists, in hopes that they would be able to sway large voter blocks in their favour. At the altar of such electoral trysts, individual liberty is sacrificed. That, thankfully, is not the case with the Modi government.

From the very beginning, the BJP has steered away from the policy of appeasement and has taken hard decisions that no other political party of some standing would venture taking. Perhaps, the party’s inclination to take hard and groundbreaking decisions is one reason why the BJP continues to find support from the people of India. The present government has exhibited a number of times that it does not kowtow to the hoary tradition of pseudo-secularism in India and continues to press ahead on issues that represent the truest wishes and desires of millions of Indians. For far too long, the Babri Masjid dispute has been swept under the carpet for fear of alienating a certain class of voters. With the Supreme Court adjudicating the matter, it will, sooner rather than later, find a closure.