Please-all high court verdict may please none

The Allahabad high court does not seem to have settled anything. In fact, the uncertain nature of its verdict, especially the obiter dicta relating to a three-way division of the “disputed” site, may pave the way for political posturing and communal tension.

Since the court accepted the legitimacy of the claim that the place where idols of Ram Lalla were surreptitiously installed in 1949 was indeed Lord Ram’s birthplace, the Hindutva brotherhood is unlikely to be suddenly smitten by a feeling of generosity towards Muslims and allow a mosque to be constructed on the portion of land which may be allocated to them.

There are innumerable sites all over India where temples and mosques exist side by side, but the atmosphere in Ayodhya has been vitiated so much by BJP’s and Sangh Parivar’s Ramjanmabhoomi movement that it will be extremely difficult for the two houses of worship belonging to different religions to come up simultaneously.

Such a friendly scene is also difficult to contemplate considering that one of the claims of the saffron hawks has been that mosques should not be built at all in Ayodhya, which should be solely a temple town for Hindus as the Vatican is for Catholics.

The two fundamental errors of the judgment are, first, it ignores the stealthy manner in which Ram Lalla’s idols were smuggled into Babri Masjid in the dead of night by an unknown Hindu outfit in order to claim the site for Hindus. If such a heavy-handed way to claim a piece of property is accepted as legal, all owners will have to live in fear.

Secondly, what the judgment did not take into account was that this 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.

It is open to question, therefore, 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.

What the judges also failed to note was that till the “mysterious” appearance of the idols in 1949, there was no major attempt by any organisation of Hindus to take over the site.

The issue did not even feature in the manifestoes of, first, Jan Sangh and then BJP. The Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, therefore, was a simulated one, driven entirely by cynical political calculations rather than deep religious faith. Moreover, the cynicism of the movement was responsible for the loss of hundreds of innocent lives in communal riots.

If, now, the virtual acceptance of the claims of Hindus by the high court leads to more communal outbreaks, the three judges will have to carry a burden on their conscience.

What the judges have evidently tried to do is to play safe. Realising that a foray into ancient lore or current political gamesmanship will be of little practical use, they decided to accept the fait accompli of the mosque being converted overnight into a temple and then try to make the best of a dubious exercise by giving a part of the land to Muslims and another to another litigant, Nirmohi Akhara.

This happy coexistence of a Hindu god with Muslim worshippers and a third organisation of mere mortals may be in the best traditions of pleasing all. The problem is, it may please none.