Poets, writers join chorus of refrain on Ayodhya verdict

Even as the Supreme Court deferred the Babri Masjid verdict by a week, poets, writers and religious leaders gathered to support the ‘refrain’ call given by other minority leaders at a press meet. The meet was organised by Urdu Markaz, an organisation promoting Urdu and its writers, on Wednesday evening at Imamwada in Bhendi Bazar.

The writers called for “no celebration or no mourning”, and backed the court’s stance. “In a way, it’s good that it got deferred for a week.  The court did a good thing of putting this off to a future date,” said Hassan Kamal, a poet who chaired the briefing. The meet was attended by Markaz members Prof Aisha Shaikh, Azra khan, Shahzad Siddiqui, Fayy-az Ahmed Faizi, Haroon Afro-ze, Ram Puniyani, Zubair Az-mi and Maulana Mustaqeen.

“The issue has been hijacking a lot of things for years. It is good that there will soon be some decision on it,” said Kamal. Calling Ayodhya-Babri not just a religious but also a political issue, the writers acknowledged that the problem was a result of the passiveness shown by the liberals in India.

“Until 1992 we kept ourselves busy with issues like poverty, unemployment, and education. When this happened we realised that the threat is bigger and only then we started to get involved in it,” said Ram Puniyani, writer and social activist.