Ayodhya Dispute: Can the Ram Janmasthan be considered a deity, asks Supreme Court

The Ayodhya title suit witnessed an interesting debate on Wednesday as the Supreme Court argued whether a place of birth can be considered divine, and if so, why shouldn't a mosque or church be treated similarly for being the abode of divinity.The question was posed by the five-judge bench during the concluding arguments of senior advocate CS Vaidyanathan, who was appearing for Lord Ram. He had argued that the disputed site is considered Ram Janmasthan (birthplace) and the belief of its devotees (who have worshipped at the site for centuries), has made the place itself a deity.Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, and S Abdul Nazeer confronted Vaidyanathan saying, "A mosque is Waqf property and the same is dedicated to the deity (Allah). But...it does not become the divine, although divinity is attached to it. How then is a Hindu deity different? Also, has a Church been treated as a juridical person by law?"Vaidyanathan replied that a deity in Hinduism is immortal. That is why if an idol is placed in a temple and the temple is submerged by floods or has to be razed for road-widening, the idol is removed and placed elsewhere.But in the current case, the birthplace itself is a deity. "Ram Janmabhoomi can't be somewhere else, just like Mecca cannot be shifted somewhere else," he said. He expanded the argument saying that since deity is immortal and permanent, it's divine status cannot be eroded by the erection of a mosque over the site.The bench then invited the Ram Janmbhoomi Punaruddhar Samiti, which has filed an appeal against the Allahabad HC decision, to make submissions. However, the bench found it difficult to follow senior counsel PN Mishra's submissions as he failed to provide extracts of documents and books.Next, the Court called the Hindu Mahasabha to make submissions, but senior counsel VN Sinha confessed to the Court that he didn't expect his turn to come so soon.The Court was left with no choice but to call the lawyer appearing for Gopal Singh Visharad, a Hindu worshipper who was the first to file the suit in 1950 that set the title suit battle in motion.Hardly had senior advocate Ranjit Kumar made the preliminary submissions, the Court faced translation woes as not all the Hindi documents had "good" English translations. CJI Gogoi flagged this concern as Justice Nazeer has problems understanding Hindi sans translation.