Ayodhya: A Solomonic Judgment, Not Quite Closure

The Supreme Court bench made a series of interesting observations before it delivered its verdict. It held the installation of idols in 1949 inside the former Babri Masjid was illegal. It held the demolition of the former Babri Masjid in 1992 as unlawful. Yet it granted the disputed site to the Hindu community to build a temple on the disputed 2.77 acres of debris strewn land. Now factor this with the sixty-seven acres acquired by the UP government around the hitherto disputed site. Clearly the path has been cleared for the building of a grand temple and a theme park dedicated to further deifying King Rama of Ayodhya. 

The unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court bench has been generally applauded by most otherwise argumentative Indians as an act of reconciliation and even an instance of Solomonic wisdom. However, several top Muslim leaders have expressed unhappiness with the Supreme Court’s experiment with Solomonism. They say they defer to it but are not happy with it. Asaduddin Owaisi pithily said in reaction: “The Supreme Court is supreme, but the Supreme Court is not infallible”.

Although King Solomon used the share-the-baby test to determine the identity of the biological mother, Solomonic judgments are generally understood as compromise judgments that reject the winner-take-all approach that characterizes most modern common law adjudications. But sometimes Solomonic judgments may prioritize pleasing and displeasing the litigating parties in varying degrees over deciding disputes in strict accordance with the relevant law. Clearly the Supreme Court has preferred Solomonism over the law. It may have sewn up the wound, but the scar will remain. It will be in our history books.

Several top Muslim leaders have expressed unhappiness with the Supreme Court’s experiment with Solomonism. They say they defer to it but are not happy with it.

All through the one hundred and sixty-four years of torturous transit through our courts, Muslims did not agree to share even the chabutara with the Hindus as part of a grand compromise. They wanted all and all they got was five acres of land at some other place in Ayodhya. Even if a mosque is built there, I don’t think it will be called the Babri Masjid. There can be little denying that like the Shahi Idgah at Mathura or the Gyanvapi Masjid in Banaras, the Babri Masjid was a symbol of Muslim rule. That moment in history is long gone. But does destruction of age-old buildings and monuments reverse history? Realizing this LK Advani who led the last charge on the Babri Masjid called it an “ocular distortion”. Even the allegedly more liberal Atal Behari Vajpayee called it a “kalank”. That is now gone. But our history has been writ and imprinted on our minds. But that is not the history we must be worried about. A new history is being written. King Rama has now legally metamorphosed from an article of faith to a legal entity. The judgment allots the site to the infant Ram Lalla Virajman. It must be clarified that Ram Lalla Virajman is not a living person but a notion.

Advani is still the popular villain of the liberal set because he set off on his Rath Yatra wanting a Ram Mandir built in Ayodhya. But that demand was a much older one. The British first allowed Hindus to offer worship at the mosque in 1857, soon after the events that year to restore Bahadur Shah as truly the emperor. One Abhirama Das first placed the idols inside the mosque premises in December 1949. It is also pertinent to mention that the DM of Faizabad, KKK Nayar ICS did not have the idols removed despite being explicitly ordered by the Chief Secretary, Bhagwan Sahay ICS, and the IGP BN Lahiri IP. KKK Nayar was rewarded for his exertions by getting elected as the Jana Sangh MP from nearby Bahraich. Lets also not forget that it was in Rajiv Gandhi’s time that the court-ordered lock on the purported “Janmabhoomi” was broken, at Arun Nehru’s behest, with the Congress even performing “Shilanyas”. There is no dispute that the claim has been a historical one and even in 1947, an attempt was made to seize the property.  The problem was allowed to fester because it suited all parties. It was inflamed by intemperate language by both sides to the dispute. 

SC may have sewn up the wound, but the scar will remain. It will be in our history books.

I recall Syed Shahabuddin once demanding proof that Rama ever existed? Shahabuddin a former IFS officer who served as India’s ambassador to Algeria was Vajpayee’s handpicked selection for an educated Muslim face in politics. But he just became the English speaking face of Muslim bigotry. It was against this backdrop that the BJP upped the ante and conceived of the Rath Yatra. It was the brainchild of Pramod Mahajan, Narendra Modi and Venkaiah Naidu, all Advani’s blue-eyed boys. The “Rath” itself was a garish and stupid looking contraption slung over a DCM Toyota truck. I rode with Advani on the “Rath” from Indore to Ratlam. It was a horribly uncomfortable journey. A truck chassis is not optimized for comfort but to take a load, besides the road was pockmarked. Advani showing me the western-style toilet provided by his chelas and commented that he defied anyone to sit on it when the Rath was moving. But the Rath was carrying the burden of history, and all along people thronged to greet Advani astride it. It took the BJP from two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to eighty-five in 1989. There was no looking back for the RSS from then. But when Lalu Yadav, then the CM of Bihar, stopped the tamasha in Samasthipur and arrested Advani, he rightly said: “DCM Toyota tha, koi uran khatola nahi!”

But the Rath has not stopped rolling. The avatar from Mathura now beckons for recognition. Why should the Shiva worshippers settle for less? Rulers such as Aurangazeb, the last great Moghul, and even democratically elected Indira Gandhi who tried to impose their beliefs and will by being authoritarian were felled by regional uprisings and popular rejection. This then is the great lesson of history. India can only be governed and kept together by the persuasive use of authority and not by the imposition of will. The elected government can govern not just with the support of a majority in parliament but by also catering to the aspirations and demands of the many groups of the colorful mosaic that India is. We also have a tradition where some nationalities enslaved others. Just as India is a nation of diverse people, it is a nation of diverse victimizations. What the founding fathers sought to enshrine in our Constitution is to ensure that the march of victimization is halted once and for all. Solomonic judgments don’t help in that.