Samanth Subramanian: The Ayodhya Ruling Could Be Dangerous
[Samanth Subramanian is a deputy editor at Mint, a New Delhi–based newspaper. His first book, Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast, was published by Penguin in 2010.]
On the last day of September, the Allahabad High Court announced its verdict on a disputed shard of land in the town of Ayodhya, where the Babri Masjid mosque once stood and where some Hindu organizations claim the deity Rama was born. This appeared to be fine news—not least because a verdict materialized at all. The first litigation over the ownership of this land was filed, and dismissed, in 1885. More suits were filed in 1950, 1959, 1961, and 1989. One suit was dismissed; the other four were combined and presented to the Allahabad High Court in 1989. By any measure, it was about time a judgment appeared.
It was promising, too, that India seemed to hold its breath for a considered judicial decision. Most of the defining moments in the history of these 27 hectares have involved provocative rhetoric, religious extremism, and acts of brazen illegality. In 1949, a 60-strong mob of Hindu zealots smuggled idols into the mosque; they were allowed to remain, one district administrator wrote at the time, because removing them “must lead to a conflagration.” Forty years later, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, L. K. Advani, undertook a whistle-stop tour to make clear his party’s determination to build a temple in place of the Babri Masjid. Most infamously, in 1992, as Advani and other party officials watched, a horde with hammers and chisels methodically dismantled the dome of the 460-year-old mosque, igniting religious riots that claimed about 1,500 lives....
The court’s expectation of immediate conflict suggests an unwarranted distrust of the Indian populace, and a belief that the riots in 1992—or in 2002 in Gujarat—were spontaneous uprisings instead of politically manipulated acts of violence. But even had India been teetering on the brink of rioting, it was for the state to keep the peace, and for the court to first protect the plaintiffs’ legal rights. In trying to soothe rather than adjudicate, the judges may have had noble intentions, but they had to make compromises....
Read entire article at Newsweek
On the last day of September, the Allahabad High Court announced its verdict on a disputed shard of land in the town of Ayodhya, where the Babri Masjid mosque once stood and where some Hindu organizations claim the deity Rama was born. This appeared to be fine news—not least because a verdict materialized at all. The first litigation over the ownership of this land was filed, and dismissed, in 1885. More suits were filed in 1950, 1959, 1961, and 1989. One suit was dismissed; the other four were combined and presented to the Allahabad High Court in 1989. By any measure, it was about time a judgment appeared.
It was promising, too, that India seemed to hold its breath for a considered judicial decision. Most of the defining moments in the history of these 27 hectares have involved provocative rhetoric, religious extremism, and acts of brazen illegality. In 1949, a 60-strong mob of Hindu zealots smuggled idols into the mosque; they were allowed to remain, one district administrator wrote at the time, because removing them “must lead to a conflagration.” Forty years later, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, L. K. Advani, undertook a whistle-stop tour to make clear his party’s determination to build a temple in place of the Babri Masjid. Most infamously, in 1992, as Advani and other party officials watched, a horde with hammers and chisels methodically dismantled the dome of the 460-year-old mosque, igniting religious riots that claimed about 1,500 lives....
The court’s expectation of immediate conflict suggests an unwarranted distrust of the Indian populace, and a belief that the riots in 1992—or in 2002 in Gujarat—were spontaneous uprisings instead of politically manipulated acts of violence. But even had India been teetering on the brink of rioting, it was for the state to keep the peace, and for the court to first protect the plaintiffs’ legal rights. In trying to soothe rather than adjudicate, the judges may have had noble intentions, but they had to make compromises....