Instead, the apex court has found the order for a three-way division of the disputed site to be “strange and surprising” since this had not been “prayed for by any of the parties”. To many, including jurists, the proposed trifurcation between Hindus, Muslims and a third litigant, the Nirmohi Akhara, by the high court suggested an easy way out of a complex problem. A few carping critics described it, therefore, as being worthy of a wishy-washy panchayat order. There was also little possibility of such an arrangement being implemented in real life even if the earlier aggression of outfits like the VHP and the Babri Masjid action committee has become muted of late.

However, even more weird than the parcelling out of the plot of land was the high court’s uncritical acceptance of the claim of the Hindu fundamentalists that Lord Ram was born at the exact place where the Babri Masjid was built in 1528. Since Ram is not a historical figure, it is open to question whether his putative birthplace can be legally awarded to a community on the basis of a religious belief. Equally odd was the absence of any reference in the high court judgment to the sudden appearance of the Ram Lalla idols in the disputed site in 1949, which enabled the Hindu fundamentalists to claim the place as their own.

It has also to be remembered that although the legend about the mosque having been built on the site of a demolished temple was known in the region, it did not have much currency outside of Uttar Pradesh before the saffron brotherhood made it a central part of its political agenda in the mid-1980s and the BJP accepted it in 1989. It doesn’t take much political perspicacity to guess that this sudden embracement of a pseudo-religious thesis was not unrelated to the fact of the BJP winning a mere two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984. Its expectation evidently was – and it proved right – that the use of Hindu religious sentiments will boost its political prospects.

While the high court delved into history and mythology for its “strange and surprising” diktat, it had no time for the cynical exploitation of religious sentiments by a right-wing group, which led to a direct assault on the place of worship of a minority community in 1992 even if it was under lock and key on the basis of an administrative order. Hundreds of lives were lost in the communal riots which followed the demolition.

There is little doubt, therefore, that the time has come for a more sensible judicial appraisal of a portentous event, which was resurrected in the mid-1980s, reached its apogee in the Nineties as the BJP rode to power at the centre by utilizing its communal potential, and then began to fade away as the ordinary people realized that they had been hoodwinked by power-hungry politicians pretending to be Hindu patriots. In an earlier verdict, the Supreme Court had described the disturbances in the wake of the demolition as a “passing storm”. Subsequent events have proved the correctness of that assessment.

But even if the political implications of the event have played themselves out over the last two decades, the legal side remains unsettled. Some clarity can be expected when the Supreme Court gives its judgment. It will also be in all probability the final chapter because, by then, the passions which led to and followed the demolition would have subsided. Even when the high court gave its verdict last year, there was no sign that the kind of feelings which were uppermost in the minds of both the communities in the Eighties and Nineties meant anything at all to them at present. In all likelihood, this trend will continue as even the BJP is distancing itself from the kind of propaganda in which it indulged earlier, recalling Golwalkar and Savarkar’s characterization of the minorities as unpatriotic aliens.

Even then, it should not be forgotten that the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation was marked not only by cynicism, but also medievalism. No one could have imagined at the time of independence that places of worship would be targeted by a political group in the 20th and 21st centuries. Not only was the Babri Masjid demolished, churches were systematically attacked by saffronites in Orissa in 2008. Although the Supreme Court will deal exclusively with the Ayodhya dispute, its judgment will have a wider ambit. (IPA Service)