A missed opportunity for resolving the Ayodhya tangle
Published on: 5 August 2019, 06:54 am
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]T the much-awaited hearing on Friday, August 2, 2019, of the appeals against the September 30, 2010 judgement of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title suit, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi directed that daily hearing of the cases would begin on August 6, 2019 as the mediation process by the Supreme Court-appointed three-member committee had not yielded any solution.
The report of the mediation committee, headed by retired Supreme Court judge F M I Kalifulla, with Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and advocate Sriram Panchu as its other members, had been perused by the five-member Constitution bench, the CJI said.
Since the apex court had recommended the mediation process and appointed the three-member committee in March 2019, hopes had naturally arisen that some light would be seen at the end of this particular tunnel. After all, the Ayodhya case has continued to be a factor in the political developments of our country for several decades. The religious sentiments of a great many Indian citizens, who are presented with the dream of a grand temple to Sri Ram at his birthplace, are used to bringing Ayodhya centre stage in every election season.
The Ram Janmabhoomi where such a temple is visualized, and where the Babri Masjid was demolished by a large mob of kar-sevaks on December 6, 1992, is at the heart of the dispute in the title suit, and its present status as a vast barricaded area of rubble among excavated trenches represents in many ways, the embattled state of Indian democracy.
Characters and Chronology: The akharas
The oldest litigants in the title suit are the Nirmohi Akhara. According to the traditional division of worship and rights among the akharas protecting the Hindu faith, Mahant Raghubar Das of the Nirmohi Akhara, filed a suit in 1885, asking for land to build a temple. The other two akharas having rights in Ayodhya are the Digambari Akharaand the Nirvani Akhara. Under this division of rights among the akharas,the Nirmohi Akharahas rights over the Ram Chabutara, Sita Rasoi, Bhandar Griha and Santi Nivasat the Ram Janmabhoomi, and were in fact, in possession of these places till 1982.
The original suit of the Nirmohi Akhara, initially dismissed by the then Faizabad magistrate on the ground that the demolition of a Ram temple in 1528 was a grievance that was now too late to remedy, was revived in 1950 after a serious development. It involved the clandestine placing of the idols of Ram Lalla and his brothers, Bharat, Lakshman and Shatrughan, which were smuggled into the Babri Masjid and installed inside on the intervening night of December 22-23, 1949 by a group of persons led by Baba Abhiramdas, a sadhu from Bihar.