Several prominent personalities have sought for a review of the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict of November 9, stating that it had “caused widespread concern among all those who have the interests of justice and fairness at heart”.
Among those who have signed the request are Maya Krishna Rao, Antara Dev Sen, Astad Daboo, Githa Hariharan, Irfan Habib, Jayati Ghosh, Mihir Bhattacharya, Prabhat Patnaik, Vivan Sundaram, Valay Singh, Vishwamohan Jha among others, it was reported by The Wire.
According to the verdict, the disputed site in Ayodhya will go to a trust for the setting up of a temple, which is to be done through the Central government. The Sunni Waqf Board will get five-acre land for construction of a mosque in an alternate and “prominent” place. The court also mentioned that the demolition of the mosque in 1992 was unlawful, and the idols placed in 1949 was also done illegally.
According to the statement of the signatories, “the first source of concern is that the Court’s has delivered a judgement which has been made possible only by the criminal destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, which the Court itself has described as an ‘unlawful act’”.
It also says that “No speculations over archaeological excavations on the site, on which the Court has so much relied, would have been possible without the previous destruction of the Masjid. Nor would it have been as easy for the Court to hand over the site to the Hindu side if the Masjid had still stood.”
The statement further says that “the Court’s treatment of both archaeology and history seems to have been rather cavalier and one-sided”. The signatories have said that there is no iota of proof “for the Court’s assumption that Muslims had ceased to pray in the Masjid in Mughal and Nawabi times. Nor is there any proof that Hindus anywhere before very late times believed that Lord Rama was born precisely at the site of Babri Masjid, which should, of course, not be confused with the belief that he was born in Ayodhya. Remarkably, the Court glosses over Tulsidas’s silence on the site of his birth.”
The statement also raises concern about the apex court’s assigning the Centre the task of trust for the Ram temple to be built as they say it implies, “that in the Court’s view it is the Government’s duty to cater to Hindu religious interests. This surely is hardly in consonance with the supposed secular nature of our state.”
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