Current Affairs: Ayodhya Verdict - An Analysis of Indian Express Articles - I

[The Ayodhya Verdict passed by the honorable Supreme Court of India is most important among the landmark verdicts it has delivered in the recent past. It is so because the very conflict has an incredibly long history, has created in immense conflict in the present, is a great challenge for Law and has enormous implications for peace and harmony in the immediate and future. Its resolution may have implications on how we interpret law and visualize the nation culturally and civilizationally. Naturally, every literary agency is interpreting the Ayodhya Verdict and creating perspectives around that to influence every single endeavor around it.

In this blog series, I will add my own bit in shaping this civilizational future. I shall analyze every single article that appears in prominent newspapers.

This entire series should be ready with my introductory explanation as the First Read. ]

The Indian Express is one of the prominent News Papers of India. Its history is very interesting and its journey is something that every student and observer of Journalism would have studied in some measure. It has immense milestones in this journey such as the kind of opposition it mounted during Emergency and so on. In the recent, it is among the few newspapers that has Opinion pieces from diverse ideologies, disciplines and political orientations and has avoided collapsing into either pro or anti government to an extent. In the light of this, I pick Indian Express articles on Ayodhya as first in my series of review of Ayodhya articles. In particular I pick 3 articles that summarily help appreciate the overall verdict against which all other analytical articles can be read and understood.

In this first article, the IE tried to explain all the fundamental aspects of Ayodhya Verdict to a beginner. A summary of the points made by the article from the judgement stand-point is worthy of listing and given here. It helps us get a sense of how the SC approached the resolution of the law suite and deliver a verdict.

• Fundamentals
• The SC explains the fundamental principles through which it made justice in this case - Equity, Good Conscience, Applicable Legal Regime and Good Conscience to create ultimate balance for a just society
• The Fundamental Questions that SC asked were
• Who owns the title and who has the possesion
• Did the Outer Courtyard include Ram Chabootara and Seeta ki Rasoi
• Was the mosque built on an ancient Hindu temple
• The SC recognizes the centrality of evidence over faith and belief. At the same time, SC recognizes that the very faith and belief that Ram was born in that place and its historicity. (This distinction is very subtle and most havent grasped it. This is central to the resolution).
• The SC concludes the entire 2.77 acres of land as a single title
• Critical conclusions
• The SC accepts that the structure over which the Masjid was built was non-islamic, was very old and prior to the existence of the mosque
• The SC terms the demolition of Masjid as in egregious violation of the rule of law
• The SC concludes the exclusive occupation and use of the Outer Courtyard by the Hindus
• The SC concludes that the Muslims occupation of the Inner Courtyard was always contested by the Hindus. Hence, the conflict and dispute exists since Babur.
• The SC also considers the 1858 wall separating the two spaces was a British attempt to manage the conflict and hence not a final reality. The site is still one single entity and does not suggest any division of the site. It is this approach by the SC that paved the way for the site to be granted to Ram lulla for greater occupation and use of the land.
• The SC accepted Ram lulla as a juridical entity. The land was awarded to Ram lulla based on higher occupation and usage of the land by Ram lulla

It is an extremely good summary of these points as it also quotes original text from the final verdict.

As a next step it is useful to read this article, where IE summarizes all the questions raised by SC to resolve this dispute and answered by the SC itself. These questions are important and deserve to be succinctly listed. It gives a background to the final judgement and the conclusions mentioned in the previous article.

• How realiable are the accounts of travellers
• The SC has used the travellers accounts with great care and as not concluding evidence. Faith and belief evidenced merely in the travellers accounts have not been used as concluding evidences.
• The Significance of ASI Findings
• On a preponderance of probabilities, the underlying structure seems to be of Hindu nature of 12th century
• The mosque was built over the pre-existing structure and uses the material from previous construction
• Does an ancient Hindu temple exist beneath the Masjid
• The underlying structure seems to belong to 12th Century and of Hindu religious nature
• What transpired between 12th to 16th Century is difficult to conclude
• No concluding evidence that a Hindu temple was destroyed in 16th Century to build Babri Masjid
• The Legal status of Ram Lulla
• A detailed explanation of why Ram Lulla is a justicable legal entity
• Why SC rejected the 2010 Ayodhya Verdict by Allahabad High Court
• Who had the possession of 2.77 acres of land
• The most important reason is despite the existence of the mosque, the Hindu worship of the site has never been restricted as the birth place of Ram, even prior to 1856-57 and all the way goes back to Babur's time
• Evidence of offering of Namaz only commences from 1856-57
• The establishment of Ram Chabootara demonstrates assertion of rights
• The wall erected in 1856-57 by the British does not stop the Hindus from contesting the use of the Inner Courtyard
• There is no exclusive use of the Inner Structure by Muslims at any point in time
• All the Lord Ram related festivals were celebrated at the same place by large crowds visiting the place
• How placing idols under the dome and the demolition deprived Muslims
• It was done in violation of the law
• It denied Muslims a place of worship
• What HC erred in its judgement
• Why was it necessary to give Muslims an alternative piece of land
• Because for atleast a 100 years there was a place of worship however less it was used. Hence an alternate mosque was necessary.

This last question is important. In this article, the IE explained why the SC gave an alternative piece of land of 5 acres to Muslims and which article in the Constitution did it invoke - Article 142. The beauty of Article 142 is that it provides a space for Supreme Court to pass very special orders in order to create a balance of justice when it feels the need even when mere application of law does not need it. In this of course, it cannot obviously violate any existing law or measure. Fundamentally, Article 142 agrees that mere application of law is not sufficient to deliver justice in the immediate and at times extra-ordinary action is necessary. Generally invoked in human rights cases, in this case SC invoked in the Ayodhya case because the SC considered it as a Civil Dispute - any one of the side losing would obviously also lose a space of worship. In order to make a complete justice, SC recognized that atleast since 1858 the mosque is used for prayer however sporadically and continuity in place of worship is to be ensured. It was important for this article to be explained and IE deserves to be appreciated for the same. Most newspapers left out that Nirmohi Akhara being added into the Board of Trustees to manage Ayodhya Temple by SC is also a result of invoking the same Article 142, in order to do complete justice, as Nirmohi Akhara lost the land case but it has been part of managing Ram Chabootara for centuries. Fundamentally, SC is compensating for the case being a Land Dispute and keeping the place of worship outside of the purview of the case.

This summarization and reference to these articles are important as they help to appreciate the overall judgement, the context, the resolution methodology. My own analysis also can be appreciated in the background of these elements.