Ayodhya

Babri Masjid

mosque

Hindu

Allahabad High Court

Mahatma Gandhi

Rajmohan Gandhi

Mathura

The delivery of justice in the panchayats is determined by an ethics of reconciliation more than just considering evidenceThe recent Supreme Court verdict on thecase has baffled many. Its decision to allow a temple for Rama to be built on the site of the demolishedand to offer an alternate site for the rebuilding the latter seems not to flow from the logic of its own argumentation. The Supreme Court judgement recognizes the lack of archaeological evidence to prove a temple had existed previously on the site of the Babri Masjid, that thewas “desecrated by installation ofidols” in 1949, that “the destruction of the mosque and the obliteration of the Islamic structure was an egregious violation of the rule of law.” The recognition of these facts ought not to have allowed the Supreme Court to reach the verdict that it did.The Supreme Court, it appears to me, has acted less like a modern court with distinct procedures for reading evidence than like a panchayat, whose judgement is driven more by the value of reconciliation in the present and in the future than by strict conclusions based on evidence. The delivery of justice in the panchayats is determined by an ethics of reconciliation more than by sole considerations of evidence. I mean, of course, the modus operandi of panchayats in theory, and do not wish to imply that the panchayat judgements always achieved reconciliation for the disputing parties.If the Supreme Court was indeed acting like a traditional panchayat, with the idea of ensuring harmony between communities in the present and in the future, is the judgement it arrived at last weekend the best that it could have arrived at? How else might it have decided?Asking for the status quo to remain was a possible option. In an interview, in 2002, I asked Ramachandra Gandhi, the philosopher, what he felt ought to done at the site of the demolished mosque. His response: “The status quo should be preserved. The debris, the rubble, representing the hardness of our hearts and the shallowness of our minds, is more sacred as a confession of our unregenerateness than an aggressive, avenging, construction of a Ram temple at the site can ever be. Or a legalistic reconstruction of the demolished mosque.” The decision to retain the status quo therefore need not be an evasion of responsibility. The demolished structure could stand not as a passive fact of heritage, but as an active monument with great moral significance in the present.A second possible option might have been to allow for both a mosque and a temple to be built on the disputed site. Indeed, thejudgement of 2010 had divided the disputed 2.77 acres of land equally between three parties, the Hindu Maha Sabha, the Sunni Waqf Board and the Nirmohi Akhara, a local religious sect, for constructing, respectively, a Ram temple, a mosque and the Ram Chabutra, Bhandar and Sita ki Rasoi.Like the panchayat mode of deliberation,viewed ethics, rather than history, as a guide for living wisely. In his Hind-Swaraj, he sees the disunity between Hindus and Muslims as a fight between brothers in a family. If the Supreme Court viewed the Ayodhya dispute as one between siblings in a family, asking one of them to relocate to an alternate site would not have appeared an ideal resolution.In any case, any verdict on the dispute cannot undo the acts of the past. Opening new wounds, to borrow from’s discussion of the Babri Masjid controversy in Revenge and Reconciliation, then is not the way to heal old wounds.The Supreme Court verdict might have averted the outbreak of violence in the short term, but Indian Muslims are not likely to find it a just and acceptable decision. It seems to be the result of political considerations more than any concern with bringing about a genuine reconciliation between the two large religious communities of India.Earlier this year, the Supreme Court appointed a three-member mediation panel to explore non-legal solutions to the Ayodhya dispute. It might have done better by constituting public meetings for different religious communities to express their views of the problem. Established after apartheid was formally abolished in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a courageous effort at arriving at racial justice through practices of community wisdom and healing and not legal instruments. The murmurs heard recently over the need to rebuild temples in place of existing mosques inand Kashi accentuate the value of such a forum in India. How does one respond to past acts of violence in responsible and morally adequate ways in the present? The moral confusion in this regard, it has become clear all over again, is wide and needs to lift.