Sahmat slams Ayodhya verdict, finds it ‘gravely disturbing’

NEW DELHI - The Allahabad High Court judgment on Ayodhya is a “blow” to India’s secular fabric, a group of over 50 eminent historians, artists and activists said Friday, raising their “serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values” have been treated in the verdict.

Coming together under the umbrella of Sahmat (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), they questioned the court’s premise to base its judgment on the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which had claimed that remains of a temple were found beneath the mosque.

“The judgment delivered by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute has raised serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values have been treated in it,” said a joint statement signed by eminent personalities like Romila Thapar, D.N. Jha, K.N. Panikkar, Irfan Habib, Zoya Hasan, M.K. Raina and Madan Gopal Singh.

.. the view that the Babri Masjid was built at the site of a Hindu temple, which has been maintained by two of the three judges, takes no account of all the evidence contrary to this fact turned up by the Archaeological Survey of Indias own excavations — the presence of animal bones throughout as well as of the use of surkhi and lime mortar (all characteristic of Muslim presence) rule out the possibility of a Hindu temple having been there beneath the mosque, the statement said.

It also alleged that the ASI’s findings were fraudulent.

“The ASIs controversial report which claimed otherwise on the basis of pillar bases was manifestly fraudulent in its assertions since no pillars were found, and the alleged existence of pillar bases has been debated by archaeologists.

According to the statement, site notebooks, artefacts and other material evidence relating to the ASIs excavation be made available for scrutiny to scholars, historians and archaeologists.

No proof has been offered even of the fact that a Hindu belief in Lord Ramas birth-site being the same as the site of the mosque had at all existed before very recent times, let alone since time immemorial.

Not only is the judgment wrong in accepting the antiquity of this belief, but it is gravely disturbing that such acceptance should then be converted into an argument for deciding property entitlement. This seems to be against all principles of law and equity, the experts stated.

As they see it, the most objectionable part of the judgment is the legitimisation it provides to violence and muscle-power.

“While it recognises the forcible break-in of 1949 which led to placing the idols under the mosque-dome, it now recognises, without any rational basis, that the transfer put the idols in their rightful place.

Even more astonishingly, it accepts the destruction of the mosque in 1992 (in defiance, let it be remembered, of the Supreme Courts own orders) as an act whose consequences are to be accepted, by transferring the main parts of the mosque to those clamouring for a temple to be built, the statement said.

For all these reasons, the statement said, they see the judgment as yet another blow to the secular fabric of our country and the repute of our judiciary.

Whatever happens next in the case cannot, unfortunately, make good what the country has lost, they added.

A three-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench Thursday ruled by majority that a temple had been destroyed to build the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in the 16th century and so the mosque violated Islamic tenets.

The judges ruled that the entire disputed land in Ayodhya should be divided among the Sunni Waqf Board, Hindus and the Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu sect, who were among those who fought the court battle.

The status quo, however, would be maintained for the next three months, the court ordered.