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Journalism of Courage
Will this digging into the historic soil of Ayodhya, containing deposits of human habitation that go back over two millennia and more, provide us with a clue on how to manage one of the oldest and most fractious property disputes the country has ever seen? The answer, emphatically, is no. On the contrary, it will only add one more divisive element in a case that promises to bedevil the best judicial minds of this country for many more days to come.
There are several reasons why Wednesday’s order of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has caused widespread consternation, not least among historians and archaeologists. As those interviewed by this newspaper pointed out, it is almost impossible to arrive at a definitive conclusion about the finds, should indeed there be anything significant unearthed. As one of them pointed out, how is a pre-mosque structure to be distinguished, and how could the shards from the past prove that a temple marking Lord Ram’s birthplace was razed? More to the point, how does all this have any relevance to the issue at hand, that of the ownership of the title deeds of the land? Most mainstream political parties hailed the high court order because they perceived it as a way of expediting a settlement to this dispute. On the contrary, it promises to do just the reverse since the evidence cited could itself be the source of future acrimony and further court cases.
But the most dangerous implication of the order is what it portends for the future since it does not recognise that an existing monument represents a closure of a historical process and must be accepted as status quo. This could then be cited as a precedent to justify the destruction of other structures and monuments in the name of meting out justice. Should the Qutub Minar or the Red Fort be torn down? Or indeed Hindu temples built on Buddhist and Jain sites? And how far back should we go in the business of interpreting the past in the light of contemporary controversies? History, after all, is a palimpsest composed of layer upon layer of human existence. We have argued in these columns that rationality and progress demand that we end this business of going endlessly back to the past and the historical wrongs that have visited it. That it would be both retrogressive and destructive to do so. The present imbroglio also points to the limits of the judicial process, given the hornets’ nest of complexities and sensitivities that is the Ayodhya issue. It needs statesmen to settle it, leaders who can rise above party interest in the cause of national interest.
