It is reported that when our lordships were stuck in a judicial jam while trying to find a way to resolve the Babri Masjid case, god came to their rescue and showed them a bypass.
This is what Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has revealed to the world. “Very often we have cases (to adjudicate) but we don’t arrive at a solution,” he told an audience in Maharashtra, adding: “Something similar happened during the Ayodhya (Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid) dispute which was in front of me for three months. I sat before the deity and told him he needed to find a solution…”.
We can imagine him sitting with folded hands in front of his god, urging him to give them a solution. This means that the decision given by Justice Chandrachud and his brother judges was not theirs, it was communicated through them by god himself. Till today people were only guessing about the authorship of the unsigned judgment. Now we know that it was dictated by god. The judges were merely the medium.
We must note that Justice Chandrachud did not ask his god to give him strength and wisdom to be able to find a solution, he asked him to find the solution for him. What he is claiming is that it was a divinely ordained solution that he and his brother judges merely penned in human language.
I think the CJI’s ‘revelation’ will have shattered the faith of many true believers – the millions of devout Hindus who believe the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment of 2019 was sinful. It was a sin to destroy a religious place of others and then build a temple on that crime scene. Many devotees of Ram felt angry that this injustice was done in the name of their deity. They were hurt by the fact that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad was accepted as the ‘next friend’ or guardian of Ram, and that Ram himself was considered a perpetual minor who cannot take care of his interests and needed a guardian like the VHP.
Justice Chandrachud told his audience that he has been a religious person all along. We recently saw proof of this. He worshipped Ganesh in the presence of the prime minister. But what emerged from that image or video was that the main person offering pooja was the PM while the CJI and his wife played supporting roles by singing along with Modi and ringing the bell.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud at the latter’s residence to participate in a Ganesh puja. Photo: X/@narendramodi
Before that he had given proof of his religiousness during his Gujarat visit. He visited the temples of Dwarkadhish and Somnath with his wife and. His visit was recorded and widely broadcast. We know that a ‘personal’ visit would not have been a news headline and thus a topic of public discussion without his knowledge and permission.
During his visit to Gujarat he apparently got inspired by the sight of religious flags fluttering on the top of the temples. He said that he was reminded of the flag of Jagannath Puri on seeing the dhwaja above Dwarkadhish: “Just look at the universality of our country’s tradition, it binds us all. This flag has a special meaning for all of us. Above all of us (lawyers, judges, citizens) there is a unifying power, which is governed by the rule of law and the Constitution of India.”
It is possible that some people like Justice Chandrachud get reminded of the dhwaja of Puri when they see the flag above the Dwarkadhish temple. But is this the unifying tradition of this country? What is this power above all of us? Can that power be symbolised by a religious flag?
It is understandable that the prime minister frequently displays his religiosity in front of his voters, but if judges start doing this and start declaring that the source or inspiration of their decisions is their religion or god, then everyone will lose faith in the courts.
Also read: Justice Chandrachud Should Not Blame God for His Own Awful Ayodhya Judgment
Our judges made a mistake by taking the responsibility of “solving” the Babri Masjid case. It was beyond their capacity. The issue before them was to decide the ownership of the land of the Babri Masjid. They themselves accepted that the mosque had been standing on that land for centuries. It was a living mosque, prayers were being offered in it for 400 years. The court also accepted that there was no evidence that it was built by demolishing a temple. They did not consider it relevant either. It was also accepted that in 1949, idols of Hindu deities were secretly smuggled in the mosque in the dark of the night. According to the judges, this was a crime. Similarly, the act of demolishing the mosque on December 6, 1992 was also a criminal act. The judgement said this. But after accepting all this, they concluded that the land of the mosque should be given to the guardian or friend of Ram. That is, to the same people who, in the language of the court, had committed two crimes: once in 1949 and then in 1992. Their argument was that the repeated disturbances and crimes that those poor people were committing in the Babri Masjid prove that they were continuously staking their claim on it. How can this claim be rejected? Through judicial acrobatics of this kind, ownership of the land of the Babri Masjid was transferred to them. To those very people, who in the eyes of the court were guilty of double crime.
Did god, be it Ram or Shiva or Krishna, tell our CJI to engage in this sort of judicial craftiness? Surely what ordinary people could see – that the five judges were actually doing an injustice in the name of justice – would not have remained hidden from the eyes of an omniscient god?
That injustice was continued by Justice Chandrachud when he allowed the survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque by saying that it was necessary to satisfy the curiosity of the petitioners. Those poor people only wanted to know what was inside the mosque! Now puja is being done in the basement of the mosque and Muslims have almost lost ownership over a part of it. Was this decision also inspired by god?
In his story Panch Parmeshwar, Premchand fictionalises the popular belief that God resides in the panch, the head of the village council. And that he rises above worldly love, greed and fear to dispense justice regardless of personal cost. But this is not evident from the conduct of Justice Chandrachud and his brother judges. They are deeply entangled in worldliness. Soon after gifting the Babri Masjid’s land to the current rulers of India, one of them got Rajya Sabha membership. One got the post of governor. Are people wrong in speculating about the reason behind this gradual revelation of religiosity by the CJI? Some who still want to retain their faith in the judiciary are disturbed that the CJI chose the moment of elections (in Maharashtra) to talk about his decision leading to the construction of the Ram temple on the land of the Babri Masjid. The BJP has been claiming ownership of this order. Now the CJI attributes it to god himself. Who he is speaking for, is the question everyone is asking.
Justice Chandrachud should know that the judiciary as an institution is much older than him and will outlast people like him. Just as history has recorded the injustice committed by his father, a time will surely come when it will note his own moral weakness – and that of many of his brethren. Then it will be recorded that when the edifice of Indian secularism was being demolished, many judges lent their hand to the act of tearing it apart. Will Justice Chandrachud’s name be there? Is this what is worrying him when he wonders about how history is going remember him?
