New Delhi: A number of prominent personalities have asked for the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment to be reviewed as it has “caused widespread concern among all those who have the interests of justice and fairness at heart”.
In a statement, the signatories said that the “first source of concern” is that the court has delivered a judgment “which has been made possible only by the criminal destruction of the Babri Masjid” on December 6, 1992, which the court itself described as an “unlawful act”.
They said the archaeological on the site, which the judgment relied on, would not have been possible without the destruction of the majid. “Nor would it have been as easy for the Court to hand over the site to the Hindu side if the Masjid had still stood,” they said.
Also Read: Five Acres in Lieu of Citizenship
The statement also says there is “no iota of proof” for the Supreme Court’s assumption that Muslims had ceased to pray in the masjid in Mughal and Nawabi times. “Nor is there any proof that Hindus anywhere before very late times believed that Lord Rama was born precisely at the site of Babri Masjid, which should, of course, not be confused with the belief that he was born in Ayodhya,” it says.
Among those who have signed the request are journalists Dhirendra K. Jha and Pamela Philipose, historian Irfan Habib, academics Jayati Ghosh and Badri Raina and Sohail Hashmi.
The full statement has been reproduced in full below.
§
The Supreme Court’s judgement in the Ayodhya case delivered on 9 November 2019 has caused widespread concern among all those who have the interests of justice and fairness at heart.
The first source of concern is that the Court’s has delivered a judgement which has been made possible only by the criminal destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, which the Court itself has described as an “unlawful act”. No speculations over archaeological excavations on the site, on which the Court has so much relied, would have been possible without the previous destruction of the Masjid. Nor would it have been as easy for the Court to hand over the site to the Hindu side if the Masjid had still stood.
Moreover, the Court’s treatment of both archaeology and history seems to have been rather cavalier and one-sided. There is no iota of proof for the Court’s assumption that Muslims had ceased to pray in the Masjid in Mughal and Nawabi times. Nor is there any proof that Hindus anywhere before very late times believed that Lord Rama was born precisely at the site of Babri Masjid, which should, of course, not be confused with the belief that he was born in Ayodhya. Remarkably, the Court glosses over Tulsidas’s silence on the site of his birth.
Finally, the Court’s assigning to the Government of India the task of setting up a Hindu religious trust to build the future Rama temple on the Babri Masjid site implies that in the Court’s view it is the Government’s duty to cater to Hindu religious interests. This surely is hardly in consonance with the supposed secular nature of our state.
We, the undersigned, therefore, earnestly urge the Supreme Court to review its judgement.
Aban Raza
Achin Vinaik
Ahmad Raza
Alok Jain
Anand K Sahay
Angelie Multani
Anil Bhatti
Anil Chandra
Antara Dev Sen
Archana Prasad
Ashok Rao
Astad Daboo
Ayesha Kidwai
Badri Raina
C.P.Bhambri
C.P.Chandrasekhar
Chanchal Chauhan
Chirashree Das Gupta
D.N.Jha
Deepak Sanan
Dhirendra K Jha
Dinesh Abrol
Dunu Roy
Gargi Chakravartty
Geeta Kapur
Githa Hariharan
Indira Arjun Dev
Indira Chandrasekhar
Irfan Habib
Ishrat Alam
Jayati Ghosh
M. Shrimali
Kausar Wizarat
Kavita Singh
Keval Arora
Kumar Shahani
Lata Singh
Lima Kanungo
M.K.Raina
Madangopal Singh
Madhu Prasad
Madhushree Dutta
Manini Chatterjee
Maya Krishna Rao
Mihir Bhattacharya
MMP Singh
Mohan Rao
Mohd Abuzar
Mukul Dube
N.K.Sharma
Nadeem Rizavi
Nasir Tyabji
Nikhil Kumar
Nina Rao
Pamela Philipose
Parthiv Shah
Prabhat Patnaik
Prabhat Shukla
Pradeep Saxena
Prashant Mukherjee
Praveen Jha
Puneet Nicholas Yadav
Radhika Menon
Radhika Singha
Rahul Roy
Rajendra Sharma
Rajinder Arora
Rajni B Arora
Rakhi Sehgal
Ram Rahman
Ramesh Dixit
Ramesh Rawat
Ranjani Mazumdar
Rekha Awasthi
Rimli Bhattacharya
Roger Alexender
Rohit Azad
S K Pandey
Sadiq Zafar
Shakti Kak
Sharmila Samant
Sherna Dastur
Shireen Moosvi
Sidhique Kappan
Smita Gupta
Sohail Hashmi
Sudhanva Deshpande
Sudhanva Deshpande
Sudhir Chandra
Sukumar Muralidharan
Sumangala Damodaran
Supriya Varma
Svati Joshi
Utsa Patnaik
Valay Singh
Vandana Rag
Vanita Nayak
Vijaya Venkatraman
Vikas Rawal
Vishwamohan Jha
Vivan Sundaram
Wajahat Habibullah
Zoya Hasan