As is well known by now, the consecration ceremony of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya is to be held today, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate the temple. This is a temple that is the result of decades of movement by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
But what finally enabled the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya was the Supreme Court’s historic order in the title dispute. It was the Supreme Court’s five-judge bench, claiming to be speaking in one voice, gave legitimacy to the Hindu side’s claim, ultimately paving the way for the construction of the Ram temple.
The judgment is historic not just in the sense that it ‘settled’ the dispute that has shaped India’s political, social, and cultural landscape for a while now, but also, in the way in which it dealt with the tradition of legal methods of looking at history.
Reading the Supreme Court’s judgement as a scholar as well as a law practitioner gives one enough reason to believe that the Supreme Court became a party to the historical movement’s culmination.
It must be said that right from the outset that the judgement appears to be based on two very interesting arguments.
First, it gives reasonable arguments where it sees the entire disputed structure – the area of the erstwhile mosque and the area surrounding it – as two separate parts, namely the outer and the inner courtyard, while giving its pronouncement for the outer courtyard.
Secondly, it simultaneously treated the same structure, which it earlier saw as divided into the inner and the outer, as a composite whole while giving its judgement for the inner courtyard. Both reasonings were used by the court to conclude the arguments in favour of one side: the Hindu side.
To begin with, the entire ‘disputed structure’, as it was called, was divided into two parts by the court: the inner and the outer courtyard. Once this division was done, the court set itself the task of looking into the possession claims of the two parties and their individual claims to the outer, as well as the inner, courtyard. The apex court, then, was tasked with accessing the claims of both the Hindu and Muslim sides based on ‘possessory title’ and set itself to examine the evidence offered by both Hindu and Muslim sides to the different courtyards. Despite the fact that the court, on multiple occasions, stated that “title cannot be established on the basis of faith and belief” (para. 1209), a careful reading of the judgement reveals that the court essentially deviated from factual and evidential-based approaches to legal methods and sought refuge in Hindu faith and belief.
Also read: The Babri Masjid Demolition Went Unpunished – and the Fight for Justice Died
Arguments for the outer courtyard:
To begin, in its very line of inquiry, the court adopted different reasoning to access different parties’ claims to both the two courtyards.
This becomes evident when one looks at how the court deals with the claims of the outer courtyard from both sides. Based on different travelogues that the court accepted as evidence, the court accepted the reasoning for continuous and unimpeded worship in the courtyard by the Hindus. While doing so, it relied on Jospeh Tieffenthaler’s travelogues and his tour to India in the year 1740.
This travelogue included sections that mention the “faith and belief of Hindus,” who associated the erstwhile structure of the Babri Masjid with the birthplace of the deity Ram. The court accepted that “the account has a reference to the form of worship… and to the assembly of devotees at the site.”
Further, the court refers to the writings of Montgomery Martin, who, on the basis of the “faith and belief of Hindus,” attributes the structure as the birthplace of Ram. The writings of Tieffenthaler and Martin are relied upon by the court as evidence to illustrate the site’s long history of Hindu worship. In addition, the court interprets the presence of Sita rasoi, swargdwar, and the bedi, described in Tieffenthaler’s account, as proof for the Hindu sides’ “open, exclusive, and unimpeded possession of the outer courtyard.”
Now, when it comes to assessing the Muslim side’s occupancy of the same, the court notes the failure of the Muslim side to prove their sole occupancy, dismissing their claim for uninterrupted possession of the site based on their absence from the site. The reasoning for their absence, which was a result of their being disallowed to pass through the outer courtyards in the presence of Hindu priests worshipping and living there, was left untouched by the court. That the Muslims were forcibly ousted from the possession of the outer courtyard and were denied entry by force by Hindus who had taken over possession of it does not become reasonable enough to be accepted by the court.
While the court accepts various accounts of travellers, historical records are dealt with differently. For instance, the court does not rely on the Waqf Inspector report of December 1949, which stated that the priests who worshipped and lived in the outer courtyard obstructed Muslims from passing through it. It was because of this that only the Friday namaz could be performed inside the mosque, and that too with the assistance of the police. In such a scenario, the court chose to ignore the fact that a demonstration of uninterrupted possession of the outer courtyard must be impossible for the Muslim side.
The court declared the outer courtyard in favour of the Hindu side.
Also read: The Babri Masjid Judgment and the Sound of Silence
Arguments for the inner courtyard:
Coming to the inner courtyard, the court accepted the submissions of the Hindu side, placing reliance on the accounts of the travellers who cited oral testimonies of Hindu devotees, indicating that large groups of Hindu devotees visited the site on Hindu religious holidays.
For the court, these testimonies established a pattern of actual worship over the years as these devotees would stand at the railing of a brick wall structure – a division that separated the inner and outer courtyard – to offer their prayers.
Taking note of the evidence that demonstrated the continuation of namaz inside the dome – the last namaz having been performed on December 16, 1949 – the court accepted the submissions made by the Muslim side that it continued to be in possession of the inner courtyard. The court also admitted a contestation over the possession of the mosque that once led to its damage in 1934, which was repaired and renovated by a Muslim contractor, indicative of the assertion of Muslims’ right to pray inside the inner courtyard.
Even though the Muslim side presented papers demonstrating historical records of grants from the British government for the mosque’s upkeep and preservation as proof of its continued possession, the court sought evidence from the Muslim side for nearly 500 years prior to 1857. The unreasonable reasoning, however, did not apply to the Hindu side.
While the Hindu side could not produce any direct evidence to demonstrate their uninterrupted usage and actual possession inside the structure, the Muslims were here able to demonstrate their actual worship inside the structure, as indicated above.
But here comes the most interesting detour by the court. It stated that the structure was actually not in parts but a composite whole. The same court that accepted P. Carnegy’s written accounts of 1870, which noted that the construction of a brick-grill wall by the British government in 1857 divided the premises into two parts now accepted a theory of the structure being a composite whole.
This new theory gave the court an easy way out, wherein it concluded that since Hindus had continued to perform worship at the site and the existence of a mosque also could not impede them, the entire structure would go to the Hindu side. This conclusion, the court said, was based on a “balance of probabilities.”
An alternative argument that claimed that the British government’s construction of the brick-grill wall in 1857 predetermined the title was also summarily rejected by the court. Instead, the court provided a different interpretation that read: “The grill-brick wall did not constitute either a subdivision of the disputed site, which was one composite property, nor did it amount to a determination of title by the colonial administration.”
Also read: What the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya Judgment Means for the Future of the Republic
To sum up, despite the fact that the Babri Masjid stood at the site until it was illegally demolished on December 6, 1992, the court’s reasoning in the case highlights its quest for evidence to support its argument in favour of the Hindu side. The aforementioned interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision illustrates the use of different criteria for different sides, as well as a disdain for the evidence presented by the Muslim side.
This is how unreasonable reasoning brought about the end of one of the oldest controversies in Indian history. Today, as we witness the consecration ceremony at the Ram temple, we must ask the court a simple question: if the mosque had still been standing, would it have presented justifications for its ‘legal’ demolition and ordered for the same?
With the Supreme Court once again hearing the Gyanvyapi mosque and Shahi Idgah disputes, one wonders if the Ram temple movement has truly culminated and its dust, settled.
Kawalpreet Kaur is a practicing advocate based in Delhi. She is associated with Human Rights Law Network, Delhi.
