Senior advocate and retired Delhi high court judge S. Muralidhar has delivered a sharp indictment of the judiciary’s handling of communal disputes, warning that the courts have failed to uphold constitutional values in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.

According to a report in Indian Express, while delivering the A.G. Noorani Memorial Lecture in Delhi on September 6, he described the Supreme Court’s conduct as an instance of “unforgivable institutional amnesia”.

Muralidhar cited the Supreme Court’s inaction on the suo motu contempt petition against former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, filed after the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. “It was not taken up for 22 years. And then when it was listed before Justice (Sanjay) Kaul it was said; why flog a dead horse. This is institutional amnesia, which in my view is unforgivable, of an act which the Supreme Court found was an egregious crime,” he said.

He also cited the Ayodhya judgment of 2019, arguing that the Court went beyond the scope of the suits before it.

“No one had asked for the construction of a temple. Directions under Article 142 were issued; no one asked for it, no legal basis, no prayer, hence no opposition. No central government or Hindu group lawyer had asked for it,” he said. The ruling, he added, “was completely outside the realm of the suits” and its fallout continues to affect the courts.

Despite the Places of Worship Act, litigation over religious sites has multiplied, Muralidhar warned. “We have had suits emerging everywhere; 17 suits all over the country,” he noted.

The retired judge also criticised television media for framing national debates in terms of “Hindu-Muslim questions,” ignoring India’s plural traditions. “We tend to forget that ours is a composite culture,” he said, adding that “what they say throughout the [Ayodhya] judgment and what they eventually rule does not seem a logical outcome at all.”

Referring indirectly to former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, widely regarded as the Ayodhya verdict’s author, he observed: “It was an author-less judgment but the author himself said he consulted the deity before (delivering) it,” reported Indian Express.

Reasserting India’s diversity, Muralidhar stressed: “India’s population is as diverse as it is also devout … We never were nor can be one culture, one language, or one religion.” He endorsed Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia’s dissent in the Karnataka hijab case, cautioning that “getting into essential religious practices is problematic because you are entering theology. It is a dangerous exercise because judges can get it wrong.”

Calling for judicial introspection, Muralidhar added: “We don’t ask who our judges are and what their religious beliefs are. To secure secularism for the future, we will have to go back and start from schools.”

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