POLITICS-INDIA: Court Throws Cold Water on Temple Plans

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 13 2002 (IPS) - A Supreme Court ruling handed down on Wednesday, prohibiting religious activity at Ayodhya town in northern India where Hindu fanatics razed a mosque 10 years ago, may yet restore faith in India’s battered secular ideals.

Barely two weeks ago, a pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in western Gujarat state allowed Hindu mobs to systematically attack Muslims and their property, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in which close to a thousand members of the minority community perished.

The pogrom against Muslims and the tragic event that triggered it, the firebombing of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims from Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh state, had roots in plans by the fundamentalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum to construct a temple at the site. These plans ignored a status quo ordered by the court.

Wednesday’s ruling was simple in that it merely upheld the status quo, first passed in 1994, slicing through a welter of interpretations brought forth by legal experts and politicians on whether the VHP could still carry out consecration rites for a temple on land adjacent to the disputed site on Mar. 15.

The court brushed aside the government’s plea that allowing a brief, symbolic ceremony on Friday at a site adjacent to the plot where the mosque stood would not stand in violation of the status quo.

“No religious activity of any kind, whether symbolic or actual, shall be permitted or allowed to take place,” the court ruled, pointing out that allowing a Hindu ceremony would result in demands for a Muslim one as well.

“If you allow ‘puja’ (Hindu prayer ceremony), will you (government) allow ‘namaz’ (Muslim prayers) tomorrow on that land? ” the judges demanded to know of attorney general Soli Sorabjee.

Assurances by Sorabjee that Hindu volunteers would not be allowed to take over the disputed land at Ayodhya were not accepted by the court, which recalled that similar assurances were violated in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was razed down.

Ashok Singhal, leader of the VHP that is closely allied to the BJP of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has announced that in spite of the court’s order, the organisation would go ahead with plans to for a consecration ceremony at Ayodhya as planned. “It will be a three-hour long ‘puja’ (ceremony).”

Volunteers of the VHP had, in December1992, torn down the Babri Masjid, a large, three-domed mediaeval structure, with crowbars and their bare hands as Vajpayee and other leaders of his pro-Hindu BJP party, including Lal Krishna Advani, currently home minister, watched on.

The razing down of the Babri Masjid sparked off communal violence across the country in which at least 3,000 people died, but it propelled the BJP from being a small regional party to national power at the centre by 1998 with Vajpayee as prime minister.

But the BJP still depended on powerful regional partners that have made their support for or membership in Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government conditional on the abandonment of the temple-building agenda.

On Tuesday, Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of southern Andhra Pradesh state and leader of the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP), made it clear that the status quo at Ayodhya should be maintained by the Vajpayee government.

Said former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court H Ahmadi: “There could have been no other interpretation — whether you do it (a ceremony) for a minute or for an hour or for a few days it would still have impinged on the status quo.”

Sorabjee’s plea that a brief, limited ceremony be allowed by the court has betrayed the BJP’s eagerness to keep its ally, the VHP, happy and angered the TDP and other secular allies in the ruling NDA alliance.

“We were not consulted and this is a serious matter,” said Yerran Naidu, who leads the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP) that rules Andhra Pradesh state and has 29 members in the Lok Sabha or law-making Lower House of Parliament.

“The TDP is a secular party and we have been telling the government that it should do nothing that might disturb peace and communal harmony and function strictly within the set agenda of the NDA, which certainly does not include constructing a temple at Ayodhya ,” Naidu said. .. Mamta Banerjee, leader of the Trinamul (grassroots) Congress, another key partner in the NDA, said she “took strong objection” to Sorabjee’s plea and said she would remind Vajpayee that he was “leading a coalition government and not a BJP government”.

Leaders of the powerful opposition Congress party have accused Vajpayee of “taking Parliament for a ride” by repeatedly assuring the government that he would do his best to uphold the status quo and then asking the court permission to allow a limited “symbolic” ceremony.

After touring Gujarat last week, Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and Yerran Naidu accused the government in Parliament of not doing enough to contain the violence targeting innocent Muslims and their establishments. They have also been demanding that Vajpayee sack the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court also ruled that the government should retain control over the area surrounding the disputed site and not hand it over to the Hindu community as demanded by the VHP.

According to the VHP, the Babri Masjid was built by Muslim invaders on the site where a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu warrior deity Ram, who lived 10,000 years, ago stood.

POLITICS-INDIA: Court Throws Cold Water on Temple Plans

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 13 2002 (IPS) - A Supreme Court ruling handed down on Wednesday, prohibiting religious activity at Ayodhya town in northern India where Hindu fanatics razed a mosque 10 years ago, may yet restore faith in India’s battered secular ideals.
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