By K Raveendran
Every court judgment is supposed to be delivered without ‘fear or favour’ and ‘affection or ill-will’, but insights provided by Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud on the Ayodhya Ram Mandir land judgment reveal how some of the disapproved tendencies did creep into the making of the final verdict. With the consecration of the Ram Temple only days away, every political party except the BJP is having to deal with the same dilemma.
CJI Chandrachud explained the other day why it was decided to keep the authorship of the landmark judgment anonymous after the members of the five-member constitutional bench had reached a consensus to present the verdict as a unified voice of the court, rather than attributing it to any single judge. The CJI was among the judges who penned the verdict, led by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi.
“The case has a long history of conflict, of diverse viewpoints based on the history of the nation and all those who were part of the bench decided that this will be a judgment of the court. The court will speak through one voice and the idea of doing so was to send a clear message that all of us stood together not only in the ultimate outcome but in the reasons indicated in the judgment,” the CJI said. But he refused to elaborate further.
Obviously, there was fear that individual authorship may not go down well, particularly with those sections who may have desired a different outcome. There is no way that the verdict would have pleased every party to the dispute in an equal measure. The bench had the virtually impossible task at hand, of balancing what appeared to be irreconcilable interests intertwined by matters of faith, evidence, history, religion and politics. More importantly, the verdict provides a template for the future on how to use the present to set right the wrongs of the past — perceived or real. It is in this context that the single unanimous judgment adds further significance and relevance to the prevailing situation.
The bench kept consistency with its view expressed in the course of the hearing of the case, which entailed examination of 11,500 records, spread over 38,147 pages, that the Ayodhya land dispute was not only about property, it was also about “mind, heart and healing”. That clearly established the additional dimensions of the issue, which were not considered adequately by various courts that heard the matter earlier.
In this respect, Justice Gogoi’s bench had also made a departure from the stand of former Chief Justice Dipak Misra that it was purely a title dispute that required to be decided only on the basis of the evidence presented before the court. The court looked beyond 1528, the year in which Babri Masjid was built, to consider matters of crucial relevance in arriving at a decision. The fact that the past continues to haunt the present, with political parties, including the Congress, caught between the compulsions of attending the consecration of Ram’s idol at the magnificently built temple complex and the need to keep safe distance from the ruling BJP’s brazen attempt to generate political capital ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
Gogoi’s bench declared that the issue was not just about 1,500 square feet land, but about deeper sentiments. The issue could not be considered unmindful of its gravity and impact on public sentiment and also on the body politic of the country. “We cannot undo what has happened but we can go into what exists in the present moment,” the court observed. That was a whole new approach.
The approach of the Muslim parties was tempered by the refusal of the court to reopen the settled issue in the 1994 Ismail Faruqui case that a mosque was not an essential part of worship in Islam and that namaz could be offered even in the open. That cut several knots from the riddle in one go. The broadening perspective of the court about the contextual aspect has implications for other cases of similar nature as well. This implies that issues cannot be considered in isolation of its context and brings into play factors that may have hitherto been considered extraneous. The approach in the Ayodhya issue may well become a template for the future.
Apparently, the same set of conditions are present in the case of the Mathura ShahiIdgah Mosque site which the Hindus claim as the land of Lord Krishna’s birth. The Supreme Court this week dismissed an appeal against the Allahabad High Court order which rejected a PIL seeking recognition of Mathura’s ShahiIdgah Mosque site as Krishna Janmabhoomi and the removal of the mosque. The Allahabad High Court has already allowed the appointment of a commission to inspect the mosque, situated next to the Krishna temple. (IPA Service)
The post Ram Mandir Ahead Of Consecration: Persisting Issues Of Heart, Mind, Fear And Favour first appeared on Latest India news, analysis and reports on IPA Newspack.
