Ayodhya - Built by Gods, Broken by Men

Built by the Gods, Broken by Men = Ayodhya is not just the place where the Babri Masjid stood. It is a microcosm of India’s multicultural past.

The tension in the air enhanced by the security personnel and the verdict announced is one side of the Ayodhya story, but there is a lesser known side of the city which is in stark contrast to its image as a ticking communal bomb. The Atharva Veda describes it as a ‘’city built by Gods and being as serious and calm as paradise itself.’’ Ayodhya in Sanskrit means ‘’not to be warred against’’ and all over there are signs of its secular and saintly past. There are 32 mosques in this Holy city of Hindus. The ‘’azaan’’(call for prayer) echoes through the walls of temples and mixes with the bhajans and non-stop recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa. Mythology has given the city a unique status for Hindus, a place built by Gods where Lord Ram was born, but Ayodhya is equally sacred for Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists. There is the minaret that stands tall amid temples on the banks of the Sarayu river, which nobody knows who built or when. A few furlongs away is the famous cave temple of Hanuman Garhi, from where Lord Hanuman keeps a watch on the Ram Janmabhoomi or Ramkot. The Muslim ruler of Awadh, Nawab Shuja-Ud-Daula, had constructed this temple. Within the fort-like temple complex is the all-faith Satyar temple with idols of Ram, Buddha and Mahavira, and pictures of Mecca-Medina and Zarathustra.

Such symbolism is all over Ayodhya which embraces some 1200 temples. In another corner of the city is the famous Dargah of Hazrat Sheesh, who is believed to be the son of Adam, the first messenger of God. Then there is the Dargah Naugazi- an impressive, 16.2-m grave that attracts both Hindu and Muslim devotees from all over india. Pir Nuh Aleihi Salaam, after whom the mausoleum is named, is believed to be Noah and the grave his famous ark. The large number of Sufi shrines that were once an integral part of the ancient cityscape made local Muslims believe that Ayodhya was like Mecca-Khurd(small Mecca).

Scholars have pointed out that Sufi saints had used Ayodhya as a centre of spiritual teachings since 12h century. Among the mystic saints were Qazi Qidwattuddin Awadhi, who came from central Asia, and sheikh Jamal Gujjari of the Firdausiya school in the pre-Mughal era. On the other hand, some Buddhists had wanted to join the legal battle over Ram Janmabhoomi as a concerned party because of their ancient links. They claimed that Ayodhya was a Buddhist centre but int the wake of the revivalist movements in the medieval period, Buddhist shrines were taken over and converted in to temples. This was found legally untenable. It has, however been established that Chinese Buddhist traveler Huien Tsang came to Ayodhya and found some 3000 Buddhist monks.

Ayodhya is also the birth place of Jain tirthankaras Rishabh Deo, Ajinath, Abhinandannath, Anantnath and Sumatinath. The first Sikh Guru Nanak Dev, ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur Singh and tenth Guru Govind Singh meditated at Gurudwara Brahmakund on the Brahmaghat which, in mythology, was where Brahma meditated for 5,000 years. Ayodhya is just 6 Km away from Faizabad which was the capitall of Nawabs, who with their Iranian background were quite secular. Faizabad has a special place in Urdu Literature. Mir Anees the Shakespeare of Urdu literature, besides other famous poets and writers, belonged to Faizabad. If Umrao Jaan, the famous courtesan and poetess added romance to the Nawabi era in Lucknow, Begum Akhtar or Akhtari Bai, the Ghazal, dadra and thumri singer made Faizabad proud.

Much of the remains of the past have been destroyed or are decaying but the spirit of the city retains tradition of love and mutual trust that the saints, sufis and nawabs created……



In brief, the majority verdict from the three judgements is as follows:


The gist of the court findings goes like this. The spot where the idols are kept today, which was under the central dome of the demolished structure, is the spot generally believed to be, and worshipped as, the birthplace of Lord Ram. So the court ordered: let it be so. ‘’It is declared that the area covered by the central dome of the three-domed structure, i.e; the disputed structure being the deity of Bhagwan Ram Janamsthan and place of birth of Lord Rama as per faith and belief of the Hindus, belong to plaintiffs… and shall not be obstructed or interfered in any manner by the defendants.’’

That the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided in to three equal parts among the parties to the dispute, namely, Ram Lalla (Infant Ram), represented by his sakha(or close friend) Trilokhi Nath Pandey; the Nirmohi Akhara, which has staked its claim to the property since 1885 and ran a place of worship on the premises; and the Sunni Central Waqf Board, which claimed to have had possessions of the disputed structure and the land around it since the 16th century.


While putting forward this three-way division, the verdict also held that the place under the central dome of the demolished Babri Masjid is the birthplace of Ram ‘’ As per faith and belief of Hindus’’ and hence should belong to the Hindus as represented by Pandey. A makeshift temple of Ram has existed since December 6th 1992, the day the Babri Masjid was demolished. Justice Agarwal, who wrote the lengthiest judgement, running in to 21 volumes and more than 5,000 pages, quoted from Rig Veda: ‘’During the Dissolution, there was neither existence nor non-existence, and at that time neither LOK(world) was there nor was anything beyond space. What encompassed all at that time? Where was the abode and of whom? What was the unfathomable and deep water?...’’


After firmly affixing legality to faith and belief, the majority verdict also held that the disputed structure was constructed by Babar. Justice Khan said that for a long time until the construction of the mosque, it was believed by Hindus that somewhere in the large area of the disputed land, there existed a very small portion which was the ‘’Janmasthan’’ of Ram. However, he said that the belief did not relate to any specific small area in the 2.77 acre disputed land. He also said that the Hindus started identifying the disputed structure, sometime after the construction of the mosque, as the exact birthplace of Ram or as a place wherein the exact birthplace of Ram was situated. Justice Khan also found that much before 1855, Ram Chabutra and Sita Rasoi had come in to existence and Hindus were worshipping there. This was the basis for his finding that both Muslims and Hindus were held to be in joint possession of the entire premises under dispute.


Justice Khan found that for some decades before 1949, Hindus had started treating/believing the place beneath the central dome of the mosque to be the exact birthplace of Ram. He said that the idol was placed for the first time beneath the central dome of the mosque in the early hours of December 23, 1949. But he doesnot explain its relevance in deciding that both parties could be declared as joint title holders of the entire disputed premises when it is clear that the installation of the idol in 1949 was illegal and should have been reversed immediately. In contrast, he assumes that an illegal act, if not corrected in subsequent years, vindicates itself.

Of crucial importance is how Justice Khan interprets the Limitation Act. When the suits (except suit No:5) were instituted, the Limitation Act, 1908, was in force. It was replaced by the Limitation Act, 1963. According to this Act, the suits for declaration of rights had to be filed within 12 years of the 1949 incident, and the Sunni Waqf Board filed its case within the limitation of 12 years, It was filed on December 18,1961, within the limitation without adversely affecting the title of the Sunnis. But Justice Khan found the suit time-barred. This interpretation appears to be debatable. Justice Khan declared all the three sets of parties, Muslims and Hindu organisations and the Nirmohi Akhara, joint title holders of the property/premises in dispute, to the extent that the disputed land should be equally divided-one-third share to each for using and managing the same for worship. However, in his final decree, he allotted the portion below the central dome to Hindus. Thus an illegal installation, followed by regular pujas, enabled Hindus to acquire the right to pray at a particular spot and secure the same spot through a court-directed partitioning of land.


Justice Agarwal’s reasoning of the right to worship is bizarre. He held that the Hindu plaintiffs had a right to worship: ‘’The place in suit to the extent it has been held by this court to be the birthplace of Lord Rama and if an idol is also placed in such a place the same can also be worshipped.’’ But it is not clear how he holds that the right to worship flows from a mere belief that a particular place is the birthplace of a god. Even if it is conceded that historically there has been such a belief, an explanation of how the legal right to worhsip could be inferred from it would have been necessary. Justice Agarwal seems to condone the illegal placing of the idols inside the mosque in 1949 because it was based on such a belief.


This has serious implications for the other religious sites, and the secular tenet of the Constitution faces the risk of being seriously compromised, let alone the challenge of maintaining inter-communal harmony.


Justice Khan records in his judgement that in 1885 the Sub-Judge of Faizabad had conceded that there was no doubt regarding the possession and ownership of Hindus over the Chabutra(the platform outside the mosque which had Ram’s feet embossed on it). But the Sub-Judge had held that it was against the public policy to permit the construction of a temple thereupon. The court was then of the opinion that granting permission to construct a temple would amount to laying the foundation for communal riots.


An appeal against this judgement was dismissed by F.E.A.Chamier, the then District Judge of Faizabad, on march 18, 1886, saying that it was too late to remedy the Hindu’s grievance as the event of building the masjid on a piece of land held sacred by the Hindus had occurred 356 years earlier.


The second appeal was dismissed by Justice W.Young, the Judicial Commissioner of Oudh, on November 1, 1886. The penultimate sentence of the judgement in the second appeal was that there was nothing whatsoever on record to show that the Hindu plaintiff was in any sense the proprietor of the land in question.


The Lucknow Bench appears to have achieved what could not be achieved in 1885. This must lead to a genuine introspection by our judicial authorities on whether historical evidence and precedents could easily be brushed aside to accommodate contemporary jingoistic pressures.


In his judgement on the land acquisition case, delivered on December 11, 1992, Justice S.H.A Raza of the Allahabad High Court rightly said that an ‘’article of faith cannot be stretched to such an extent which threatens the Rule Of Law. The contention that faith is beyond the jurisdiction of the Court is centered around the application of theocratic ideas.’’ Still less can the faith of one community become the law of the land by a judicial ruling because it happens to be the majority community.


But what if judges themselves rely on their own religious faith in their judicial orders? Justice D.V.Sharma remarks on Ram and ‘’the spirit of divine’’ in this context are eloquent enough. Courts can try only suits of a ‘’civil nature’’(section 9 of the Civil Proceedure Code) in matters of faith. Remember the Evidence Act permits expert evidence only on a few limited matters (Sections 45 to 50). History and Archeology are not among them. The Act itself is misread by Justice S.U.Khan, who held that ‘’both the parties have failed to prove commencement of their title. Hence by virtue of section 110 of the Evidence Act, both are held to be joint title holders on the basis of joint possession.’’


Section 110 says no such thing. It says, on the contrary, that ‘’when the question is whether any person is owner of anything of which he is shown to be in possession of, the burden of proving that he is not the owner is on the person who affirms that he is not the owner.’’- in this case, the Sangh Parivar vis-à-vis the Babri Masjid. The Supreme Court has held that ‘’a presumption of an origin in lawful title could be drawn….in order to support possessory rights, long and quietly enjoyed, where no actual proof of title is forthcoming.’’ The longer the possession, the stronger the presumption (1991 Supp (2), SCC 228 at pages 243-244).


Records of the 19th century litigation disprove Justice Khan’s inference of ‘’Joint possession’’. From such errors flow the bizqrre order of a tripartite partition, which the media and others have so readily lapped up as an act of ‘’judicial statesmanship’’. The record since December 23, 1949, shows the judgement of september 30, 2010, to be a crowning act on consistent judicial injustices to Muslims in 1950,1955,1986 and 1994. The verdict comes despite the Places of Worship (Special Provisions Act. 1991), which makes it impossible for anyone to change the status of a religious place, including Kashi. Will Ayodhya become a precedent? In Benares, the bone of contention is the Gyanvapi masjid which stands next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. In Mathura, next to the Krishajanmasthan temple is the Shahi Idgah mosque. Are we slated for further division?