Lands of the Gods

The colonial roots of the Ayodhya verdict

- Deepasri Baul

The decades-old Babri Masjid–Ram Janmabhoomi case has come to be the most intractable property dispute of our times. Most reports locate the starting point of the conflict at 1949, when Hindu idols were surreptitiously placed under the central dome of the Babri Masjid in the dead of the night. Years later, in 1984, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad started the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, mobilising Hindus across the country to build a temple on the disputed site. It ultimately led to the destruction of the mosque by mobs of kar sevaks—religious volunteers—in 1992, and communal bloodletting that left at least two thousand dead.

On 9 November 2019, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court pronounced the eagerly anticipated final verdict on the resulting legal dispute. In a unanimous judgment, the court maintained that it had assessed the conflict primarily as a property dispute, or a title suit. “The dispute is over immovable property,” it stated. “The court does not decide title on the basis of faith or belief but on the basis of evidence. The law provides us with parameters as clear but as profound as ownership and possession.” Despite this exhortation, the court extended itself to hand over property rights over the entire disputed site to “Hindus,” on the premise that Hindu faith decreed that very site to be the birthplace of the epic hero Ram, who lived in the Ayodhya of the mythical Treta Yug.

The judges described the case as an “adjudicatory task of unique dimension