Sri Sri meets Nirmohi Akhara, AIMPLB ‘representatives’
LUCKNOW: In a bid to find an outof-court solution to Ayodhya’s Ram temple dispute, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Art of Living founder, informally met representatives of Nirmohi Akhara and All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) recently.
Though AIMPLB is not a party in the case, it is the apex body of Muslims and decides religious and personal matters. The Sunni Central Board of Waqfs, UP is a party in the case and Jafaryab Jilani is its counsel. Jilani is also member of AIMPLB.
The meeting was held in Bangalore early this month.
However, representatives of the two organisations were guarded in divulging details about their talks with Sri Sri Ravishankar.
While Nirmohi Akhara on Friday said the talks centered on ‘communal amity’, Jilani said they had not authorised anyone to negotiate “but some local members might have met.”
AIMPLB said it had several members in Bangalore, some of whom might have met Ravi Shankar. However, it refused to confirm that the meeting was in connection with the Ayodhya dispute.
“We have 251 members in the Board and several of them are from Bangalore. I have also met Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a couple of years ago. But the AIMPLB has not authorized anyone to talk or negotiate on its behalf on the Babri-Masjid-Ram Janam Bhoomi issue,” Jilani told HT over phone from New Delhi.
The mahant of Nimrohi Akhada, Ayodhya, Ram Das admitted that the Akhada’s Nagpur wing sarpanch Raja Ramchandracharya had met Sri Sri to find an amicable solution to the dispute but refused to reveal details of the outcome.
When contacted Ramchan-dracharya said his meeting with Sri Sri was to establish goodwill between the two communities. “We feel that a solution should be arrived at in a cordial manner,” he said.
There are about a dozen main contestants in the court case with six each from both the communities. The title suit, however, is between Nirmohi Aakhada and Sunni Central Board of Waqfs, UP.
According to Jilani, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi came closest to finding out an acceptable formula to the dispute but the Supreme Court nipped the very idea in the bud.
A former West Bengal chief minister, ex-Governor of Punjab and an accomplished and senior SC lawyer Siddharth Shankar Ray acted as an intermediary in the initiative. He vetted a proposal mooted by Rajiv under which Muslims would give up their claim if evidence of a ‘living’ temple was found at the disputed site. The verdict would be pronounced by a five-member SC bench comprising of a Muslim, Parsi, Christian, Sikh and Hindu judge. The apex court turned down the idea and refused to form such a bench, says Jilani.
Both former prime ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, too, tried to persuade and arranged a face-toface meetings between the Sangh Parivar and some Muslims through various, back channel efforts, but failed. Attempts to use services of non-Muslim religious figures like Sri Sri Ravishankar, the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati and Dalai Lama drew momentary response but failed in the long run.