COURTS AND BABRI MASJID

When the Ayodhya dispute comes up for hearing before the Supreme Court on October 29, the fundamentals of India’s secular polity, public confidence in the court and the court’s own prestige and self-esteem will all be at stake.

TA.G. NOORANI

HERE are at least 13 incontrovertible documents that prove that Muslims were forcibly ousted from the Babri Masjid on December 22-23, 1949. Two reports dated December 10 and 23, 1948, by the Inspector of Waqfs, Mohammed Ibrahim, after visits to the Babri mosque, recorded the harassment and stoning of the namazis going to the mosque. Yet prayers continued to be offered just before dawn and on Fridays. There was official support to an application by Hindus in 1949 to build a Ram temple on the chabutra (raised platform) outside the mosque.

The first information report (FIR) on December 23, 1949, lodged by Sub-inspector Ram Dube, Police Station, Ayodhya, reads thus: “According to Mata Prasad (paper No.7), when I reached to [sic] Janam Bhumi around 8 o’clock in the morning, I came to know that a group of 50-60 persons had entered the Babri mosque after breaking the compound gate lock of the mosque or through jumping across the walls (of the compound) with a stair and established therein, an idol of Shri Ram Bhagwan and painted Sita, Ram, etc. on the outer and inner walls . ... Ram Das, Ram Shakti Das and 50-60 unidentified others entered the mosque surreptitiously and spoiled its sanctity.”

A radio message on December 23, 1949, by District Magistrate K.K. Nayar to the Chief Minister, the Chief Secretary and the Home Secretary announced: “A few Hindus entered Babri Masjid at night when the Masjid was deserted and installed a deity there.” On December 26, 1949, K.K. Nayar wrote to the Chief Secretary: “Installation of the idol was carried out in the night between 22 and 23 instant.” There are other written records: Ramchandra Das Paramhansa’s admission to The New York Times on December 22, 1991, that he had installed the idol; Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s wire and letters to Chief Minister G.B. Pant; Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel’s letter to Pant on January 9, 1950; the Gandhian activist Swami Akshay Brahmachari’s letters and memorandum to Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri; and the interview of the Imam of the Babri Masjid, Abdul Ghafar, in 1987.

The government of Uttar Pradesh was headed by G.B. Pant. Paragraphs 12 and 13 of a written statement in court by the State of Uttar Pradesh, signed by Deputy Commissioner, Faizabad, J. N. Ugra, on April 25, 1950, read thus: (12) “That the property in suit is known as Babri Mosque and it has for a long period been in use as a mosque for the purpose of worship by the Muslims. It had not been in use as a temple of Shri Rama Chandraji. (13) That on the night of 22 December 1949, the idols of Shri Rama Chandraji were surreptitiously and wrongly put inside it.” It was converted by force and deceit into a Hindu temple on December 22, 1949. The courts have refused redress to Muslims in 70 years.

The Supreme Court of India is all set to rush headlong into a judicial mire of old on October 29, 2018, which will blow up the remnants of the warped judicial process on the Babri Masjid since 1949, the fundamentals of our secular polity, public confidence in the court and the court’s prestige and indeed, self-esteem. The course of the judicial process was diverted by the Special Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Lucknow, which dealt with the case in wilful disobedience of the Supreme Court.

The court might pause to recall that, let alone the courts in Uttar Pradesh, its own record in this case has been a pathetic one. But for the indulgence shown by the then Chief Justice of India (CJI) M.N. Venkatachaliah and Justice G.N. Ray, the mosque would not have been demolished on December 6, 1992. Chief Minister Kalyan Singh was allowed to go scot-free with violations of the Supreme Court’s stay order of November 25, 1991, and the High Court’s order of July 15, 1992. He was hauled up for contempt of court only on October 24, 1994, a day before the CJI retired. He repeatedly ignored the warn-