Nandini Sundar: Ayodha verdict: Five Acres in Lieu of Citizenship
The Muslims of India
approached the Supreme Court for affirmation of their citizenship. Instead,
they were given five acres of land. In their verdict on
the Ayodhya dispute, the bench recognised “it is necessary to provide
restitution to the Muslim community for the unlawful destruction of their place
of worship.” But in sharp contrast to their lengthy exegesis on other issues –
like the indubitability of faith, the archaeological evidence for a temple
below the mosque, the way that historical texts must be read – there is
absolutely no discussion of what ‘restitution’ means, and more importantly,
what it might involve in this specific context.
Truth? Let us imagine, for a moment, that every other record of the Ayodhya dispute except for this judgment disappeared. Drawing on Lon Fuller’s The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, a fictional case which Justice Chandrachud is fond of, let us imagine that a future court of Newbharat in 4300 CE is trying to understand why the country known as the Republic of India self-destructed after 2019 and became the Hindu Rashtra of Bharat. That court would rely on this 2019 judgment for the “preponderance of probabilities,” much like this court, which relying on two surviving accounts of European travellers for its ‘evidence’ that the ‘Hindus’ had continuing use of the premises for worship but ‘Muslims’ did not, awarded title to the ‘Hindus’... read more:
The end of the
20th century might well have been regarded as an ‘age of restitution’
given the wave of apologies, reparations and truth commissions, like the US
government’s reparations to Japanese Americans for internment during WWII, the
Australian and Canadian governments’ apology to their native populations, or
truth commissions in Guatemala, Peru or South Africa. In all these,
as well as in international law, restitution is portrayed as a process of
arriving at ‘truth’, ensuring ‘non-repetition’, and thereby effecting some kind
of reconciliation, either with the state or with perpetrator communities. The
Ayodhya judgment, however, fails miserably on all counts.
Truth? Let us imagine, for a moment, that every other record of the Ayodhya dispute except for this judgment disappeared. Drawing on Lon Fuller’s The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, a fictional case which Justice Chandrachud is fond of, let us imagine that a future court of Newbharat in 4300 CE is trying to understand why the country known as the Republic of India self-destructed after 2019 and became the Hindu Rashtra of Bharat. That court would rely on this 2019 judgment for the “preponderance of probabilities,” much like this court, which relying on two surviving accounts of European travellers for its ‘evidence’ that the ‘Hindus’ had continuing use of the premises for worship but ‘Muslims’ did not, awarded title to the ‘Hindus’... read more:
see also
Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Ram’s political triumph
SC judgment refers to Sikhism as a 'cult'
Democratic Liberties Only Belong To The Bold And Vigilant: Justice Chelameswar
Peace as a punctuation mark in eternal war
Arthur Rosenberg on Fascism as a Mass-Movement
Purushottam Agrawal: Being Hindu in a Hindu Rashtra
Listen, Mister Muslim: By Javed Anand
SC judgment refers to Sikhism as a 'cult'
Democratic Liberties Only Belong To The Bold And Vigilant: Justice Chelameswar
Peace as a punctuation mark in eternal war
Arthur Rosenberg on Fascism as a Mass-Movement
Purushottam Agrawal: Being Hindu in a Hindu Rashtra
Listen, Mister Muslim: By Javed Anand
