Ayodhya

[acharya]

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010, 9:02 AM IST

What They Said: The Babri Masjid Case

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/...sjid-case/



By Tripti Lahiri



The verdict in the decades-long legal dispute over who has the rights over the Babri Masjid religious site in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state was scheduled to be issued by the Allahabad High Court on Friday. In 1992 Hindu mobs partially destroyed the medieval Babri mosque there demanding to build a temple to Lord Ram, the deity who in Hindu belief was born at Ayodhya. On Thursday the Supreme Court decided to delay the verdict and ordered a hearing Sept. 28 on the possibility of a reconciliation. India Real Time presents a summary of the opinions expressed in the run-up to the verdict and on its deferment.





AFP/Getty Image

A man prays at a temple in Ayodhya this week.

“It appears almost unreal to remember that this is, in legal terms, a mere dispute over the title to a small plot of land in a nondescript historical town of north India,” said an editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly, a week ahead of the expected verdict, calling for the country to guard against the rise of militant Hindu nationalism.”



“Unfortunately, for the past two decades and more, this dispute has not remained a mere legal one, but has been the core of a violent political movement which has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of India’s citizens in riots and massacres,” said the magazine.



Political observer Ashok Malik, writing in the Hindustan Times on Wednesday, laid out some of the questions before the court and suggested possible verdicts, based on the historical, archaelogical and other evidence presented.