On November 9, a 5-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India issued its verdict on the Babri Masjid Ram Janma Bhoomi controversy – the largest and most controversial case in the history of modern India – in favor of the temple. The court ordered the Government of India to form a trust within three months and hand over the entire 2.77 acre disputed site to the trust to build the Ram temple there. The court also ordered handing over of a 5-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board at a prominent place in Ayodhya so that a mosque could be built there. According to the legal experts, the Supreme Court’s verdict does not stand to the test of justice and fairness both technically and legally. Former Supreme Court Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly says technically the Supreme Court must maintain the status quo of places of worship as of 1947, the year India got its independence. Hence, the Supreme Court does not have the right to decide the title on the basis of archeological evidences. If it happened, then the legality of thousands of religious places would be challenged.

If historical evidences are to be considered, the Supreme Court has upheld almost all the evidences of the Muslim party, but at the end it gave the verdict in favor of temple. Here is a list of claims of Muslims which the Supreme Court upheld in its verdict on the basis of the evidence:

1- The court acknowledged that the Babri Masjid was built in 1528 by Mir Baaqi, Babar’s commander. Therefore, this mosque stood in this place for about past five hundred years.
2- The mosque was not built by demolishing a temple. Nevertheless the mosque was not built on a vacant land. There was a structure beneath it. But the nature of that structure is unknown.
3- No archeological evidence of any temple was found beneath the mosque.
4- The Court also held that regular prayers were offered at the mosques between 1850 and 1949.
5- The Court held that the placing of statues inside the Babri Masjid was illegal.
6- The Court ruled that the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 was gross violation of law.

The most important aspect of the observations of Supreme Court is its acceptance that that the Babri Masjid was not built by demolishing a temple. This is a great victory for Muslims, because the Babri Masjid, which was used by a section as a symbol of oppression of Muslim rulers, was completely abolished by the Court.

The Supreme Court’s acknowledgment of all these facts were proof enough to deliver the verdict on the disputed site in favor of the mosque. There was no need for any further proofs and evidences. But the Supreme Court’s verdict in this regard went against its accepted facts. This verdict of the Supreme Court has severely damaged its reputation and stature.

This verdict looks more a settlement rather than a judgement based on facts because the terms of the three-member arbitration panel set up by Supreme Court itself to resolve this dispute outside the court in March this year was the same as was proclaimed by the Supreme Court in its verdict on 9 November. However, this judgment of the Court is against the historical facts and archaeological findings as observed by the honorable court itself. The judgment is also a cause of concern as it is not just the issue of one mosque, but according to a report, there are at least two thousand historical mosques in India claimed by extremist Hindu organizations. It is widely feared that current verdict of the Supreme Court could become a judicial precedent in this regard.

The historicity of Ayodhya city
Historically, not only the issue of Ram Janmabhoomi is a controversial one, but the mythical city of Ayodhya where the mythological personality Ram was born too enjoys the same status. A brief discussion is given here.

Ayodhya is a legendary city which has been mentioned in Hindu mythologies like Ramayana and Mahabharata. But is today’s Ayodhya and the legendary Ayodhya mentioned in Ramayana one and same? There are two opinions of historians in this regard. Historians including B. B. Lal and H. D. Sankalia, have identified the legendary Ayodhya with the present-day Ayodhya town. A section of historians have argued that the legendary Ayodhya of Ramayana is a purely mythical city, and is not same as the present-day Ayodhya. These scholars include M. C. Joshi, Hans T. Bakker, and a group of 25 historians from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), among others. According to them, the ancient name of the present Ayodhya city was Saketa. In the fourth century AD, it was renamed after the mythological city of Ayodhya.

The first party argues that in some Hindu religious books it is mentioned that the legendary city of Ayodhya was situated on the banks of the Sarayu River just like the present-day Ayodhya. In addition, in some ancient Hindu religious books, Ayodhya and Saketa have been used as two alternative names of a same city.

The second party has the following historical and archeological evidences to back their claim:

• According to the archaeological evidence, the earliest possible settlements at Ayodhya can be dated to 8th century BCE, while the Ramayana is set much earlier.
• Historians note that no place called Ayodhya is attested by any epigraphic or other archaeological evidence before the 2nd century CE. The earliest extant inscriptions mentioning a place called Ayodhya are from the Gupta period in 436 CE.
• The rise of the modern Ayodhya town as a centre of Rama worship is relatively recent, dating back to the 13th century. Several inscriptions dated between 5th and 8th centuries mention the town, but do not mention its association with Rama. The writings of Xuanzang (c. 602–664 CE), a Chinese tourist who toured the sub-continent in the 7th century AD and also visited Ayodhya, associate the town of Ayodhya with Buddhism. Evidence of Ayodhya city being the center of Jainism in the third and fourth centuries AD has also been discovered.
• The JNU historians agree that an ancient historical city called “Ayodhya” (Pali, Ayojjha or Ayujjha) existed, but argue that it was not same as the modern Ayodhya. Instead according to the ancient Buddhist texts, the legendary city of Ayodhya was located on the banks of the river Ganga. Therefore, the legendary Ayodhya cannot be applied to the present day Ayodhya.
• A large number of historians, including Ram Sharan Sharma, say that the dispute of Ram Janam Bhoomi occurred for the first time after the eighteenth century. According to them, Ayodhya seems to have emerged as a place of religious pilgrimage only in medieval times. The ancient Hindu religious books did not mention Ayodhya as a sacred city. For example, Vishnu Smriti lists as many as 52 places of pilgrimage but it does not include Ayodhya in this list. Sharma also notes that Tulsidas (1532-1623 AD), who was a great devotee of Ram and wrote the Ramcharitmanas in 1574 at Ayodhya, does not mention it as a place of pilgrimage.
  
  To summarize, there are hard historical, archeological and literary proofs and evidence in addition to the above which show that the current city of Ayodhya is not the legendary Ayodhya mentioned in Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
  
  The beginning of the conflict
  Now the question arises here is as to when did this conflict begin? In fact, the Babri Masjid / Ram Janmabhoomi dispute has its roots in the colonial era. The first communal clash took place in this regard in Ayodhya in 1850. This was the period when people of all religions in India were uniting throughout India to liberate India from the British. Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths fought the war of independence in 1857 AD under the leadership of Moghul Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. The British had realized that if the Hindus and Muslims of the country united against them, they would soon have to leave India. Therefore, the first seed of hatred they sowed here to break the Hindu Muslim unity was the creation of dispute of Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi, in which they gained success beyond their imagination. Hence, this strategy became part of their policy for the next hundred years. After the British, this policy was successfully adopted by their political successors (Hindu extremist organizations) and they succeeded in reaching to the power and achieving their goals on the basis of adoption of this policy today.
  
  From this perspective, the issue of Ram Janmabhoomi is neither a legal one nor it is a matter of astha or belief. Instead it is a political gimmick. The birth of a mythical personality in a legendary city on a mythical place could only be a myth not fact!! If Muslims would have petitioned in the Supreme Court on the historicity of Ayodhya city before petitioning the Babri Masjid – Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, the issue of Babri Masjid would have been resolved automatically.