*Sightings* 10/7/2010

*Hindu-Muslim Dispute Over Holy Site*

– Elsa J. Marty

Last week a high court in India announced its verdict on a disputed holy
site in the city of Ayodhya. There is perhaps no place in India that better
symbolizes contemporary Hindu-Muslim tension. Many Hindus believe Lord Ram,
the hero of the *Ramayana*, was born there. But the exact site now
considered his birthplace, Ram Janambhoomi, has been home to a mosque, Babri
Masjid, since the early sixteenth century. Hindus and Muslims have been in a
legal battle for the property for the last sixty years. In 1992, however,
Hindu extremists destroyed the mosque, and riots erupted throughout the
country, killing more than 2,000 people. A commission spent seventeen years
investigating the course of events and finally released a report last year
indicting leading members of the BJP, the Hindu nationalist political party,
for their role in planning the demolition of the mosque. But the report was
tabled in Parliament and has not affected the proceedings of the criminal
case.

So on September 30, 2010, when the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court
issued its judgment on the civil suit for the property title of the
contested site, Indians were paying attention. The country had braced itself
for the worst, and 200,000 security personnel were deployed in northern
India to prevent rioting. The judges’ ruling came as a surprise to all
parties: they ruled that the land should be divided equally between the
Muslims, Hindus, and the Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu sect of ascetics devoted to
Lord Ram.

Their decision to split the property three ways has been heralded by many as
a brilliant compromise and as an opportunity for reconciliation among Hindus
and Muslims. Most of the press has focused on the absence of violence,
citing the public’s response as though it were a litmus test for the
worthiness of the legal decision.

But not all are content with the verdict. Both sides have vowed to appeal
the decision to the Supreme Court, hoping to obtain full possession of the
land. While few people have read all 8,189 pages of the court’s ruling, it
is clear that the case sets an alarming precedent for the role of religion
in legal matters. The two main issues at stake in the case were: whether
Lord Ram was actually born at the disputed site, and whether the mosque had
been built upon a demolished temple.

On the first question, despite the fact that belief in his historical
existence is purely a matter of faith and cannot be legally or historically
verified, the three judges ruled unanimously that Lord Ram was indeed born
at the disputed site, beneath the central dome of the mosque. The place of
his birth was treated as both a juristic person (not a natural person) and a
deity, because, the judges ruled that the  ¢â‚¬Å“spirit of [the] divine ever
remains present every where at all times for any one to invoke at any shape
or form in accordance with his own aspirations and it can be shapeless and
formless also. ¢â‚¬ 

On the second question, the judges were divided 2-1. Basing their
conclusions upon a controversial archaeological study, the two Hindu judges
ruled that the mosque had been built upon a destroyed temple, although the
third judge, a Muslim, dissented on this point. Thus the majority decision
stated that  ¢â‚¬Å“the disputed structure cannot be treated as a mosque as it came
into existence against the tenets of Islam. ¢â‚¬ 

The general consensus among analysts is that political considerations
affected the judges’ decision more than the legal framework. An editorial in
*The Hindu*, a leading Indian newspaper, called it  ¢â‚¬Å“a compromise calculated
to hold the religious peace rather than an exercise of profound legal
reflection. ¢â‚¬  But will it lead to improved Hindu-Muslim relations and a
lasting peace? Romila Thapar, a distinguished historian of early India,
well-known for her criticism of Hindu nationalist politics, says no.  ¢â‚¬Å“The
verdict has annulled respect for history and seeks to replace history with
religious faith. True reconciliation can only come when there is confidence
that the law in this country bases itself not just on faith and belief, but
on evidence, ¢â‚¬  she wrote in *The Hindu*. The court’s ruling may have
prevented an immediate outbreak of violence, but at what cost to the rule of
law?

*References*

Editorial,  ¢â‚¬Å“Intriguing compromise could
work, ¢â‚¬ 
*The Hindu*, October 1, 2010.

Romila Thappar,  ¢â‚¬Å“The verdict on Ayodhya: a historian’s
perspective, ¢â‚¬ 
*The Hindu*, October 2, 2010.

The full text of the Ram Janmbhoomi Babri Masjid Judgment from the High
Court of Allahabad is available here .

Elsa J. Marty is a third-year Masters of Divinity student at the University
of Chicago Divinity School and has studied interfaith relations in India.

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Centerat the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.