the ayodhya verdict

​The Times of India editorial page carries as many as three write-ups that are critical of the Ayodhya verdict.
Opines Omair Ahmad, “The whole judgement validated the idea that violence based on faith can offer you a legitimate locus standi on property you want to claim.”
Ahmad’s grievance with violence is restricted to one party alone. He forgets the wee bit of violence that was wreaked some 450 years ago when Big B & gang went marauding over the Gangetic plains and undertook their little architectural venture in Ayodhya.
Next comes Shobha De. She intends to denigrate the very process of jurisdiction when she wonders aloud “What if there would have been a woman on that Constitution Bench which delivered the historic Ayodhya verdict?” Madam of course doesn’t enumerate the specific qualities which a lady judge brings to the table (or bench) and a male judge doesn’t. Erudition in law, integrity, objectivity; these are the basic qualities we expect in a judge. And I like to think that none of them are sex specific.
And finally, we have Aakar Patel. Mr Patel is “..unable to figure out the logic and the jurisprudence that links the findings of the court and its conclusions.” He has a point. But what he fails to acknowledge is that the case wasn’t one that could’ve been strictly circumscribed within unequivocal tenets of constitutional law. ANY ‘conclusion’ that the judges would have arrived at would have been similarly dislocated from the ‘findings.’
And yet, despite all the nitpicking, no critic mentions the most relevant bit of legal juggling that was perpetrated. Shifting away from the High Court’s stance, the apex court declared the disputed area to be one single chunk. Thereupon, whatever transpired in one part could be taken to have transpired in the whole of it.
Anyway, all that is behind us now. In philosophy and other subjective realms, it is rare that complex problems get solved to the satisfaction of all. They are usually ‘dissolved’ and left at that. What ultimately matters now is that a cantankerous thorn has been dislodged from the flesh of Indian polity. It’s time all of us moved on.