Babri Masjid

The Ayodhya verdict favours politics over history. It bypasses the settled principles of legal scrutiny in adjudicating land conflicts. Such a verdict has detrimental ramifications for democracy and constitutional values. 

Responding to Abhijit Sarkar’s “Rhodes Will Not Fall Alone” the authors argue that the aim of their campaign has been the opposite of “sanitising history.” The campaign wants to begin and sustain a long overdue conversation in Britain about its colonial past.

Fearful of an adverse judicial verdict, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and others of their ilk are now keen on an outof- court settlement of the Ayodhya dispute which will put an end to the court cases against them. But the rest of the country should keep in mind two considerations. First, a settlement with the 'Sangh parivar' leaders can never be relied upon. Secondly, such a settlement will be at the cost of granting immunity to those guilty of the demolition of the Babri mosque and all the ensuing hatred and bloodshed.

Unlike any other political entity in the country, the BJP is an arm, a front organisation, and an extension of another organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In the Eighties there was a fundamental transformation in the mass character of the party: on the heels of the VHP's test runs with emotive symbols the party cashed in to reap a rich harvest of votes. When these proved inadequate to reach power without back-pedalling the core issues, a compromise was arrived at. The issues were deferred but never renounced. They were put on the shelf, ready to be activated when the time was ripe. Such a time had clearly arrived by mid-March 2002 for a variety of reasons.