NRI authors hail SC's Ayodhya verdict, say it will strengthen India's social fabric

A day after the Supreme Court announced its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, some NRI authors on Sunday lauded the judgment, saying it will strengthen India's social fabric.

The Hindi authors, who had come to attend the Tagore International Literature & Arts Festival in Bhopal, expressed hope that the verdict will help in improving relations between the two communities.

The apex court in a unanimous verdict on Saturday cleared the way for the construction of a Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and directed the Centre to allot a five-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a mosque.

Writer Divya Mathur, who has worked at the Indian High Commission in London and at the Nehru Centre there, said most Indians settled in the UK would be happy with the decision as it would increase social harmony in India.

Echoing similar sentiments, Kavita Vachkanvi, a writer from Houston in the US, said with the decision, a historical wrong was corrected.

Meanwhile, expressing apprehensions over the SC judgment, Vice Chancellor of Nalsar University of Law Prof Faizan Mustafa said the decision is "self contradictory and will cause problems in the future".

"The court placed too much burden of providing evidence on one side and asked it to prove that it had exclusive authority over the land from 1528 to 1857," he said.

"The top court has said that there were a lot of violations in 1949 and Muslims were not allowed to offer namaz in the mosque. When you have accepted it as a mosque, it is natural that namaz was offered there. If namaz was not offered there, the responsibility to prove it should have been on the other side," Mustafa said.

He said the SC has shown practical understanding and has resolved such a big issue but for a secular constitutional democracy, this decision does not seem to be in line with provisions of the law.

"The court has taken into consideration the practical reality. Even if the decision would have been in favour of the Sunni Waqf Board, it would have been impossible to build a mosque there. Resolving the issue, the court has given the disputed land to a trust to build a temple there. I expect this conflict would come to an end now," the professor added.