Daily Times

One of the things I have truly admired about India in the past was the secular nature of its superior judiciary. The verdict delivered on Saturday by the Indian Supreme Court has thoroughly disabused me of my fanciful notion about this one bastion of secularism in what is otherwise a Hindu majoritarian state masquerading as a secular democracy ever since its inception. It is quite another matter that our own country Pakistan has since 1956 not even bothered to keep up appearances of state’s impartiality to faith. I suppose there is some brownie points for being honest about one’s bigotry.

Let us look at the verdict of Supreme Court of “secular” India which makes for exciting reading: “Suit 5 has been held to be maintainable at the behest of the first plaintiff (the deity of Lord Ram) who is a juristic person.” How can a deity – any deity for that matter- be a juristic person? Apparently it goes back to an 1887 judgment of the Bombay High Court which held an idol to be a juristic person. The judgment in paragraph 7 further reads: “A suit was instituted in 1989 by a next friend on behalf of the deity (?Bhagwan Shri Ram Virajman?) and the birth-place of Lord Ram (?Asthan Shri Ram Janmabhumi?). The suit is founded on the claim that the law recognizes both the idol and the birth-place as juridical entities. The claim is that the place of birth is sanctified as an object of worship, personifying the divine spirit of Lord Ram.” This is actual language from the highest court in “secular” India. So needless to say Plaintiff No.1 of Suit No.5 is someone called “Ramlalla Virajman”. One can be forgiven for thinking that this is an actual person. This is explained in paragraph 125 of the judgment as under: “For the devotees of Lord Ram, the first plaintiff in Suit 5, ?Bhagwan Sri Ram Virajman? is the embodiment of Lord Ram and constitutes the resident deity of Ram Janmabhumi. The faith and belief of the Hindu devotees is a matter personal to their conscience and it is not for this Court to scrutinise the strength of their convictions or the rationality of their beliefs beyond a prima facie examination to ascertain whether such beliefs are held in good faith.”

I can only imagine what wonderful new ideas our own judges are getting from this. After all in the Indian film “Oh my God”, Bhagwan himself (or herself) was a litigant. As a lawyer I had no idea that the reality in Indian courts is so close to Bollywood storylines but I shudder to think of its implications for jurisprudence in India and even in Pakistan, which often gets these wonderful ideas about law and religion from our otherwise hostile neighbour.

Rationality, 21st century modernity and the English Common Law cannot dent the hold of superstition and bigotry on the average South Asian mind

The final direction in the suit thus reads: “The right of the plaintiff in Suit 1 to worship at the disputed property is affirmed subject to any restrictions imposed by the relevant authorities with respect to the maintenance of peace and order and the performance of orderly worship.” Thankfully the plaintiff in Suit 1 is not a religious deity but a worshipper who filed the said suit in 1950 called Gopal Singh Visaharad. This gentleman should be above 100 years old now. For Suit 5 the direction reads: “Suit 5 is held to be maintainable at the behest of the first plaintiff who is represented by the third plaintiff.” Again the first plaintiff (Bhagwan Shri Ram Virajman aka Ramlalla Virajman) is a divine deity who apparently filed the suit by giving a special power of attorney to next friend (who by the way has since passed away). The Sunni Waqf Board’s suit was also held maintainable and as relief they have been allotted 5 Acres of land in the alternative as relief to build a new mosque.

These conclusions have been arrived at through an apparently careful exposition of facts, which are as under:

Fact No.1: There is no archaeological evidence for the site being the birthplace of Plaintiff No.1 (Bhagwan Ramlalla Virajman aka Bhagwan Shri Ram Virajman) in Suit 5.

Fact No.2: An unspecified architectural structure may or may not have existed when Mir Baqi built the Babri Mosque in 1528.

Fact No.3: Mir Baqi was a Shia Muslim and commander of Babur’s forces who built the Babri Mosque in 1528.

Fact No. 4: No evidence of destruction of a temple was found.

To my less sophisticated mind this would leave no doubt that the matter to be dealt was entirely between Sunnis and Shias. Not so to the superior and seemingly infinite wisdom of the Indian Supreme Court. The Shia Waqf Board’s claim was dismissed. Chief Justice RanjanGogoi is reported to have said: “We have dismissed the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Shia Waqf board challenging the order of 1946 Faizabad Court. Babri Mosque was built by Mir Baqi. It is inappropriate for the Court to get into area of theology.”What an extraordinary statement for his Lordship to make. Lord Ram has legal personality and arrayed as Plaintiff. Several paragraphs of the judgment dealt with Hindu idea of Supreme Being. However it is inappropriate for the Court to get into the area of theology when it comes to a matter of Shia and Sunni difference.

To keep the long story short – the disputed land has been awarded to Hindus. Sunni Muslims have gotten 5 acres of land in the alternative. Shia Muslims have been left out in the cold (despite having the strongest claim) though news reports say that they are being a good sport and see the defeat of the Sunni Muslim as consolation for their own defeat. Indian secularism has been preserved. Hindus got what they wanted. Sunnis were compensated. Shias are happy that Sunnis did not get the disputed land. Everybody wins.

Well not really. What was defeated in the judgment was common sense, rationality and the very idea of modernity. In de-apotheosis of Lord Ram from a deity to a juristic person lies the damning moral of the story: Rationality, 21st century modernity and the English Common Law cannot dent the hold of superstition and bigotry on the average South Asian mind. This judgment is reminiscent of the 1993 judgment by Pakistani Supreme Court, which made Islam a matter of copyright akin to Coca Cola. Reasonable classification you say? Yes very reasonable. Let deities be parties to suits from now on.

The writer is is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan