Opinion - Editorials

Rule of law must prevail

THREE DAYS AHEAD of March 15, with the dubious `peace initiative' of the Kanchi Sankaracharya having run aground and the Vajpayee Government looking up to the Judiciary for a direction, the fate of the `bhoomi puja', which the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas (RJN) and the VHP are determined to hold on the Government-acquired land in Ayodhya, hinges on what the Supreme Court will have to say on Wednesday (March 13) when the two related petitions that are now before it are to be heard. Coming as it did after a series of official moves that clearly pointed to an unseemly hurry on the part of the Government to act upon the Kanchi seer's formula, the Centre's politically correct decision to go by the apex court's directive marked a significant strategic shift. Given its obvious merit of sounding eminently fair and just, there can be no better way for the BJP leadership to fend off criticism by the Opposition as also by those NDA constituents and friends (such as the TDP, the Trinamool Congress and the Biju Janata Dal) who are totally against the `bhoomi puja' — even `symbolic' — or any other activity on the acquired land, pending the court verdict in the title suits related to the disputed site.

At the end of the day, the commitment which the temple protagonists are supposed to have given in writing to the Kanchi Sankaracharya — that they would `abide' by the court verdict on the disputed site — stands rubbished, with the VHP and the RJN, after some flipflops and prevarication last week, harking back to their well-known stand that the Judiciary has no place in matters of faith. Indeed, the fact that the VHP had `agreed' to be bound by judicial opinion was touted as a remarkable `achievement' of the Kanchi seer's mission, the unstated suggestion being that its `magnanimous gesture' needs to be `reciprocated' by allowing the `bhoomi puja' on March 15 as planned and by making available the `undisputed' part of the acquired land for temple construction. Nothing could be more preposterous than the argument that one has to be rewarded for `consenting' to honour the verdict of a court of law. At the moment, the point at issue has little to do with the substantive temple-versus-mosque question. It is limited strictly to the upholding of the rule of law in the face of the VHP's brazenly defiant approach to commencing temple construction on the acquired land around the disputed site. As such, all the effort ought to have been directed towards stopping these intransigent elements in their tracks. Instead, the Government, in the name of defusing `tension', went along with their designs, and this it did by inappropriately getting a spiritual leader like the Kanchi Sankaracharya involved in an issue which essentially falls in the temporal domain.

On top of it all is the apparent lack of credibility in the whole exercise, what with the All India Muslim Personal Law Board's serious complaints about the absence of a written assurance that the temple plan would be altered to exclude the `disputed site' (or of a blueprint thereof) in the event of the verdict going against the temple protagonists. In retrospect, it would seem that the AIMPLB has been led up the garden path by getting it involved in a `negotiation' that seemed primarily aimed at facilitating and legitimising the obdurate VHP's law-defying plan to go ahead with the temple construction, come what may. Small wonder then that the AIMPLB has rejected the Kanchi seer's formula, even while refraining from shutting the doors on further parleys for ever. For now, however, the entire focus will be on the judicial determination of the constitutionality of VHP's and the RJN's planned `bhoomi puja' on the acquired land and the related issue of their claim to possession of the so called `undisputed' land even before the pending suits in the Allahabad High Court are decided. Surely, in making the determination, the larger national purpose of upholding India's secular moorings and acknowledging the hideous wrong committed on December 6, 1992 — objectives sought to be served by the 1993 Act — must not be given short shrift.

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