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Abdicating responsibility?

THE UNSEEMLY HURRY palpable in the Kanchi Sankaracharya's latest initiative for bringing about a negotiated settlement of the Ayodhya issue provides a throwback to March 2002 when the seer was set on a similar mission by the Vajpayee regime to help it find a way out of the predicament caused by the law-defying `bhoomi puja' threat held out by the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas and the VHP. That his so-called peace mission, the basic objective of which was to facilitate the commencement of temple construction without waiting for the court verdict in title suits, did not succeed is recent history. Now, the Kanchi seer, at the behest of the Government, has again set about working for a peaceful resolution and this, significantly, has come at a time when excavation work at the disputed site, undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India under court orders for any evidence of a temple having existed prior to the building of the demolished Babri Masjid, is proceeding apace, with the possibility of an early judicial verdict. Also noteworthy is that there appears to be a conscious attempt by the Kanchi Acharya, evidently with the blessing of the official establishment, to keep the VHP out of the picture — at least for now. As a tactic, this may have its own rationale but whether it ultimately pays off or proves counter-productive remains to be seen.

Surprisingly for an issue that has assumed such major proportions, there is a general lack of transparency not just about the components of the `compromise formula' mooted but also the identity of various personalities (among the stakeholders on both sides) the Kanchi seer has been consulting and confiding in. The one thing that is clear is that the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) is the one he has recognised as the key, if not the sole, interlocutor on behalf of the minority community. Whether the AIMPLB finds the formula (yet to be made public but communicated to it by him) acceptable will be known only by July 6. But, whatever be its response, there is a fundamental flaw in the hypothesis that the spiritual body, which has its own place and power in its demarcated domain, can appropriate to itself the authority to speak on behalf of and commit the entire community to any pact on issue such as Ayodhya that has become — particularly in the context of the national shame perpetrated on December 6, 1992 — critically important for upholding the country's image as a pluralist, secular and democratic polity. To reiterate a point, replete as both the Hindu and Muslim communities are with sects and subsects professing allegiance to one `spiritual' leader or another, there can be no single spiritual authority, however eminent or venerable, whose writ may be said to run through the entire community and across the country. For this reason, the seemingly salutary suggestion that `Ayodhya' be sorted out by spiritual leaders of the two communities seems wholly unrealistic.

More fundamentally, the crucial issues at stake in the Ayodhya imbroglio, as it has evolved over the decades, have very little to do with religion and the temple issue cannot be treated as just a matter of faith and therefore outside the law of the land. On the contrary, the question relates to the primary responsibility a modern state committed to secularism and liberal values has to uphold the rule of law and ensure that the rights of all religious groups are protected, and in particular that the rights of the minorities are not trampled upon by majoritarian impulses. As such, by getting a sectarian religious personage like the Kanchi seer to play the role of a key interlocutor on the plea that the issue is best decided by the spiritual leaders of the two communities involved, the BJP-led ruling coalition has only abdicated its Constitutional responsibility. Given that all the Government-inspired efforts at a negotiated settlement proceed from the premise that a Ram temple be built at the site where the Babri Masjid had stood, the Vajpayee regime has only further exposed its partisanship that has been evident in its various responses to the VHP's provocative campaigns on the Ram temple front.

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