Supreme nonsense

Governance Now, Sept 16-30

The Centre’s Ayodhya nervousness is way beyond comprehension

All this fuss over the Ayodhya verdict would suggest that there is a real threat to peace and communal amity in the country or that there is a real possibility of an out-of-court settlement to the six-decade-long dispute. By the time you read this, the verdict would probably be out and we would have known how badly that impacted us or helped in finding a solution. But for now, it seems the government and the court are over-reacting to a future event that may turn out to be nothing more than another milestone in the history of the dispute.

True, we are not privy to any “intelligence input” to assert one way or the other about the possible fallout of the verdict but there is not even a faint hint that something like this exists to warrant some extraordinary preventive measures that the government has taken, like banning bulk SMS and MMS services in the entire country and flag marches by the security forces in Ayodhya and elsewhere. The central government sent 52 companies of paramilitary forces to UP and stationed hundreds more at strategic locations in various states a week ahead of September 24, the day on which the Allahabad high court was to pronounce its verdict.

The supreme court stepped in where no intervention was required. The Allahabad high court was set to deliver its verdict after rejecting an appeal to defer it on the ground that one more chance be given for an out-of-court settlement. Justice RV Ravindran of the two-member apex court bench that heard a similar plea and stayed the Allahabad high court verdict in an interim order, was right in his observation that “let the verdict come; one way or the other.….the matter will come up before us (the supreme court)”. But a stay had to be granted as per the convention because the other judge in the bench, Justice HL Gokhale, differed and supported the plea for out-of-court settlement. Interestingly, this plea had not come from the main parties to the dispute. On the contrary, the main parties and the political forces behind the festering trouble were keen on the verdict. A stay has only deferred
the already delayed verdict.

As for the government, it seems it wants us to believe that indeed riots would break out in the city of Ayodhya and elsewhere if the verdict is given or that would be the normal way for us to react whether or not we have moved far away from the
volatile days of late ’80s and early ’90s.