India: Appeal to review the Ayodhya Judgement - Statement from SAHMAT | 16 Nov 2019

SAHMAT
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[16 November 2019

Statement

The Supreme Court’s judgement in the Ayodhya case delivered on 9 November 2019 has caused widespread concern among all those who have the interests of justice and fairness at heart.

The first source of concern is that the Court’s has delivered a judgement which has been made possible only by the criminal destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, which the Court itself has described as an “unlawful act†. No speculations over archaeological excavations on the site, on which the Court has so much relied, would have been possible without the previous destruction of the Masjid. Nor would it have been as easy for the Court to hand over the site to the Hindu side if the Masjid had still stood.

Moreover, the Court’s treatment of both archaeology and history seems to have been rather cavalier and one-sided. There is no iota of proof for the Court’s assumption that Muslims had ceased to pray in the Masjid in Mughal and Nawabi times. Nor is there any proof that Hindus anywhere before very late times believed that Lord Rama was born precisely at the site of Babri Masjid, which should, of course, not be confused with the belief that he was born in Ayodhya. Remarkably, the Court glosses over Tulsidas’s silence on the site of his birth.

Finally, the Court’s assigning to the Government of India the task of setting up a Hindu religious trust to build the future Rama temple on the Babri Masjid site implies that in the Court’s view it is the Government’s duty to cater to Hindu religious interests. This surely is hardly in consonance with the supposed secular nature of our state.

We, the undersigned, therefore, earnestly urge the Supreme Court to review its judgement.

Aban Raza

Achin Vinaik

Ahmad Raza

Alok Jain

Anand K Sahay

Angelie Multani

Anil Bhatti

Anil Chandra

Antara Dev Sen

Archana Prasad

Ashok Rao

Astad Daboo

Ayesha Kidwai

Badri Raina

C.P.Bhambri

C.P.Chandrasekhar

Chanchal Chauhan

Chirashree Das Gupta

D.N.Jha

Deepak Sanan

Dhirendra K Jha

Dinesh Abrol

Dunu Roy

Gargi Chakravartty

Geeta Kapur

Githa Hariharan

Indira Arjun Dev

Indira Chandrasekhar

Irfan Habib

Ishrat Alam

Jayati Ghosh

K. M. Shrimali

Kausar Wizarat

Kavita Singh

Keval Arora

Kumar Shahani

Lata Singh

Lima Kanungo

M.K.Raina

Madangopal Singh

Madhu Prasad

Madhushree Dutta

Manini Chatterjee

Maya Krishna Rao

Mihir Bhattacharya

MMP Singh

Mohan Rao

Mohd Abuzar

Mukul Dube

N.K.Sharma

Nadeem Rizavi

Nasir Tyabji

Nikhil Kumar

Nina Rao

Pamela Philipose

ParthivShah

Prabhat Patnaik

Prabhat Shukla

Pradeep Saxena

Prashant Mukherjee

Praveen Jha

Puneet Nicholas Yadav

Radhika Menon

Radhika Singha

Rahul Roy

Rajendra Sharma

Rajinder Arora

Rajni B Arora

Rakhi Sehgal

Ram Rahman

Ramesh Dixit

Ramesh Rawat

Ranjani Mazumdar

Rekha Awasthi

Rimli Bhattacharya

Roger Alexender

Rohit Azad

S K Pandey

Sadiq Zafar

Shakti Kak

Sharmila Samant

Sherna Dastur

Shireen Moosvi

Sidhique Kappan

Smita Gupta

Sohail Hashmi

Sudhanva Deshpande

Sudhanva Deshpande

Sudhir Chandra

Sukumar Muralidharan

Sumangala Damodaran

Supriya Varma

Svati Joshi

Utsa Patnaik

Valay Singh

Vandana Rag

Vanita Nayak

Vijaya Venkatraman

Vikas Rawal

Vishwamohan Jha

Vivan Sundaram

Wajahat Habibullah

Zoya Hasan