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.