Renewed hope: Will Ayodhya mediation effort finally bear fruit?

Efforts in finding an out-of-court solution to the Ayodhya dispute through mediation are older than the razing of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992. The latest effort by the Supreme Court is a rare one that carries legal sanctity; the players involved in previous attempts towards a settlement dispute both veracity of circumstances and their respective roles.

In 2017, a Bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar had mooted the idea of an out-of-court settlement among the rival parties because “these are issues of religion involving sentiments”. It was stillborn as none of the parties showed interest.

In March this year, the court again proposed a court-monitored medication process. It appointed a panel, comprising former Supreme Court judge Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla as its head and included Art of Living’s Ravi Shankar and senior advocate Sriram Panchu. The effort has had a predictable denouement.

In 1986, the then Kanchi Shankaracharya and then president of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi, better known as Ali Miyan, initiated talks to resolve the dispute, but they were stillborn.

At its national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh in June 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) adopted the “Palampur resolution” to build a Ram temple where the Babri mosque stood. Next year, Lal Krishna Advani announced his Ram Rath Yatra. 

At that time, the V P Singh government was at the Centre and the BJP supported it from outside, along with the Left parties.

Singh and his advisers knew from the beginning the government was unlikely to last beyond a year or two, and mooted a three-member panel. The effort fell flat as the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) refused to participate.

Sworn-in as prime minister with outside support of the Congress in November 1990, Chandra Shekhar tried to pick up from where his predecessor had left. The committee had 10 members each from the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the BMAC. The government encouraged the two outfits to constitute sub-panels on archaeology, history, law and revenue, and religious records with experts of their choice. Subodh Kant Sahay was part of these efforts.

However, the Congress soon withdrew support to the government to pave way for a Lok Sabha election in the summer of 1991. Some claim that Rajiv Gandhi, during the time he was out of office, was keen to find a solution.

It was after all Rajiv who in 1986 ordered opening the gates of the Babri mosque, which some, like his then ministerial colleague Arif Mohammed Khan believed, was his balancing act after bringing a law in Parliament to overturn the SC’s Shah Bano verdict that year.

Rajiv was assassinated during the Lok Sabha campaign in May. Before the fateful day of December 6, 1992, P V Narasimha Rao, the then prime minister, also attempted to bring the two warring sides, the Sangh Parivar and the Muslim religious leadership, to an amicable solution through back-channel talks, but with little success.

In January 2002, Atal Bihari Vajpayee revived the Ayodhya cell in the Prime Minister’s Office. Such a cell was to ostensibly get the two sides to talk. The VHP believed it would remove obstacles for early construction of the temple, and the Opposition accused the Vajpayee government of stoking the controversy again to derive electoral benefits in then-upcoming Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

In 2002 and 2003, the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi also tried to mediate, as did the Dalai Lama in January 2004. The Dalai Lama said he believed the Ayodhya controversy was “a temporary aberration” in India’s centuries-old tradition of tolerance and respect for all beliefs.

The Buddhist leader had said the dispute can be resolved through mutual trust, mutual faith and mutual respect. Advani, the home minister in the Vajpayee government, had welcomed the Tibetan leader’s appeal and said the government will support and facilitate dialogue. However, neither side showed much interest as the Lok Sabha elections loomed. The Vajpayee government lost power a few months later.

There is now renewed hope with the SC stating last week that the hearings in the case will end by October 18, but also asking the three-member panel to restart its earlier effort towards mediation and that, too, in secrecy.