The decisions of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind to file review petitions against the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi case tells us two things: one, many Muslim organisations, egged on by Leftist trouble-makers, want to keep the flame of communal tensions alive for their own narrow purposes; and two, they will remain in perpetual denial about the destruction of temples during Islamic rule.

The first point is obvious, since the AIMPLB explicitly promised to abide by any court verdict repeatedly before 9 November. By now changing its tune when the verdict went the other way, it is clearly guilty of making false promises. Its decision to seek a review of the unanimous verdict of a five-judge bench, with one sitting chief justice and two future chief justices, is driven by mala fide intentions.

But the larger worry is that Muslims will be in implicit denial of the depredations of former Islamic rulers. This does not augur well for the future of Hindu-Muslim relations.

Soon after the verdict, the AIMPLB made the unambiguous claim that “the land of the mosque belongs to Allah and under the Sharia it cannot be given to anybody”. As this writer pointed out in an earlier article, India is not governed by the Sharia but by the Indian Constitution. The more worrisome aspect of this statement is that Muslims will not even acknowledge the reality that a mosque was built over the remains of a temple – and this is the case with hundreds of mosques in India.

One can always challenge a court judgement on technical grounds, but what the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi case did was to use the law of adverse possession creatively to deliver civilisational justice to Hindus, who were wronged by the actions of bigoted and iconoclastic rulers in the past. These wrongs continue to be denied in the present by their religious successors – present-day Islamic organisations.

Just as Hindus can never remain in denial about caste injustices, Muslims can’t remain in denial of their own past, when temples were destroyed by bigoted rulers.

The Jamiat and the AIMPLB have a legal right to challenge any Supreme Court verdict, but they have no right to deny Hindus civilisational justice by refusing to acknowledge past injustices. The Ram Janmabhoomi verdict was minor recompense for widespread destruction of Hindu lives and temple properties in the past. It shows that they are unwilling to truly move towards a healthier relationship with Hindus of present-day India.

The Supreme Court should not only reject the review petitions peremptorily, but also deliver a stinging rebuke to the parties that want to deny the wrongs of the past.

Civilisational Justice

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