Ayodhya verdict gets mixed review at Durban meet

DURBAN - The Ayodhya verdict was a hot topic at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas-Africa (PBD-Africa) here, with a majority of the diaspora giving a thumbs up to the court ruling, while a few expressed disappointment.

KwaZulu Natal’s former sports minister A. Rajabansi told IANS that he was “very pleased” with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) reaction to the verdict.

Rajabansi said: “I think the court decision is very good. I am very pleased with the BJP’s reaction. The dispute is settled and many lives spared. Let this be the new beginning to secularism.”

MP of the opposition party Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) Loretta Rajkumar also expressed support for the verdict. Rajkumar told IANS that the court decision “was a good decision to quickly defuse the unrest Hindus and Muslims shared”.

“Division shows that we are divided people. Going by history there should have been a temple built there. Everybody knows it had been there. This might look like it is unity, but I don’t think so,” former journalist Mahomed Farook Khan told IANS.

The PBD-Africa is being held here by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in partnership with the provincial government of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), focusing on the Indian diaspora in Africa.

Justice Ahmed Moosa Ebrahim from Zimbabwe, who was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2004, said the ruling - dividing the disputed land in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh among two Hindu litigant parties and a Muslim group - was an “understandable attempt” by the court.

Ebrahim told IANS: “I consider that I would be ill advised to make comments on the nature of the verdict without knowing the full account of rationale of what the judgment is. I would however make this comment that from a distance it would appear to be an understandable attempt by the court to come to a conclusion which gives something to everyone.”

In Thursday’s Ayodhya verdict by the Allahabad High Court, the land was divided in three equals; one third to the Hindus, one third to the Muslims and rest one third to the Nirmohi Akhara.

The 16th century Babri mosque was razed by Hindu mobs Dec 6, 1992 - an incident that triggered widespread communal clashes killing some 2,000 people in the country and that has left deep scars on the country’s psyche and its secular philosophy.

(Lakshmi Krishnakumar can be contacted at lakshmi.k@ians.in)