‘To solve Ayodhya, court had to step out of law book’

LUCKNOW - The first bench of the Allahabad High Court that heard the Ayodhya petition in 1989 had made clear that it was doubtful if the questions involved could be solved by judicial process, says one of the three judges who heard the case then.

The court felt it would have to step out of the parameters of the law book to tackle the issues involved, Justice S.H.A. Raza (now retired) told IANS here Sunday, three days after the Lucknow bench of the high court gave its verdict.

The bench ruled Sep 30 that the disputed land was to be divided among three parties - two-thirds to two Hindu litigant parties, and one third to a Muslim group. It also said that the Babri mosque had been built on a site that was the birthplace of Hindu god Ram.

However, in 1989, when the case first came before the high court, it was held that a judicial process may not be able to solve all the complex issues.

“It is doubtful that some of the questions involved in the suit are solvable by judicial process”, was the clear cut written observation of the first three-judge special bench constituted to hear the case (Sunni Central Waqf Board vs Gopal Singh Visharad - Civil Miscellaneous Application of 1989) in July 1989.

“Yes we felt that way because sure enough it was far beyond the capability of any court of law to determine whether Bhagwan Ram was born at the disputed site or not,” Raza, a member of the three-judge special bench, said. The others on the bench were Allahabad High Court Chief Justice K.C. Agarwal and Justice U.C. Srivastava.

“I went through the Valmiki Ramayan and stated that even though there was no doubt about Ram being born in Ayodhya, it was not easy to conclusively specify the particular spot where he took birth,” pointed out Raza.

Raza has the distinction of being associated for the longest period of five years with this special bench, which was constituted and re-constituted 13 times over the 21-year pendency of the case. As many as 18 judges heard the case of whom 15 retired before the final verdict could come Sep 30.

“It was therefore understandable that even the present bench of Justice S.U. Khan, Justice Sudhir Agrawal and Justice Dharam Veer Sharma had to step out of the parameters of the law book. Otherwise it may not have been possible for them to give a final verdict,” Justice Raza said.

“It was the best that the judges could have done under the prevailing circumstances and after taking the larger picture into account.”

He sought to point out: “However, my only worry is that while it is not unusual for judges to sometimes take extraneous factors into account for finalizing a judgment in writ petitions, this is not permissible in civil suits, where one is required to confine oneself to the four walls of the rule book. And the Ayodhya case was a civil suit filed to establish the title over a piece of land.”

The judge, however hastened to add: “I cannot say how the Supreme Court would react to this, but one can clearly see that the judges were left with little choice but to move a few steps beyond the legal parameters to ensure a balance in the verdict, which was undeniably responsible for preventing any kind of emotional outburst from either side, thereby saving the nation from a repeat of 1992.”

This is also highlighted on Page 323 of A.G. Noorani’s well known book, “Babri Masjid: 1528-2003″).