Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram said the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgement became a right one because both sides accepted it and not the other way round.
Launching party colleague Salman Khurshid’s book Sunrise over Ayodhya along with senior leader Digvijay Singh, he observed, “The jurisprudential basis of the Ayodhya judgement is very narrow, but due to the passage of time both sides have accepted it. Because both sides have accepted it, it has become a right judgement and not the other way round.”
Speaking earlier, Mr. Singh noted that many expected a widespread reaction to the verdict after the court gave the disputed land to Hindus. “But over the years, people have become so fed up with this dispute that they wanted to move on,” he pointed out. Reconciliation could be the only way forward and it was also the essence of the book. He also spoke about Nelson Mandela’s “Truth and Reconciliation” Commission to maintain harmony.
Countering Mr. Singh’s argument, Mr. Chidambaram stated Mandela had promised truth and reconciliation, but first the truth must be told and then there could be reconciliation. “The truth is that what happened on 6th December 1992 was terribly wrong.”
‘Incident defied SC’
It was an incident that debased the Constitution, defied the Supreme Court and created an unbridgeable chasm between the two communities, he asserted.
“It is perfectly right to say that a wrong has been committed but please reconcile. But I think it is patronising to tell the people of this country, over 200 million Muslims that please reconcile because that’s what it is!”. It was for each citizen of the country to decide whether the Ayodhya judgement emptied the soul of the Constitution. “Everyday, there are occurrences that empty a bit of the soul of the Constitution and yet no one in high authority is willing to stand up and speak for this grave debasement and denigration of our Constitution,” he remarked.
“While we proclaim we are secular, many of us are ultimately submitting to so-called pragmatism,” he concluded.
