India

Moving on from the Unholy Mess to Holiness?

GRK Murty
To the surprise of many, the honorable judges of the Allahabad
High Court have at last pronounced their judgment, a judgment
that was awaited by the whole nation for almost six decades
with bated breath, a judgment that has afforded an
opportunity to the government—which, in its alertness to stem
any communal violence, had deployed 20 companies of central
paramilitary forces, 800 constables, 150 inspectors, and 30
officers in Lucknow alone, while keeping the paramilitary forces
ready at 16 locations that are closer to airports across the
country, along with AN 32 transport aircraft of the Indian Air
Force for instant deployment anywhere should any religious
disturbance arise following the Ayodhya verdict—to heave a
sigh of relief.

Unsurprisingly, the common man on the street has exhibited

incredible serenity in his/her reaction to the court’s
pronouncement—two of the three judges ruled that the site
should be divided among the three litigants. The judgment
appears to push for a closure of the Ayodhya conflict, which has
had the nation in the grip of communal tensions of the worst
kind for the past 60 years, and march forward to build a new
India. Political leaders of all hues too have risen above their
stated ideology and opportunism to call for peace and respect
for the verdict.

But it is the elite, who, instead of paving the way for soothing
the ruffled feelings, if any, of the common man, have created a
cacophony over the verdict: some in the electronic media have
said that the verdict is like a ‘Panchayat judgment’; some have
termed it as a judgment that relied more on faith rather than
on the fact of law; some newspapers screamed, “Two-thirds of
land to Hindus and one-third to Muslims”; yet others shouted,
“The court has pronounced a dangerous judgment where a
deity has a preeminent claim over law.” They simply failed to
see it as a means to end the 60-year-old litigation that has
seized the nation in a worst religious conflict, holding back the
much-needed economic growth.

Encouragingly, it is one of the judges, Justice S U Khan, who

took the lead in unplugging the nation from this unholy past
and in putting it on a new trajectory when he said in his prelude
to the judgment: “Here is a small piece of land where angels
fear to tread. It is full of innumerable landmines. We are
required to clear it. Some very sane elements advised us not to
attempt that.... However, we have to take risk. It is said that the
greatest risk in life is not daring to take risk when occasion for
the same arises.… This is one of those occasions. Have we
succeeded or failed? No one can be a judge in his own case.”

And, fortunately, the nation as a whole appears to have

passed its judgment on the Court’s verdict quite maturely: its
cool attitude towards a once-hot religious conflict suggests a
shift in its value system. Indeed, the nation’s response to the
verdict clearly shows that the people are certainly moving on
from the unholy mess and chaos of the past towards a new
path of holiness—a holiness that simply dumps the chicanery of
its political forces and the dogmatism of its so-called religious
leaders. The youth of the nation appear to have taken upon
themselves the mantle of steering the country towards reaping
the full benefits from its ‘demographic dividend’ by leveraging
on India’s newfound entrepreneurship, particularly among the
private businesses that are, unlike the Chinese industry, less
and less dependent on State patronage for growth.

It is only such rational behavior that can strengthen our

democratic moorings and put the collective efforts and output
of the 1.2 billion people at 8.5% plus growth rate per annum.
Such an attitude alone can harness the potential commercial
energy of its youth that has been unleashed by the reforms that
the nation launched in the early 1990s.

Jai Ho, India!

******