Habib and Thapar stalled Ayodhya proceedings for over 25 years. They tried again. And got beaten squarely

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed all review pleas in the historic Ayodhya verdict, including the review petition filed by 40 activists. Eminent historians and self-acclaimed intellectuals such as Harsh Mander, Nandini Sunder, Apoorvanand Jha, Jayati Ghosh, Irfan Habib, Shabnam Hashmi etc. had come together filing this review petition challenging the Ayodhya verdict.

Though not parties to the original litigation, these leftist academicians were the once constantly fuelling the belief within the Muslim community that they were entitled to the disputed site in Ayodhya. For decades, such leftist historians have been constantly claiming that there were no temple remains were found at the disputed site. Their credibility, therefore, took a serious hit after the Ayodhya verdict as their false propaganda got exposed.

Immediately after the Ayodhya verdict, these eminent historians and academicians were the ones who cast aspersions on the Supreme Court verdict and this is why the Muslim side never really got a closure as they were once again made to believe that the historic judgment was erroneous and there was a scope for correction by way of a review petition. Irfan Habib went on to question the Supreme Court findings about Muslims not offering prayers at the disputed site in Ayodhya prior to 1856-57, while Hindu side was able to show that it had been offering prayers for a longer time. Similarly, Romila Thapar, another eminent historian had tried to cast aspersions on the Ayodhya verdict pronounced by the Allahabad High Court by disputing the excavations report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which was accepted as reliable evidence by the High Court. Prashant Bhushan, the counsel representing the forty activists seems to have tried to re-iterate the same point of view all over again.

While the likes of Irfan Habib and Nandini Sunder had started questioning the Supreme Court verdict on Ayodhya dispute straightaway, they filed the review petition only a few days ago in one last desperate bid to justify their decades-long propaganda about the dispute. Forty activists, therefore, joined hands that helped the review petition come into limelight even as the elitist-intellectual group tried to influence judicial wisdom.

The review petition claimed that the verdict had a “direct impact on the syncretic culture of the country and its secular fabric envisaged in the Constitution”. It also argued that the tenor, language and operative orders of the Supreme Court verdict had expanded the scope of a title dispute to a battle of faith between the two sides. The petition read, “Therefore, by relying on the faith of the belief of the existence of a temple, over the evidence of existence of the mosque, this decision has been in violation of Constitutional principles of equality and freedom of religion.”

The review petition filed by the forty activists lacked any merit on the face of it. The same activists who seem to have been suggesting that the Supreme Court had not correctly appreciated the evidence before it, actually went on to rely on the rhetoric of how the verdict violated the principles of secularism in the Constitution. Prashant Bhushan has said, “Curative petition in such a case would be futile.” The dismissal of their review plea therefore marks the end of academic activism (read propaganda) over the Ayodhya dispute. This really exposes how a select group of ’eminent historians’ and self-acclaimed intellectuals misled the country about one of the most sensitive issues in the country for decades. Now, that their review plea has been dismissed, it is clear that they never really had any substantial and compelling contentions to make when it came to their steadfast position on the Ayodhya verdict.