Harsh Mander: The legal and moral illogic of DY Chandrachud’s remarks on the Ayodhya verdict

“Something has shifted, something has changed, something has broken in India after the momentous ruling on the disputed land in Ayodhya.”

I wrote these words days after the unanimous historic ruling by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court in 2019 that awarded the entire site, where once stood the imposing medieval Babri Masjid, to Hindu litigants for building there a temple to Ram. The mosque had been brought down by marauding mobs in the winter of 1992, a demolition that many feel was the most tragic day in free India’s history after the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi.

These words returned to haunt me many times in recent months.

First, after the judge who came out as the author of the unsigned verdict claimed that it was god who guided him in writing that judgement, and that he is a devout Hindu. So, according to him, a Hindu god guided him in writing a judgement which was a religious dispute between Hindus and Muslims.

And again, now, when the same judge declared that it was the building of the mosque by a military commander of Mughal emperor Babar in 1528-’29 that was the “fundamental act of desecration”, not its razing to the ground by a frenzied throng in democratic India...

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