Citizens statement regarding Supreme Court order staying, Allahabad High court judgement of September 2010

ANHAD
23, CANNING LANE, NEW DELHI-110001
TEL: 23070722/ 40

May 9, 2011

Statement on Today’s Supreme Court Judgement


We heartily welcome today’s Supreme Court order staying the September 30, 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court on the Ayodhya issue. The Supreme Court’s observation that it found the High Court verdict "strange and surprising" sums up, as it were, the irrationality and unreality of a judgement that clashes with the first principles of India’s secular Constitution and seems to have been written for a pre-secular, pre-constitutional medieval age preoccupied with the allegories of faith.

The Supreme Court’s critique of the High Court judgement should also serve to alert those sections of civil society and the polity who had somehow managed to persuade themselves of the ’practical justice’ of the act of judicial trifurcation or partition of the disputed site and had virtually commended it as the ultimate solution to a long-vexed problem. Law and justice must be bed rocked on principles, not convenience. Nor can nations afford to grow weary or fatigued of fundamental values and acquiesce in unjust and unprincipled remedies at variance with such values.

We look forward to a comprehensive reconsideration by the Supreme Court of all the premises and postulates of the High Court judgement. Today’s interim order and the observations made constitute a fine beginning and inspire confidence in the prospect of this larger judicial exercise.

Anupam Gupta
Dr. KM Shrimali
Mahesh Bhat
Prof. KN Panikkar
Prof. Rooprekha Verma
Shabnam Hashmi