Politics
R Jagannathan
Dec 10, 2019, 12:58 PM | Updated 12:58 PM IST
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India’s Left-wing historians and academicians, despite the open rebukes administered to them by both the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi case for lying, are stirring the communal pot once more.
As dyed-in-the-wool Hinduphobics, they have chosen to oppose the unanimous judgment of the five-member constitutional bench that found in favour of the Hindu side while compensating the Muslims with five acres of land.
These academicians, who are not party to the dispute, have again inserted themselves into it as middlemen, claiming that the “tenor, language and operative orders have expanded the scope of the SLP (special leave petition) from a title dispute to a battle about the faith of the Hindus and the Muslims”.
The SLP has been signed by the usual suspects, from Irfan Habib to Harsh Mander, Nandini Sundar, Shabnam Hashmi, John Dayal and Jayati Ghosh.
The Left, as has always been the case, gains most by keeping Hindus and Muslims in a perpetual state of tension, and they are far from being honest brokers. If they were, they could have told the Muslim side long ago that their case was weak.
But they told them the exact opposite, as former Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) employee, K K Muhammed, said long ago.
He confirmed in many interviews that a temple existed at the same spot long before the Babri Masjid was built, and it was Left historians like Irfan Habib, one of the key signatories to the SLP now, who prevented the Muslim community from settling the dispute amicably.
Muhammed told The Times of India in an interview two months ago: “If Muslims had shown willingness on their part (to compromise), many of the problems that they are facing might have been automatically solved.
“That would have generated goodwill among Hindus also. Muslims were ready for this (before the Babri was demolished). But these Marxist historians led by Irfan Habib created the problem.
“It is they who told the Muslim community that they have excavated the place and they did not get anything by which they could say that there was a temple beneath the mosque.
“And none of these people except one or two were archaeologists. They were all simple historians. They were not technically qualified to be archaeologists.”
But the Left’s lies on the Ram Janmabhoomi continue to this day, well after their views were demolished by archaeological evidence.
In their intervention this time, they have brazenly asserted the following: “Interestingly, the belief of the Hindus that Ram was born in Ayodhya is not without doubt (as has been expressed by eminent historians such as Professor Romila Thapar and Professor Irfan Habib, mentioned above inter alia).
“The existence of the Babri Masjid is a fact that has been historically documented, whereas the existence of the Hindu temple on which this mosque was built is merely a belief of the Hindus, one that has not been corroborated by any of the evidence adduced by the Hindu parties.” (Italics mine)
That’s two major lies in just one paragraph. No Hindu has any doubt about Ram being born with Ayodhya, and no Muslim party to the dispute ever raised this doubt in the Supreme Court. It was the exact opposite. Only the Left has doubts on this issue.
The second lie is even more blatant, where the SLP suggests that the “existence of the Hindu temple on which this mosque was built is merely a belief of the Hindus, one that has not been corroborated by any of the evidence adduced by the Hindu parties.”
The digging authorised by the Allahabad High Court established the pre-existence of the temple beyond all doubt.
Whoever claimed that the Left produced more intellectuals than the Right ought to have his head examined. What it has produced is mindless pamphleteers, who will deny the truth even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
The Supreme Court should strongly reject not only the Left pamphleteers’ SLP, but rebuke them openly for their falsehoods and penalise them monetarily for this SLP.
Only exemplary punishment for wasting the court’s time and repeatedly backing falsehoods will teach them a lesson.
But then, has reason ever deterred the Left from its ideological commitment to establishing a fantasy regime based on their own opium of class struggle and violence, built by restating Goebbelsian falsehoods?
Jagannathan is Editorial Director, Swarajya. He tweets at @TheJaggi.