The Ayodhya Ruling and the Rule of Law
Guest Contributors Prannv Dhawan and Parth Maniktalaare are law students at NLSIU Bengaluru and Campus Law Centre, Delhi respectively. Prannv is the founding editor of the Law School Policy Review and Parth is an editor of the online journal, Polemics and Pedantics.
A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court in India has unanimously held that the possession of the most-contested piece of land in Indian political history—the 2.77 acres where the Babri Masjid Mosque once stood—should in fact be exclusively given to the Hindu claimants of the case. At the same time, the Court invoked its special power to do ‘complete justice’ under Article 142 to restitute the damage caused by ‘egregiously illegal’ idol installation (1949) and Masjid demolition (1992). Hence, it ordered the government to allot an alternate plot of 5 acres to the Sunni Muslim Waqf Board at a ‘prominent place’ in Ayodhya for the construction of a new mosque.
A few words have become an indispensable part of the...