Hindu Taliban destroyed Babri Masjid, Supreme Court told

New Delhi, July 13: The Supreme Court on Friday was told that just as the statue of Bamiyan Buddha was destroyed by the Afghan Taliban, similarly the Hindu Taliban razed the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. “No faith has a right to destroy a mosque,” Dhavan said, assailing the argument by the Hindu side that no equity survived once the mosque had gone (razed). “It can’t be, should not be argued that no equity lies and there is nothing left to be decided once it (mosque) has been destroyed,” Dhavan told the bench.

Dhavan said this to the three-judge bench while advancing arguments that the 1994 top court judgment that had said that offering namaz in a mosque was not an essential practice of Islam needed to be revisited. “The question of essential practice was totally alien to the case before the top court bench in 1994,” he said. Describing the shift in the stand of the Uttar Pradesh government as a “breach of faith”, Dhavan said that there was no delay on the part of the Muslim litigants in flagging the issue and they did it in the first instance when the opportunity arose. It were the Hindu litigants who had relied upon the 1994 judgment during the hearing of the title suit of the disputed site before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court. This also amounted to saying that Hindus were protected by the Article 25 of the constitution but not the Muslims and Christians and “We (the Hindus) are superior and everything belongs to us”. Dhavan described as an indulgent act of “charity” the offer by the Shia Waqf Board to move out of the disputed site in return for a site for a new mosque. He said the 1994 judgment needed to be revisited as the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court relied on this in deciding the Ayodhya title suit by which the disputed 2.77 acres site was ordered to be divided between the Nirmohi Akhara, the Lord Ram deity and the Sunni Waqf Board. (IANS)