Stop looking back

Stop looking back

The ebb and flow of history shouldn’t hold India hostage. Keep moving forward.

The arguments before the Supreme Court bench hearing the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute pleading for correcting a “historical wrong” glosses over the fundamental reality that time cannot be frozen. First of all, the past is murky. The pro-Mandir side has advanced the claim that a temple was razed to erect the Babri Masjid, perhaps to gloss over the razing of the Masjid in the present, and then gone on to argue that Mughal emperor Babur’s putative razing of the temple merits a correction.

Despite the lack of definitive evidence let us, for a moment, suspend disbelief and grant the pro-Mandir side’s initial premise: a temple was indeed razed in the 16th century to construct the Babri Masjid. The moot question still remains: the Indian Constitution was established in 1950 and is applicable only since then. How far can we go back in history to correct supposed injustices? Admitting this principle would open up a Pandora’s box. For instance, Dalits could demand reparations for three millennia or so of fierce repression by upper castes, women may go back even longer in history against patriarchy, and Odisha (Kalinga then) can harbour grievances against present day Bihar for Ashoka’s costly third century BCE war. Time, people, places, events have all passed into history, yet the obsession with summoning the injustices of the past prevails.

Rather than peeves over medieval (non-?) events, a more urgent challenge awaits India today. A bewildering new world is taking shape with the dawn of artificial intelligence and rivals like China racing ahead, heightening India’s security challenges. Contested claims surrounding remnants of a temple discovered under a mosque and theological inquiries into whether mosques are essential for Muslims to say namaaz aren’t helping. A verdict from SC, which relies wholly on reason and the established facts of the case rather than murky history or sentiment, offers a final opportunity to set one of history’s ghosts to rest.