Ayodhya verdict right because both sides accepted it: Chidambaram

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 10

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday said the Ayodhya temple verdict was right because both sides had accepted it.

Speaking at the release of party colleague Salman Khurshid’s book “Sunrise over Ayodhya”, a Penguin publication, at the India International Centre on Wednesday, Chidambaram said the jurisprudential faces of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid judgment were extremely narrow.

“It is a very thin ledge but due to the passage of time what the author points out is all sides have accepted it. Because both sides have accepted it, it is become the right judgment, not the other way around. It’s not a right judgment, which both sides have accepted. Because both sides have accepted it, it has become the right judgment,” Chidambaram said.

Noting that practices had acquired a new meaning Chidambaram said Nehru’s secularism was not the same to millions today as Nehru had conceived it to be.

“Secularism has moved away from acceptance to tolerance and from tolerance to an uneasy coexistence. Unless we recognize what happened in the last 20 years, we won’t be true to what we believe India should be,” Chidambaram said lamenting that “we live in a world where lynching is not condemned by anyone in authority and certainly not the prime minister and Home minister.”

The former finance minister said Babri Masjid demolition of December 6, 1992 was a terrible wrong and it was patronizing to ask 200 million people to reconcile.

Speaking on the occasion former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh said temples in India had been vandalized “even before the advent of Islam.”

“In history, vandalism of temples happened in India even before Islam came into the country. It did not start after Islam came. It used to happen whenever a king conquered another and wanted to establish his religion. But today it has been told that vandalism came with Islam and that is why they are responsible for it,” said Singh adding that Ram Janmabhoomi dispute was there since 1858 but VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS never made it an issue.

“It was after they were restricted to two seats in 1984 that they decided to make it a national issue,” said Singh.

SAVARKAR HAD NO PROBLEM CONSUMING BEEF

Digvijay Singh today said Hindutva had nothing to do with Hindu religion and Savarkar was not a religious man. “Savarkar had even said why is the cow considered ‘maata’. Savarkar had no problems in consuming beef. He brought Hindutva word to establish Hindu identity that caused confusion in people and that was propagated by the RSS,” said Singh.