Former Law Minister and former Foreign Minister and now a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court, Salman Khurshid, has said that the Supreme Court’s 2019 Ayodhya verdict was, in the circumstances, the right one. But he adds that it has imposed “a sacrifice” on Muslims in the hope that “we find closure and carry on with our national life”. In a 30-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire to mark the launch of his book ‘Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in our Times’, Mr. Khurshid did concede that the Court could have split the Babri Masjid site between the Hindu and Muslim parties but that would have been messy and also would not have brought closure to the issue. In the interview, Mr. Khurshid says that since the Supreme Court viewed the Ayodhya case as a title suit regarding a disputed property it follows that it could only be determined on the basis of evidence and not faith. This also means, he argued, that if Muslims do not have evidence to prove they had possession of the mosque from 1528, its year of construction, till 1856-57, this cannot be adduced by arguing on the basis of history or on the basis of assumptions that if a building is a mosque it follows that prayers were said inside its premises.
Mr. Khurshid said this may seem absurd and illogical but the law does require that a title suit is handled on evidence and nothing else. In this case, Mr. Khurshid pointed out, the Hindu side was able to provide better evidence of ownership than the Muslim side.
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