The Ayodhya tangle

The country waited with a bated breath for the Allahabad high-court verdict on the Ayodhya issue. Lot of people expected violence if the ruling goes against any one community. But left to people, no one wants mindless violence in the name of religion. It just does not help anybody, except the political class. That is what happened on Sep 30, 2010. It was a wonderful precursor to Oct 2nd.

What I did not like about the aftermath is the way the media behaved. The Times of India carried a headline "2 parts to hindus & 1 part to muslims". These kind of headlines are not expected from a national daily like Times. Even they proved to be not better than the political class. This clearly showed that even they are not truly independent.

The very next day, the same Times carries 2 headlines "Mulayam feels muslims are cheated by the verdict" and "Some mulsims open to move mosque as a goodwill gesture". While the former is again irresponsible journalism, the second one is a welcome move.

Let me shift focus back to the problem on hand. The problem at Ayodhya is only the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is the trust deficit between various communities in India. This is the root cause for each of these flareups. In fact, there are facts which prove that muslims never attached any special significance to Babri Masjid till it was demolished. The act of demolition is not acceptable, but that allowed the political class to divert attention of people from the real issues to an insignificant issue.

The best way to solve this issue is to just allow it to fade away from peoples memories. The current generation does not care about places to pray, but they do care about opportunities to prosper with better education & job opportunities. It is only when people don't have enough opportunities, we will have a class of people who want to make a quick buck by using other means.

In my view, the best gift by any government to all communities in India is having a uniform civil code. This will remove a lot of oppression we are seeing in different communities in the name of religion. Rajiv Gandhi had this golden opportunity and he was foolish enough to let it go.

In summary, both the hindu & muslim communities can live without one extra temple or mosque at Ayodhya, but not stay hungry without opportunities to earn a decent livelihood.