HYDERABAD: Welcoming the Supreme Court ruling on the Ayodhya case, RSS prachar pramukh Shyamji said that he was confident that a just verdict would be reached over the Ayodhya case at the earliest, thus realising the dream of every devout Hindu. With fast tracking of the hearing from October 29, the road to Ram Mandir at Ayodhya was close at hand, he said. On Thursday, the Supreme Court declined to refer to a five-judge Constitution bench the issue of reconsideration of its 1994 judgement that a mosque was not integral to Islam.
Mr Nagendranath, an advocate, said that the most important implication of the SC order on the 1994 ruling could be speeding up of the title case. Many believe a judgement in favour of the Hindu parties before the 2019 general elections could go in favour of the BJP which had promised the construction of the Ram Temple in its manifesto, he said. Chilkur Balaji head priest S. Rangarajan, who has been fighting the cause of Hindu temples in several courts, said the essentiality of religious practices were best determined by saints, moulvis and clergy not political leaders and absolutely not the judiciary.
“The law and the state cannot and should not tell us what is essential or non-essential in religion. The judiciary should not take over the role of the clergy,” he said. He said that in the Ayodhya case, of the three judges hearing the matter, Justice Abdul Nazeer dissented from the majority judgement. That the questionable observations in Ismail Faruqui’s ruling have permeated the Allahabad HC verdict of 2010, he said adding that the Ismail Faruqui judgment needed to be brought in line with the Shirur matt case. “The state has the power to regulate secular activities associated with religious practice. The question is how to decide whether an activity is religious or secular,” he added.
