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Yes. Since the judiciary option was now available once again, cases were filed in the courts for recovery of the site. After December 1949, when the idols of Shri Rama appeared in the Babri structure, the courts permitted continuous puja of the Hindus within the structure. The Courts also declined the removal of the idols and prohibited Muslims within 200 feet of the idols. In February 1986, it was on court orders that the locks at the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi were removed, giving full access to the Hindus to worship Shri Rama lalla.
In addition, the VHP participated in various discussions, organised by the Government of India, during the reign of three former prime ministers – Shri V P Singh, Shri Chandrashekar, and Shri Narsimha Rao. The most organised and well-documented effort of the three was one at the time Shri Chandrashekar was the Prime Minister. In each case, the discussions were frustrated because the prime ministers refused to proceed further, knowing that it will go against their programme of vote-bank politics. They would have had to stand up not only to an obscurantist Muslim leadership, but also to those politicians and intellectuals who like to wear the badge of secularism on their sleeves.
In December 1990, when the Chandrashekar government organised the meetings to discuss the history of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi site, VHP gave written submissions, with sufficient supporting material to establish the authenticity. The VHP has published the evidence, and many people have written about it. These documents are available for study by the general public.
These submissions covered all the aspects relating to literary, historical, revenue, judicial and archaeological records. All these had clearly proved the stand of the Hindus that a temple in honour of Shri Rama and was deliberately destroyed in 1528 AD with an objective of constructing the Babri structure in its place.
The government did acknowledge the receipt of this information. The relevant minutes of the time read as follows: “The VHP submitted the rejoinder in which it tried to refute claims of the AIBMAC (All India Babri Masjid Action Committee) point wise. The AIBMAC did not react to the evidences put forward by the VHP. Instead it sub¬mitted photo-copies of more evidences in support of its claims. Since the AIBMAC did not give comments on the evidences put forward by the VHP, it is not possible for the government to decide the areas of agreement and disagreement.”
The Narsimha Rao government had formed a cell under Shri Naresh Chandra called the Ayodhya Cell. This was to evaluate the evidence already submitted. The deliberations of the cell is not publicly known. Given the practice of secularism in our country, it would be safe to say that this cell probably came to the conclusion that the historical case of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi site is fully in favour of the Hindus. |