1. Faizan Mustafa and Aymen Mohammed of the NALSAR University of Law write in the Indian Express that the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgement “will be remembered for the victory of faith over the rule of law” since “despite conceding that faith cannot confer title, it still went ahead to give property to worshippers on the basis of faith”.
  2. In Scroll.in, Sruthisagar Yamunan points out that the Supreme Court judgement is silent on why the Muslim side alone must prove they had exclusive possession of the disputed site. Also in Scroll.in, Rohan Venkatramakrishnan writes about the ironical turn of events –two illegal acts by Hindus in 1949 and 1992 paved the way for the Hindu side’s victory in the case.
  3. In the Hindustan Times, Swapan Dasgupta, Rajya Sabha MP and leading intellectual of the Hindu right, says the inauguration of a Ram temple in Ayodhya will signalthe end of a long period of mental servitude and subordination in India.
  4. The Supreme Court has held the demolition of the Babri Masjid to be illegal, writes Scroll.in’s editor Naresh Fernandes, arguing that to truly achieve justice in Ayodhya, the people behind the demolition, including senior BJP leaders, must be brought to book.
  5. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was part of the Ram temple movement that culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, writes Liz Matthews in the Indian Express. In 1990, as a member of the BJP’s national executive, he was tasked with coordinating party president LK Advani’s Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Mumbai.
  6. In the Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta draws on the epic Ramayana to argue that Ram’s political triumph was not a moment of moral redemption and hopes the future Ram temple at Ayodhya would mark “a new kind of holiness not predicated on the revenge of history”.
  7. Is this justice, asks Syeda Hameed, president of the Muslim Womens Forum in the Hindustan Times, arguing that Muslims should clearly, politely and unequivocally refuse the Supreme Court’s offer of five acres of land in Ayodhya.
  8. Hilal Ahmed, associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, offers two readings of the Ayodhya judgement in The Print, concluding that it is problematic in the way it establishes the dispute as a historical conflict between “Hindus as a faith community and Muslims as a historical entity of ‘outsiders’”.
  9. In The Wire, journalist Harish Khare, media advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh, asks the Supreme Court to oversee the working of the trust for the construction of a Ram temple to ensure the trustees “do not become agents of political triumphalism”.
  10. Examining the political implications of the Supreme Court’s judgement in Scroll.in, Shoaib Daniyal writes that the judgement has brought the BJP’s vision of Hindu rashtra or nation within striking distance.