This was the headline in the Times of India the day the Ayodhya verdict was out. One would expect the country's largest English daily to be a little bit more responsible while reporting such a sensitive issue, but that wasn't to be. TOI has reduced itself to yet another gossip daily and I am sure many disgruntled readers like me have switched to better papers like Mint and the Hindu. Just to make my point more clear, the headline that Mint carried was 'Ayodhya Verdict - Justice Delivered after a 61 year wait'.
If any of you haven't yet read about the verdict, here is a gist of it.
The three-judge bench - comprising Justice S U Khan, Justice Sudhir Agarwal and Justice D V Sharma - ruled in a majority judgment 2:1, that there be a three-way division of the disputed land - one-third for the Sunni Waqf Board, one-third for the Nirmohi Akhara and one-third to the party for 'Ram Lalla'.
To me this entire High Court appeal was meaningless. Cause irrespective of what the verdict would be, one party or the other would appeal to the Supreme Court and we would have this entire media circus all over again. So the only thing that this verdict had to achieve was to give us a result which wasn't biased to such an extent that the country would see yet another bout of communal riots. That was all that was expected of this judgment and it did precisely that. By diving the land into three parts and handing over one part to each of the three parties, the verdict was a sensible one.
Some of my friends on Facebook had their status messages saying 'build a school there' or 'build a hospital there'. I'm sure they have very little clue of how the judicial system works!
I personally was of the feeling that only the Sunni Waqf Board would challenge the verdict. But apparently all the parties are keen on appealing to the Supreme Court. Which once again proves my point about this High Court verdict being useless.
On the eve of the verdict the tension in the atmosphere was palpable. But I was pretty sure that there wouldn't be any major violence in any part of India. The fact that the BJP has failed to win the previous two elections even after using the Ayodhya temple as the main point in its political agenda tells me that the Ayodhya issue is a non issue amongst most of us Indians.
