EXPEDIENT JUSTICE

That is how I regarded the SC Verdict on Ayodhya. Regardless of its wide acceptance, [including by me], it remains flawed, self-contradictory, more of politics than of justice. Students and hardcore practitioners of law can simply not support its foundation.

And yet this does bring a sense of closure to a conflict that could - if allowed to fester further - potentially result in a far worse situation than this unjust verdict would result into. Which is why, I regard it as the least worst scenarios in the present context.

A rationalist, I live in the present and the real. No point in the fanciful idea of justice in a society fractured all across with blatant communalism. Much as the arm-chair professors, the coffee-club leftists, and the fanciful Islamists would wish, delivering proper and wholesome justice today would mean the plunder of SC, with active support of the powers that be.

Ordinary Muslims have suffered a lot. They now wish to breathe some easy. They want to pursue their education and economic empowerment. This imbroglio was all along hanging on their head as the Damocles' sword. That there is no guarantee that this injustice will earn them peace is not ruled out. Which is why I call it least worst.

And I am saying this with complete authority, and challenge my baiters to this: The Muslims out on the street - those vast numbers dependent on Hindu and cosmopolitan patronage, specially in the unorganized sector - in fact, all except those ensconced inside their cocoons and Muslim ghettos, or their plum bungalows and fortified compounds, have welcomed this as fait accompli.

Aren't we yet sick and tired of those unrealistic Muslims who have secured their protection in Muslim neighbourhood, or through fat pay-checks, or those that value Islam far, far higher than the lives of the Muslims? I am.

Asma NA, Asma Kabir, Hari Krishna Prahlad, Syed Faiz Ahamd, Manzurul Haque