This Court is of the view that place of birth that is Ram Janm Bhumi is a juristic person. The deity also attained the divinity like Agni, Vayu, Kedarnath. Asthan is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as the birth place of Ram Lala or Lord Ram as a child .from page 18 of the summary of the judgement.
a one-third truth is definitely worse than a half truth or a whole lie. the indian judiciary, which would only recognize the backward castes as 'classes', seems to have no problems in endorsing pure, irrational belief as a 'juristic' person. if ram lalla is a juristic person, because there are no gods in 'secular' india, that doesn't make three-fourths of indians who figure as impure non-persons in brahminical scriptures 'hindus' just because the court needs the ballast of their numbers to emphasize the strength of 'faith' and keep the hindutva project afloat. i'm beginning to see 'juristic' persons everywhere now.
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Judgment apart, BCs are grouped as a class not caste for a reason. There is no provision in the original constitution for reservations to BCs. They had to be called backward classes to give them reservations without hitting the fundamental right to equality.
BTW, BCs also include some castes who wear the sacred thread and create religious deities by sculpting, carpentary or in gold/silver.
Also, by 1000AD, most of India was ruled by Kings who belonged to what are now called Backward Castes.
Do you also assume the chances that Babar built a mosque on top of a Temple less than 1/3 true? Considering that it is impossible to prove the facts from each side, this is the best they can offer. Even though at micro level there are some issues, at macro level this verdict is a clear testimony of secular credentials of India. Personally lot of Americans were in total disbelief as they assumed that Hindu majority will take over the entire compound. Perhaps they don't know that after leaving out the impure non-persons that you often refer in your blogs, Hindus are minority in India.
Seriously, had it been any other non Muslim country, Muslims would have had no chance to get what they got here. You must have heard about the severe backlash against the plan of building a mosque (truly it is not even a mosque in traditional sense) few blocks away from ground zero. In spite of the bad rap that India gets, including blogs like this, there is no country on the planet as secular as India. It is coming from 25 years of my personal experience living in different western countries.
As far as Juristic person, what do you expect the court to do? Announce boldly that there is no God ( only Hindu God). Who are we to say to say that it is an irrational belief?
I like your blogs for its objectivity, but when it comes to casteism you take it to the other extreme and lose it completely as you have done here. I too belong to lower caste, but none of your remarks on casteism resonate at all with my personal experience. I don't know what your background was.
"there is no country on the planet as secular as India"
Indian constitution is secular. I do not know whether a country in which caste system is practiced so widely (only recently, I visited malapetas and madigaprtas in coastal andhra villages) can be considered very secular.
What is that caste system got to do with India being not secular. Casteism and any associated superiority or inferiority is part of our social fabric. Some of the lower caste people are as proud of their caste as any other upper caste people. We hang on to it not because the religion dictates it. We hang on to it because it gives us an association with a community and provides a (false) sense of protection. Even people who get converted to other religions also continue their caste. Why? I agree there are issues and injustice done, mostly by upper caste. More than anything else, to a large extent, casteism is of economic issue. It is nothing more than the discrimination of rich against poor which is as antiquated as human civilization.
In many ways Casteism is less atrocious than racism that is prevalent in most of the western countries even today. Just look at how the talk show host from New Zealand derided Shiela Dixit. Look at the poverty levels of blacks in the inner cities of USA. Relatively speaking. I don't see any difference between those slums in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and the malapetas and madigapetas that you visited. Yet, don't you call US a secular country?
I was using this. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:
Article 1 of the Convention defines "racial discrimination" as
...any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
But see also Caste as race :
"The Government of India reiterates its position that 'caste' cannot be equated with 'race' or covered under 'descent' under Article 1 of the Convention - India's 15th-19th Periodic Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Discrimination based on 'descent' includes discrimination against members of communities based on forms of social stratification such as caste and analogous systems of inherited status which nullify or impair their equal enjoyment of human rights. Therefore, the Committee reaffirms that discrimination based on the ground of caste is fully covered by Article 1 of the Convention. - CERD, concluding observations on India's Periodic Report. "
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