I HAVE not been able to make out why the ruling Congress has been inactive when it could have taken the initiative to bring Hindus and Muslims together to discuss the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute after the Allahabad High Court judgment.

If the opportunity is not exploited, the parties concerned will meander to the Supreme Court in appeal. But both the party and the government have remained distant.

The consideration before the Congress may be one community being annoyed and the loss of votes. The problem is too big to be trivialised or politicised because the Lok Sabha election is more than three years away.

The reason why I am appealing to the Congress is the clout it enjoys as it is in power at the centre. It also has better secularism credentials than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). If the Congress were to try to sort out the dispute, it would be taken seriously. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Babri mosque was demolished when the Congress was in power in Delhi.I wish the BJP had been less aggressive. The judgment has given Muslims a third of the site. Without their cooperation, no mandir can come up there. Moreover, the nation wants a peaceful solution, not threats. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh did well to stop L.K. Advani from going ahead with another yatra. He does not seem to be repentant over the killing of hundreds of people in the wake of the yatra 18 years ago.

I have not met any Muslim who does not feel that the judgment was unfair to the community. Muslims fear that other mosques may be targeted soon. Already some Hindutva votaries have threatened to demolish mosques which have stood near temples in Mathura and Varanasi for centuries.

When the Babri mosque was demolished in 1992 the Muslims knew that they would not get back the site. Yet they went to the court to claim ownership. They probably thought that by doing so they would warn the Hindutva elements not to repeat their actions. Today they are angry and helpless. I wish they had stood on a joint platform with Hindus and Sikhs who were horrified to see the pulling down of the mosque. Together they could have taken the issue beyond the sentiments of the Muslim community and turned it into a point to reassert the country’s ethos of secularism.

I have not liked the speeches by some Muslim leaders. One went to the extent of saying that the Muslims had lost because they were not powerful. He appealed to the younger generation to build up power. Such speeches arouse passions and evoke equally strong words from the other side. They do not resolve the issue.

The Hindus must realise that the problem is deeper than the loss of the mosque. Muslims, who have been living after partition in a clime of suspicion and bias, are losing faith in India’s claim to secularism. How to give them confidence is the nub of the problem.

Parliament enacted in the 1990s a law to lay down that temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches and synagogues would stay as they existed on Aug 15, 1947. The courts were barred from entertaining any dispute relating to places of worship. The Babri mosque could not be included because a case relating to its ownership was already pending.

That law should be incorporated in the constitution so that the Muslims feel more confident. Also parliament should pass a resolution to buttress the constitutional guarantee to the Muslims. They constitute the largest minority in the country and cannot be allowed to go into a shell.

I recall Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee asking late President R. Venkataraman to have a dialogue with the community. He asked me to help him. We met several Muslim leaders. Why we could not proceed very far was because the BJP never offered anything specific which we could place before the Muslims.

Again, the RSS and its parivar have to decide whether they want to begin a new chapter of conciliation with Muslims. If it were to guarantee protection to all mosques since Aug 15, 1947, as is the law, a settlement is possible. Otherwise, the Muslim community will appeal to the Supreme Court against the judgment. That means the problem may be hanging fire for years.

And there is no certainty that the community which loses in the Supreme Court will accept the verdict.

The Hindutva elements should learn from Pakistan. The Gurdwara Shaheed Gunj exists in Lahore following the Privy Council’s judgment. The Islamic state of Pakistan has protected the structure and the sanctity of the gurdwara and religious elements have never tried to undo what the court had decided.

Once the Muslims feel secure about their places of worship, they should make a gesture regarding the Babri mosque. Tolerance and the spirit of accommodation are crucial to unity. Muslims should, however, have a mosque in the complex near the proposed Ram Temple.

Two judges — one of them a Muslim — said in their verdict that beneath the mosque lay a temple. They based the judgment on an archaeological survey report. Many may not like it. But this is the high court’s judgment. The Supreme Court can reject or uphold it.

Ideally, as I wrote earlier, the site should be left vacant to bear testimony to the murder of our multi-cultural, multi-religious society on Dec 6, 1992. But the court in its wisdom has given a verdict which tilts towards the Hindus.

Muslims should consider giving them the entire site if a constitutional guarantee and parliament resolution are forthcoming that mosques will remain as they existed on the day of independence. The quality of gesture is in giving, not taking.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.