In its final judgment on the Ayodhya dispute, delivered on November 9, 2019, the Supreme Court accepted the argument of several historians that no temple, much less a Ram temple, had been demolished to construct the Babri Masjid. It held the demolition of the mosque illegal and sought the prosecution of leaders responsible for it.
A brief history of the dispute
However, it is also a fact that at least since the 19th century, there has been a popular local tradition associating the site with Lord Ram in different ways, and disputes arising from it have led to incidents of violence as well as compromises. On the cold night of December 22-23, 1949, small clay idols of Ram Lalla were stealthily placed inside the mosque with the complicity of the District Magistrate, K.K. Nayyar. These stayed there with the connivance of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, G.B. Pant, a Congress strongman, despite Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s instructions to remove them. The mosque was then locked up for nearly 50 years and there was relative quiet on that front.
