It is election season. And so Ayodhya has to return as a subject of discussion. The crisis continues to signify a breakdown of our legal and constitutional arrangements. The demolition of the Babri Masjid was an act of constitutional usurpation for which there have been no real apologies. Now the alliance between Kalyan Singh and Mulyam Singh is a reminder of just how meaningless the so called secular-non secular divide has become in Indian politics. Most members of any single political party could easily belong to any other; the Congress may have gone after Narendra Modi in Gujarat, but had no compunction in giving tickets to so many former members of the BJP. And it is still something of a travesty that while we worry about other forms of communal consolidation, we do not worry about open consolidation and flexing of caste power, especially amongst already-powerful groups like the OBCs. What does this say about our democracy?

If Ayodhya is about religion, it is about religion in its most sordid sense. The Indian legal system has, for four decades, been unable to decisively lay the dispute to rest. In the process of adjudication and procrastination it has relied on so many legal non-sequitors that no one is sure what the grounds of any verdict are going to be. A political movement spearheaded by the BJP took the Ayodhya movement to new emotive heights, and often left its mark of violence on hundreds of innocent citizens. The Congress first opened up the issue to compensate for its own myopic interpretations of secularism and is still not sure where it stands. There is an assortment of groups, from the VHP to the Babri Masjid Action Committee, whose claims to represent their respective communities are, at best, dubious. Finally, there is the democratic voter at large. It is difficult to gauge the real depth of feeling on this issue, but one thing is clear: while a significant minority is passionate about building a Mandir, and a tiny minority passionate about stopping it, most are too fed up to care. "Let's get on with it," is probably the dominant political sentiment. With these protagonists can there be any real solution?

... contd.