Two weeks after the Allahabad High Court judgment in the Babri mosque case, there are theoretically only three options available to the litigants, in particular the Sunni Central Waqf Board, which rightly feels aggrieved at being deprived of its title to the site. They can meekly accept the judgment; negotiate a mutual compromise; or appeal the judgment in the Supreme Court.

The first option is dishonourable and bad not just for the Muslims, but for the cause of secularism and communal harmony. As we see below, it will sanctify a grossly unfair, irrational and profoundly communal verdict that throws India back to medieval jurisprudence. The second option is practically non-existent because the Hindu-communal Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Nirmohi Akhara are more loath than ever to negotiate a fair compromise: they insist on a grand Ram temple at the site, or nothing. The judgment has strengthened their hubris. They want to browbeat Muslims into surrendering their one-third share of the land.

The only decent course is to appeal the judgment. And the only legal course for the Supreme Court is to strike it down without ifs and buts. This is of course at variance with the opinion that the judgment is, if not an act of “judicial statesmanship” (as former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee described it), at least a “pragmatic compromise”: It allots the 2.77-acre Ayodhya plot in three equal portions to Ram Lalla (the infant Ram), no less, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Waqf Board; so the Muslims gain something from it.

In fact, they lose hugely and irreparably—above all, their legal title to the mosque, which was in their undisputed possession right since 1528 till Hindu communalists surreptitiously smuggled idols into it in 1949 and the state persistently failed to remove them. The Board’s title suit has been dismissed on a specious interpretation of the law of limitation, although it was filed in 1961 within the 12-year period. Strangely, however, the High Court upheld the suit filed by Ram Lalla as late as 1989, through a “close friend” and former judge.

Treating Ram as a historic figure and a juristic person is itself an offence to a modern sensibility and jurisprudence. It returns India to a medieval notion of deities and demi-gods, which have no place in law or the Constitution. This is not the sole medieval element in the verdict. Its very foundation is flawed: it equates faith with fact and blandly asserts that the place where the Babri Masjid stood until 1992 was the birthplace of Ram because Hindus believe so.

This would be outrageous even if all Hindus believe it. As it happens, most Hindus probably regard Ram as a mythological ideal or (supposedly) perfect figure. Yet, two of the three judges assert that Ram is “everywhere” and above the mysteries of Creation. They conclude he was a real person born in Ayodhya—because Hindus believe so. Once blind faith is sanctified as fact, burning witches can be suitably justified: their murderers believe they are evil. QED. We are back to barbarism.

The third judge takes the illegal infiltration of Hindu idols into the mosque as evidence of Hindu-Muslim “joint possession” and hence agrees to trifurcation of the land. In effect, as lawyer Rajiv Dhawan says, the judges turn a title suit into a partition suit and dispense “justice” worthy of rustic panchayats, but “without the benefit of panchayat consensus”.

The Allahabad judgment flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s 1994 rejection of a Presidential reference asking it for its “advisory opinion” on whether “a Hindu Temple or any Hindu religious structure existed prior to the construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid …”. It treads into an area—opinion, belief, faith, history and mythology—which is out of bounds for the judiciary. This is reason enough to overturn the verdict.

There are two others. The judgment indulges in a form of “gaming”: a crude settlement based on the bargaining or blackmailing power of the litigants, not on their rights. This runs counter to all modern jurisprudence and Constitutional principles. It also nullifies the judiciary’s legitimate function and the equality of all citizens before the law.

Worse, the judgment legitimises the Babri demolition. Not only is there no reference to that crime against secularism and the ensuing orgy of killing, nor an injunction that its perpetrators atone for it. Its very logic is premised upon accepting the demolition as an accomplished, “normal” and legitimate fact. It doesn’t even strike the judges that they were deciding petitions filed before the demolition. Instead of upholding the Waqf Board’s title, as reason and legality demand, they reward Hindu communalists for a series of illegal acts, from 1949 to 1955, 1986 and 1992, by gifting them two-thirds of the land.

Nothing could be more damaging to the project of building a modern, plural and tolerant India in which all citizens are secure, free of fear, and can practise their religion and live with dignity.

The judgment has reduced India’s Muslims to second-class citizens. It must be struck down to affirm the Constitution’s fundamental principles of secularism and equal citizenship. The whole Ayodhya mess arose and festered because of the abysmal failure of our political parties, especially the Congress, to take on the Hindu communalists in the 1980s and 1990s. It is high time they redeemed themselves by demanding that the Supreme Court quash the judgment and restore the damage done to our Muslim citizens.