It’s decided: Ayodhya is to be divided

Ayodhya

The Allahabad High Court rules that the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided into three parts to be distributed among the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and the party for ‘Ram Lalla.’

Live updates on the verdict:

1:03 am: Ayodhya verdict taken positively as leaders appeal for calm

00: 17 am: Mixed reaction to Ayodhya verdict in Pakistan

00:12 am: @awaaz_neeche – kalmadi can heave a sign of relief, today ppl forgot kalmadi bashing thanx 2 ayodhya verdict. N from 2morow india vs aus test series.

11:59 pm: Police zeal draw flak from Hyderabad residents

11: 27 pm: Ayodhya: Judge refers 274 books, 798 judgements in 5,238 pages

11:05 pm: Sangh Parivar invites Muslims to build temple

10:48 pm: Ayodhya verdict opens a new chapter for national integration: BJP

10:30 pm: @sidvee –  If Lalit Modi had been in charge of this Ayodhya verdict, Shankar Mahadevan would have been performing by now

10:00 pm: The decision has opened up a ‘chance for reconciliation’ between Hindus and Muslims of India, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) said on Thursday after the verdict (Read More)

9:45 pm: The Ayodhya verdict has been hailed as a “mature” decision by Bollywood celebrities who have urged their fans to maintain peace. (Read More)

9: 05 pm: Verdict opens up chance for reconciliation: Muslims

@Debabrata
We have built enough mosques and temples. Lets build the nation now #ayodhya #verdict

8: 45 pm: Bollywood gives thumbs up to Ayodhya verdict

8:15 pm: Verdict significant step in building grand temple: Advani
8:13 pm: Curfew like situation in UP in view of verdict

8:10 pm: In a statement, the PM today appealed to all Indians to respect the verdict and cautioned the public not to take heed of any ‘disruptive elements’ who might try to stir up trouble. He also said he had complete faith in the secular spirit of the nation.  (Read Full Report)

7: 50 pm: Verdict should end Ayodhya dispute: Bal Thackeray

7: 35 pm: Verdict will strengthen national unity, says Modi

7: 25 pm: Let’s build nation now, says twitterati after verdict

7:15  pm: Political parties welcome Aygodhya verdict

7: 00: pm: No winner or loser: Ramjanmabhoomi Trust

6:50 pm: Ayodhya security Centre’s task, says Mayawati

Ayodhya tweet – @mohak INDIAN WINS BIG OUTSOURCING CONTRACT! Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel issue to be resolved by Allahabad High Court!!!! #ayodhya

6: 45 pm: PM meets senior ministers after Ayodhya verdict

6:35 pm: I welcome court decision, says oldest litigant

6.30 pm:  Brief summary of the verdict of Justice Sudhir Agarwal

6.29 pm: Brief summary of the verdict of Justice Sibghat Ullah Khan

6.28 pm: Brief summary of the verdict of Justice Dharam Veer Sharma: Volume 1 | Volume 2

6.14 pm: What the judges said: Here is a gist of the text of the verdict by  the three judges

6.07  pm: ‘Babri mosque was built at Ram birthplace’: More details on the verdict

6.01 pm: We should all welcome the judgement, says Congress

5.58 pm: UP Chief Minister Mayawati appeals for calm

5.53 pm:  The RSS says the Allahabad High Court verdict  should not been seen as anybody’s victory or defeat.

5.44 pm: Chaos at media centre after the Ayodhya verdict

5.41 pm: Allahabad High Court website crashes

5.30 pm: Meet the  three judges – two Hindus and a Muslim – of the  Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court who authored the long-awaited verdict on the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi dispute

5.28 pm: Verdict opens up ‘chance for reconciliation’: Muslim panel member

5.22 pm: Sunni Wakf board lawyer to appeal against Ayodhya verdict

5.11 pm: Ayodhya land to be divided in three. Click here for the story

5.10 pm: Ayodhya verdict –  Babri Committee disappointed, will move SC

5.08 pm: Accept the verdict: Litigant Hashim Ansari

5.06 pm: Will study the Judgment and then react, says  Law Minister

5.05 pm: Ram idols existed on site, says Allahabad High Court

5.00 pm: The initial confusion that was unleashed was unbelievable. TV channels being allowed to telecast images of over-the-top lawyers flaunting victory signs was also uncalled for. Couldn’t the government have ensured that at least this didn’t happen? What do you think? Leave your comments below

4.58: The ownership of the disputed site is to be divided into three parts: the site of the Ramlala idol to Lord Ram, Nirmohi Akhara gets Sita Rasoi and Ram Chabutara, Sunni Wakf Board gets the rest:  TOI

4.56: Nirmohi Akahara gets Sita Rasoi and Ram Chabutara

4.54: Disputed land divided into three parts:  The Allahabad High Court rules that the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided into three parts to be distributed among the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and the party for ‘Ram Lalla’, say lawyers.

4.52 pm: Division of the land to start in three months: 1/3 for temple, 1/3 for Sunni Wakf Board, claim to third part not known yet, says counsel for Hindu Mahasabha

4.46 pm: Judges have suggested a three-way division of the 40m x 27m disputed land: Ravi Shankar Prasad, lawyer and BJP leader

4.43 pm: Sunni Central Board’s suit dismissed, claims lawyer of Hindu Maha Sabha

4.42 pm: Court accepts that the disputed land is Ram Janmabhoomi, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

4.41 pm: Ayodhya verdict out, judgement runs to 8,000 pages

4.36 pm: Chaos outside court as lawyers hold individual press briefings

4.31 pm: Lawyers brief media outside court

4.30 pm: Aaj Tak says: Court Gates are opened and copy of the order is likely to be read out soon

4.25 pm: The Allahabad High Court’s ruling on Thursday will address three questions: whether the disputed spot was Rama’s birthplace; whether the mosque was built after the demolition of a temple; and if the mosque was built in accordance with the tenets of Islam. The primer on the dispute can be found here

4.23 pm: Ayodhya: Judges to give three separate judgements

4.20 pm: The Ayodhya dispute centres around a piece of land 40m x 27m. The High Court verdict will decide who owns it

4.16 pm: BJP core group to meet after Ayodhya verdict

4.15 pm: Cabinet Committee on Security to discuss Ayodhya Verdict

4.12 pm: Hundreds of journalists gather outside court

4.09 pm: 51-member body to deliberate on the Ayodhya Verdict

4.06 pm: Lucknow DM, DIG cautions against interpretation of Ayodhya Verdict

3.56 pm:  All India Muslim Personal Law Board to meet later today

3.43 pm: Media to be briefed at the DC’s office

3.36 pm: Petitioners to be brought to media centre to brief the media

3.28 pm: BJP meet at 6 pm

3.22 pm: Roads around the High Court building sealed

3.18 pm: Lucknow Bench declared ‘no access zone’

3.14 pm: Judges to give three separate judgements. Details here

3.10 pm: Justice Dharamveer Sharma, Justice Sudhir Agarwal and Justice SU Khan to deliver verdict

3.02 pm: 3-Judge bench to deliver verdict

2.55 pm: Verdict will be given to media from DC’s office: Lucknow DM

2.45 pm: Maintain peace and tranquility: Chidambaram

Tweet on Ayodhya –  @Rumsii The way we respond to the Ayodhya verdict 2dy wud determine how mature the Indian youngistan is. I hope we keep our secularism unhurt.

2.35 pm: Full verdict to be available on Allahabad High Court website:www.allahabadhighcourt.in and  www.rjbm.nic.in

Tweet on Ayodhya – @sagarikaghose No Ayodhya discussions or polemic on CNN IBN. We don’t believe in raising temperatures for TRPs.

2.31 pm: 2000 paramilitary forces on vigil

2.26 pm: Cabinet Committee on Security to meet at 5 pm today

Tweet on Ayodhya @vaibhavmeh Minutes left in ayodhya verdict…jus hoping my countrymen will keep up the oath which they use to take

2.22 pm: 22 Uttar Pradesh areas under air surveillance

2.18 pm: Tight security arrangements in Rajasthan

2.16 pm: Bollywood appeals people to maintain calm

2.14 pm: Tight security in Karnataka ahead of Ayodhya verdict

Tweet on Ayodhya –  @vikaspgoel 1992 to 2010 ; Bombay to Mumbai . Let’s prove that it’s more than just a name change , we have grown up. #Ayodhya

2.10 pm: 1,19,000 policemen have been deployed in UP

2.05 pm:  Security forces mobilised

Tweet on Ayodhya –  @reachsundar #Ayodhya verdict on #Flintstones 50th anniversary…Coincidence or a hint to us that we gonna go back to the caves if we fight – – – again!!

2.00 pm: Sonia, Chidambaram appeal for peace

Why Indians are obsessed with family dramas

Shah Rukh Khan in Fauji

If Shah Rukh Khan had been born ten years later, would he have got a chance to play Fauji’s Abhimanyu Rai, the TV role that took him closer to superstardom?

More importantly, would Fauji have even been made now, when all you see on TV are weeping bahus, scheming in-laws and talent shows where the talented rarely win?

If you are among those who wonder why a nation that lapped up classics like a Tamas and a Hum Log now insists only on watching endless family dramas, you might find your answer in Venita Coelho’s new book.

Soap! Writing and Surviving Television in India is tagged “A Handbook For Aspiring Writers”. But you don’t need to be an aspiring writer to enjoy this one.

Venita’s insights into the history of Indian television, peppered with her own experiences – from being a “runner around” at UTV during the Doordarshan days to being the Vice President at Sony Entertainment Television – make this book a priceless read.

Stories on family politics, she says, will never go out of fashion because they are what Indians have loved most down the ages, right from the time of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

And though we follow the Western structure of story telling in the movies, where there is a beginning, a middle and an end, Television is where the Indian structure of story-telling is alive and well. Our great narratives, like the Panchatantra, never end: One story leads to another, Arabian Nights style.

The book traces the evolution of the Indian soap and explains why despite the red tape and the bureaucracy, the Doordarshan era was the golden age for fiction-based shows. It speaks of TV bosses  who were sacked while they were choosing dessert during lunch hour, of program heads with no creative bone and no Hindi, of burnouts and impossible deadlines.

For aspiring TV writers, Soap is a book like no other.

With live examples, Venita explains how to work your story, how to sell your story to the channel, how to sustain the pressures of having a daily show on air and how to use flowcharts, graphics and power point presentations to track characters, family trees and the plot.

The book goes right down to the basics: it tells you how to copyright your idea, how to deal with the health hazards of being a writer (carpal tunnel, a bad back…) and even how to demand – and get – the money a channel owes you!

A must-read for anyone interested in the strange world that is Indian television.

Interview with Venita Coelho: The woman who ran away from Television

Soap! Writing and Surviving Television in India is published by Harper Collins.  Buy a copy here

Sarita Ravindranath

Why does Kashmir seem so far away?

Violence on the streets in Kashmir

A friend of mine made an interesting observation on Facebook the other day.

“Parliament suspended after two UP farmers were shot by police, 58 and counting in Kashmir,” she said.

My first thought was – “That is true, but practically everything matters more than Kashmir.”

To me (and I suspect to a lot of other people as well) Kashmir is just something I watch on the news channel for 15 minutes before moving on to watch Indian Idol. I guess you could call it viewer fatigue.

Oh don’t get all angry at my lack of sentiment.

I know I should care about Kashmir…and Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chinese oppression, global warming, animal extinction, Greenpeace, Maoists and even the whales that Japan insists on butchering.

But right now what I really care about is dinner. It has an immediate connection (I am hungry), I am familiar with it (I eat a lot) and I know exactly how to solve the issue (the Dominos downstairs beckons me). That is everything Kashmir is not.

It’s too far away for any connection ( I am in Chennai), I am totally unfamiliar with it thanks to decades of censorship (Free press? Don’t make me laugh!) and when it seems Kashmiris themselves have no idea how to solve their issues,  what do they really expect me to do about it?

And most importantly – the only Kashmiri I ever met never spoke about Kashmir, is currently back in Kashmir and still not very talkative or in touch.

They say all that the young of Kashmir have ever seen is oppression and terror.

Well, all I have ever known is – Kashmiris are treasonous separatists, Pakistani puppets and always out on the roads throwing stones like barbarians.

Of course this is not the truth. Words like military rule, POTA, judicial murder, rape, theft, human indignity and others fight for space in my mind. But first impressions are everything.

What I should be reading are Kashmiri pamphlets handed out by my local chapter of “Free Kashmir,” frankly informing me about
the latest atrocities this nation has committed.

I should be listening to soulful ‘freedom’ songs composed by angst-ridden Kashmiris. 

I should be watching a Kashmiri movie about their plight. A movie made by Kashmiris,  not a bad Bollywood version.

I should leave the theatre so moved that my wallet loosens and I make a donation into “Free Kashmir Fund” box, helpfully placed outside the theatre along with “I support Kashmir” buttons and stickers. Kashmir needs a better, bigger campaign – one that doesn’t dishonour her name.

Ninety-five per cent of India is too far away from the valley and 90 per cent  of our people don’t care because they don’t know.

There is a difference between political movements and anarchy – a small difference.

After all, if you can get enough people to care, you change the world.

Vinayak Hegde

Population needn’t be a bad word

World Population Day

Yet another World Population Day (July 11) has passed us by.  Many eyebrows would be raised if I were to argue that our government should de-control population growth,  just like how it decontrolled oil and gas prices.

But it is high time we actually considered launching a procreation drive.

We launched the population control programme decades ago to shape a ‘secure future’ for the country. The result: Thousands of nuclear families with one child each, children who  don’t know the value of sharing.

It’s time we encouraged bigger families, with many children.

Before you start hurling stones at me for expressing such a ‘wayward’ view, try answer this question: Is population a menace?

A ‘yes’ means You and I are a menace.  It means our presence is a threat not only to the country, but to the universe because we eat up the resources and contribute to the so-called global warming.

But are we really a menace?

Who would have replaced the ageing workforce had we not been born?

Who would have maintained the momentum of the country’s growth?

Our  country is lucky because we were born irrespective of its anti-population growth drive.

Now the crucial question: Who will replace us and support the country when we become old,  if the government goes ahead with the one child norm?

Recently, an Australian scientist said human beings would be extinct in the next 100 years because of over population and lack of natural resources to support it. But his argument doesn’t hold much water. The human race will never be extinct due to over population and its consequences. It will disappear from the face of the earth due to man’s aversion to have children and, perhaps, infertility.

Why look down upon population? It can never be a burden to any country.

If anything, it is an asset. It will never keep a country poor. Instead, a country with a robust workforce is a treasure trove for the world.

It is the workforce of India that brought about the IT revolution in the country. It is this workforce that made the world turn toward India to outsource jobs to it, thereby making the country rich.

Let me remind you of what Infosys cofounder and Unique Identification Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani writes in his book Imagining India: “The idea of population as an asset rather than a burden has especially gained currency with the rise of knowledge-based industries such as IT, telecommunications and biotechnology in the 1970s. In fact, the information economy is the culmination of what the Industrial Revolution started — it has placed human capital front and center as the main driver of productivity and growth.”

But this workforce needs to be maintained and improved. For this, we need to decontrol, not control, the population.

Also to be borne in mind are the consequences of China’s successful one-child policy. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:  “The suicide rate of women in childbearing years (generally between 15 and 34) has increased considerably since the policy was implemented, especially in smaller Chinese cities. This is believed to be due to pressure to produce a single child, as it is usually desired to have a male child.”

So let’s dismiss all thoughts of controlling our population and and learn instead to be proud of it.

After all, it is our people who will make our nation a super power.

Salil Jose

Tweets on Obama’s Nobel: ‘I want it too’

Barack Obama

Within minutes of the  Norwegian Nobel Committee announcing the Peace Prize for Barack Obama, Indians were abuzz on Twitter with their take on the shocker.

Did the US President deserve it? A case of an award too soon?

We let the tweets speak for themselves. Here are our favourites:

@jhunjhunwala: Rakhi Sawant to share Nobel Prize with Obama for “efforts made to keep the institution of marriage alive”

@manuscrypts : Did they mean Osama? for being nice this year or something?

@GautamGhosh: Obama winning Nobel Peace Prize is like firms giving salary hikes when KRAs are set – a year before they are met! Heh!

@BDUTT If he can win then why not our Prime Minister, he deserves better than him…

@OldmonkMGM: India and Pakistan demands a Nobel Peace prize for each other for not bombing the s*** out of each other

@vijaysankaran : Nobel Peace Prize is now like the Bharat Ratna… it’s about who you are, not what you did-)

@recnamorcen : The Nobel Peace Prize should go to…. EKTA KAPOOR … for KSBKBT & others.. promoting cultural amalgamation

@jhunjhunwala : Pakistan asks for credible evidence to show that Obama has indeed won the Nobel Prize,asks for dossier from Nobel org

@madversity : “We Need Change and Change We Need”: Ok I said it now give me my Nobel Prize

@tantanoo : So Bush declares war, Obama lobbies peace and wins Nobel Peace prize. Nice algorithm I say.

@chuck_gopal : Who’ll win next year? Michael Moore? Karan Thapar? John Buchanan?

@sudhamshu : Just when we lauded the Nobel committee for coming up with deserving candidates for Physiology, Physics & Chemistry, they came up with Peace

@CraigGrannell : Apparent rules for winning: following warmonger into leader role; stop being as much of a warmonger.

@nikhilv : Breaking news: Obama’s Nobel Peace prize victory speech just won the Booker #obama

@TinyToots : I also want Nobel Peace Prize. Everyday I refrain from doing violence to so many people. Why is nobody nominating me?

@suddentwilight : the #nobel peace prize is another #filmfare #stardust #iffa award whr who u r and nt what u do gets u the award ! did #obama dance for it 2?

@fossiloflife : Oh wait I think Filmfare awards will have more value than a Nobel Peace Prize!

@codinghorror : World bestows surprise Nobel Peace Prize upon Obama. THAT is how f***ing sick of Bush they were. Wow.

@OldmonkMGM: Pick the odd man out: The Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama

@sidin : Obama to win Commonwealth Gold and lifetime Oscar. Also X Prize, Magsaysay and Bigg Boss 3. And Dancing With The Stars.

@MitchBenn : It’s official! George Bush was such an a***hole you can win the Nobel Peace Prize just by not being him.

@mysti : Is ‘hope for a better future’ enough to win a Nobel Prize? they should be passing those around like candies then.

@venkat2 : next in line for Obama – Khel Ratna, Bharat Ratna, Hind Purush..and Mayawati will erect a small statue next to her

@manuscrypts : Someone is bound to find an Indian connection. I await Bharat Obama…

Does Obama deserve the Nobel? Join our discussion here