Ayodhya : Past and Present

10.30 a.m. | 9 November 2019: A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India unanimously ruled that the land where the Babri Masjid once stood in Ayodhya belongs to the lord | Ram Lalla. The decision was expected to end the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India | who have been asserting their religious rights over the 2.77 acres of disputed land for five centuries. But Ayodhya still remains a divided city.Journalist Sutapa Mukerjee has frequented the town since 1998. After the apex court decree | she returned to the land now gifted to Lord Ram and reconnected with the locals. Her narrative takes off from the historic 2019 Supreme Court judgment | traces the milestones of the seventy-year-long legal battle for the disputed land and even goes back a few centuries to give cultural and civilizational context to the conflict in Ayodhya | before culminating in a ground-zero account of the Babri Masjid demolition. Ayodhya: Past and Present gives voice-through innumerable personal interviews-to the people of the pilgrim town | both the movers and shakers of the Mandir-Masjid tussle as well as the commoners caught in the crossfire. A history of Ayodhya | the book brings alive the reality of this once-quaint town that is on its way to becoming a commercialized pilgrimage destination.