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Demolition of the Babri Mosque

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Every Religion have same importance, like every religious place must be respected!

dam....i just realize that i quote a banned member in my previous post...my mistake :hitwall:
 
Liberhan pins Babri blame on Sangh leaders

NEW DELHI: It was on December 16, 1992 that M S Liberhan, then a judge of Punjab and Haryana High Court, was asked to probe the conspiracy leading
to the demolition of Babri Masjid -- an event that took communal polarisation to a new scale, and shaped the politics of the turbulent 1990s.

Seventeen years, 399 sittings, 100 witnesses, 48 extensions and Rs 9 crore later, Justice Liberhan submitted his report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, indicting the BJP and its leaders including L K Advani, and the Sangh Parivar for conspiring to demolish the Mughal-era mosque at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

The report, being kept under wraps, also holds BJP leader L K Advani responsible for the demolition, pointing to the Rath Yatra he took out to mobilise support to build a Ram temple where the Masjid stood, and, on the fateful day, for failing to control the crowds he had helped mobilise.

The indictment of other front-ranking Hindutva leaders is sharper, with former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Murli Manohar Joshi, Ashok Singhal, Vinay Katiyar and others all coming in for severe criticism for their individual culpabilities.
Kalyan, who has since joined Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also been criticised for dodging the inquiry panel.

As for Congress, the criticism is limited to the "inaction" of former PM P V Narasimha Rao who allegedly slept through the demolition.

A big section in the report, likely to be tabled in Parliament in the Budget session, is devoted to the role of Advani and his statements during the cross-examination. The report criticises him for his Rath Yatra and not keeping the saffron combine in control. Faizabad district officials have also been severely indicted for their role during the demolition.

Given the string of extensions to the commission, submission of the report came as a surprise. Naturally so, considering that half of India's T-20 squad was in primary school when Justice Liberhan was tasked with the probe.

Then again, Justice Liberhan has been consistently maintaining that he will take longer.

Not surprisingly, Justice Liberhan had to handle a barrage of questions on the delay. The retired chief justice of Madras and Andhra High Courts, however, defended himself, pointing to the stalling and obstructionist manoeuvres used to derail the probe. "I did not receive cooperation from few people," he said. Though he did not name names, the finding in the report about the delaying tactics of Kalyan and others can be taken to suggest that the reference could be to leaders of BJP and Sangh Parivar.

Repeated efforts to draw him out on the issue did not succeed. "I do not want to comment," he said, though he remarked that he was feeling "relieved".

Under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, government has six months to share the findings of Justice Liberhan along with the action taken report (ATR) with Parliament. However, the tabling of the report in the two Houses will depend on how swiftly the government wants to act on the recommendations. In case conspiracy charge is to be probed further, government can ask CBI, already seized with the criminal case about demolition, to probe further.

With strong likelihood of Congress trying to derive mileage from the report, chances of the voluminous document being tabled in the coming session of Parliament are high. Elections in Maharashtra, due in September-October, may serve as another incentive for early tabling.
 
Won't allow divisive politics: Ayodhya residents

Seventeen years after Kar Sevaks pulled down the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the Liberhan Commission that was probing into the incident has submitted its report.

But in the holy town of Ayodhya, known as the birth place of Lord Ram, does the Liberhan report really mean anything? The fact that the report has taken more than 16 years with 48 extensions, making it the longest inquiry in history and also one of the costliest inquiries, are those now just numbers that are creating ripples of fear within political circles?

Barely 100 metres from the disputed site, people have an answer.

"We Hindu, Muslims don't want to fight; political leaders should not take advantage of that. The Liberhan Commission report should be dealt with in Parliament and not bred across the country," said Hashim Ansari, Petitioner in Babri Case.

Ayodhya seems to have moved on but there's anger against politicians for dividing people on communal lines. And a sense of determination never to allow a repeat.

Perhaps knowing that for the first time since 1992, Ram was a non-issue in the recent election. Even the BJP that won the seat in 1996 riding on the mandir wave chanted a different tune.

"Please take a pledge to shun vote bank politics in this election; vote for development," Narendra Modi was heard to have said in a Faizabad rally.

The BJP lost, down to fourth place in Uttar Pradesh now.

Clearly, the people of Ayodhya now want to lose painful memories of the day the temple town's secular image was scarred.
 
BJP not apologetic over demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya

NEW DELHI: BJP has said the party was "not at all apologetic" about the demolition of the "disputed structure" in Ayodhya in 1992.
"The party is not at all apologetic about the incident of demolition of a disputed structure as it had not committed any mistake," BJP president Rajnath Singh said in an interview with RSS mouthpiece Organiser.

Reiterating BJP's commitment towards building Ram Temple in Ayodhya, he said, "Whatever happened in Ayodhya was the outburst of sentiments of the masses. It is not apt to hurt the sentiments of the masses."

On media reports about indiscipline in the party, Singh said, "There may be indiscipline at the individual level, but there is no scope for indiscipline in the party."

When asked about questions being raised on BJP's ideology by leaders from outside party platform, he said, "Disciplinary action would be taken against those who are found to be not following the ideology of the party."

"They (party members) should have a strong binding of the party's ideology on them and adhere to the party ideology," he added.
 
The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Nation | Babri report in winter session

New Delhi, Aug. 11: The government has decided to table the Liberhan Commission report along with an action-taken report in the next session of Parliament, The Telegraph has learnt.

The report, which Justice Liberhan handed over to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 1, is bound to create political ripples and discomfit the BJP, which had played a major part in the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

“It (the report) has been submitted and the government will table it on the very first day of the next session of Parliament,” a senior home ministry official said.

Having taken nearly 17 years and 48 extensions to be completed, the report reached the home ministry from the Prime Minister’s Office within a fortnight. Home minister P. Chidambaram, who has gone though it, has promised Parliament that the report will be tabled in both Houses within the stipulated six months of its submission.

In order to table the Liberhan report along with an action-taken report, steps will have to be taken over the next three months. The government can reject the recommendations in the report. Sources said that if the report is not rejected, there might be a few arrests of those indicted.

The next session of Parliament is likely to be held in November, after the state elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and probably Jharkhand take place in October. So, while the government is for now insulated from any adverse content the report may have, the UPA may be able to use it to corner the BJP over the next few months.

Those questioned during Justice Liberhan’s 399 sittings includes L.K. Advani and then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, who is now close to Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The panel, set up on December 16, 1992, was asked to probe the sequence of events leading to ---- and all the facts and circumstances relating to ---- the occurrences at the Ayodhya complex 10 days earlier.

This included the destruction of the structure, security deficiencies, and the roles played by the then chief minister and his council of ministers, officials of the Uttar Pradesh government, and individuals, organisations and agencies concerned, or in any way connected, with the destruction of the structure.
 
CBI finds 16 missing Babri files, 7 others ‘weeded out’

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is believed to have traced 16 of the 23 “missing” files relating to the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri mosque dispute and found out that the rest seven were “weeded out” as useless.

Sources said the investigation so far indicated that the documents were removed intentionally. The CBI would be registering fresh cases against officials found responsible for destroying the files.

The investigative agency is yet to ascertain whether the seven documents which the Allahabad High Court had summoned from the state government are among the 16 it has traced. The files are in a very bad condition, the sources said.

Among the 23 missing documents was a telex from the first prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru to the state government for removal of the idols installed in the Babri Mosque in 1949 as also a correspondence between the Uttar Pradesh government and the then Faizabad district magistrate.

Despite repeated directions of the high court, the state government had failed to find these documents. Later, it informed the court that, in fact, as many as 23 files relating to the Babri dispute were missing.

On July 10 this year, the state government lodged an FIR regarding the missing files at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow and later recommended a CBI probe into the matter.

However, on July 15, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court expressed unhappiness over the government’s handling of the matter and directed the CBI to probe the matter within two months and submit a progress report before the court on August 24, which is the next date of hearing.

The bench comprising Justices S Rafat Alam, Sudhir Agarwal and D V Sharma was hearing the conflicting claims regarding the ownership of the land of the disputed shrine.

“Whether non-availability or disappearance of the files is deliberate and due to the involvement of some official of the secretariat and, if so, whether it is a part of some conspiracy to obstruct hearing of this matter, should be another aspect of the probe,” the court had said.

Sources said the CBI has asked the appointment department of the state secretariat to provide information about the officials who were posted in the Home Department and looked after the matters related to the Babri dispute in the last 10 years.

The team is also collecting details to find out when exactly the seven files, which are still missing, were “weeded out”.

The high court, in its order, had said that the CBI could register cases against any officer, retired or serving, found prima facie responsible.

The CBI officials also plan to collect details from the Sunni Central Board of Waqfs which, along with others, had moved an application before the court in 2002 for production of seven documents related to the Babri dispute.
 
This is about pre-Babri Ayodhya:

-----------------------------------------

BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Korean memorial to Indian princess

In the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, a visiting Korean delegation has inaugurated a memorial to their royal ancestor, Queen Huh.

More than a-hundred historians and government representatives, including the North Korean ambassador to India, unveiled the memorial on the west bank of the River Saryu.

Korean historians believe that Queen Huh was a princess of an ancient kingdom in Ayodhya.

She went to Korea some two-thousand years ago and started the Karak dynasty by marrying a local king, Suro.

Today, the historians say, Queen Huh's descendants number more than six-million, including the South Korean president - Kim Dae Jung. But a senior official in Ayodhya told the BBC that no information was available about Queen Huh in Indian history.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
 
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'Facts of history cannot be altered'


Publication: The Hindu
Date: July 1, 1998

Prof. B. B. Lal, Director General (Retd.),
Archaeological Survey of India writes:

Under the caption 'Tampering with history', the
Editor of The Hindu, (dated June 12, 1998) dealt
with the reconstitution of the Indian Council for
Historical Research (ICHR). Since I happen to be
one of the 18 persons nominated by the
Government on the Council, the editor took the
opportunity to have a dig at me. He made three
distinct allegations. To quote: (i) "his (i.e. my)
initial conclusion was that there was no evidence
to suggest the 'historicity' of the Ramayana"; (ii)
"he even now refuses to hand over his field diaries
to ASI and throw these open to fellow
archaeologists"; and (iii) "Professor Lal began
echoing the Sangh Parivar and even claimed to
possess 'clinching' evidence suggesting-the Babri
Masjid stood on the ruins of a Hindu Temple."
In regard to the first allegation, let me make it
absolutely clear that at no point of time did I every
say that there was no evidence about the
"historicity" of the Ramayana story. My first paper
on the subject appeared in 1981 in Antiquity, a
renowned research journal published from
Cambridge, England. In 1988 the ICHR organised
an international seminar in New Delhi at which I
presented a 60-page paper entitled 'Historicity of
the Mahabharata and the Ramayana: What has
archaeology to say in the matter?' Finding in it
something that went counter to their views, the
then authorities of the ICHR withheld the
publication of the paper. Thereafter. when another
journal published it, there was a great hue and cry,
as if the heavens had fallen. Anyway, in 1993 came
out my first volume under the project
'Archaeology of the Ramayana sites'. In it I
categorically restated "The combined evidence
>from all five sites excavated under the project
shows that there did exist a historical basis for the
Ramayana." I do not know why the editor has
chosen to misrepresent my viewpoint and give an
altogether opposite impression to the reader.
The allegation that I am withholding the
documents from the Archaeological Survey of
India is again outrageously baseless. The Survey is
the custodian of all the documents, including field
diaries, plans, sections, photo negatives, and the
tire excavated material; and, as my information
goes, the Babri Masjid historians did see the same
a few years ago. Why all this fuss now?
Finally to the evidence 'suggesting that the Babri
Masjid stood on the ruins of a Hindu temple'.
Since it is an issue about which the entire country
would like to know the facts, I am presenting the
same in some detail.

The excavations at Ayodhya were a part of a much
larger project called 'Archaeology of the
Ramayana Sites'. The primary objective was to
ascertain the antiquity of this site and compare the
same with that of the other sites associated with
the Ramayana story. Thus, it was decided to
excavate at Ayodhya at as many spots as possible
to ensure that the lowest levels were not missed.
Fourteen different areas were chosen for the
operations, such as Hanuman Garhi, Kaushilya
Ghat, Sugriva Tila, etc.; and the Janmabhumi area
was just one of them.

In the Janmabhumi area, where there existed the
Mandir-Masjid complex, a trench was laid out of
the southern side of the complex, at a distance of
hardly four metres from the boundary wall. In this
trench, just below the surface, parallel rows of
pillar-foundations, made of brick-bats and stones,
were met with. While some of these fell well
within the excavated trench, a few lay underneath
its edge towards the boundary wall of the Mandir-
Masjid complex. Since affixed to the piers of the
Masjid there were many pillar-shafts carved with
Hindu gods and goddesses, it was but natural to
enquire if the pillar-foundations encountered in the
trench had anything to do with the pilars
incorporated in the mosque, which evidently
originally belonged to a temple.

An overenthusiastic Babri Masjid archaeologist, in
his effort to deny the entire pillar evidence,
published a propaganda booklet in which he stated
that these were not pillar foundations but walls.
The most amusing part, however, was that he just
drew some white lines interconnecting the pillar
bases on the photographs concerned and thereby
wanted us to believe that these were walls. What a
mockery of archaeology! Another Babri Masjid
archaeologist, while conceding that these were
pillar bases all right, suggested that the structure
concerned was no more than a mere cowshed. No
doubt for a person coming from a rural
background the cowshed idea was a very exciting
one, but he conveniently overlooked the fact that
this structural complex had as many as four
successive floors made of lime - something
unheard of in the case of cowsheds.

On February 10, 1991, while delivering a lecture at
Vijayawada on 'The Ramayana: An archaeological
appraisal' to the distinguished scholars assembled
for the Annual Conference of the Museums
Association of India, I was asked about the inter-
relationship between the pillar foundations
encountered in the trench excavated by me and the
stone pillars incorporated in the Babri Masjid and
further whether there was any temple underneath
the Masjid. I replied, as any archaeologist would
have: "If you do want to know the reality, the only
way is to dig underneath the mosque." When this
view was published in The Hindustan Times, New
Delhi, on February 12, 1991, a horde of Babri
Masjid historians pounced on me accusing that I
made this suggestion "under the impetus of the
current Hindutva campaign," and added that "Mr.
Lal by arguing fresh excavations at the site of the
Babri Masjid in Ayodhya would be fulfilling the
demand of those who wanted the Babri Masjid to
be demolished to construct the temple at that site."
(The Hindustan Times, February 13, 1991.)
To the foregoing I issued a rejoinder (The
Statesman), February 18, 1991. "Further
excavation within the floor area of the Babri
Masjid without in any way harming the structure is
necessary to know what actually preceded the
mosque at Ayodhya. Why should the contending
parties shy away from further excavation, unless
they are afraid of facing the truth?" Unfortunately,
the foregoing suggestion fell on deaf cars and
tension between the two parties continued to
develop.

Curiously, events take their own course. On
December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was
demolished by Kar Sevaks who had assembled in
thousands at the site. A regrettable event in itself,
the demolition incidentally brought to light a great
deal of archaeological material from within the
thick walls of the Babri structure. It included,
besides sculptured panels and images, architectural
components such as amalaka, sikharas, doorjambs,
etc., three inscriptions on stone.

Of the above-mentioned three inscriptions, the
largest one, inscribed on a 1.10x.56 metre slab and
consisting of 20 engraved lines, has been published
by Professor Ajaya Mitra Shastri of Nagpur
University in the Puratattva (a reputed scholarly
journal of the Indian Archaeological Society). No.
23 (1992-93), pp. 35 ff. (Professor Shastri is a
distinguished historian and a specialist in epigraphy
and numismatics.) The relevant part of his paper
reads its follows:

"The inscription is composed in high-flown
Sanskrit verse, except for a small portion in prose,
and is engraved in the chaste and classical Nagari
script of the eleventh-twelfth century AD. It was
evidently put up on the wall of the temple, the
construction of which is recorded in the text
inscribed on it. Line 15 of this, inscription. for
example, clearly tells us that a beautiful temple of
Vishnu-Hari, built with heaps of stone (sila-sam
hati-grahais) and beautified with a golden spire
(hiranya-kalasa-srisundaram) unpralleled by any
other temple built by earlier kings
(purvvuirapyakritam kritam nripatibhir) was
constructed. This wonderful temple (aty-adhutam)
was built in the temple-city (vibudh- alayni) of
Ayodhya situated in the Saketamandala (district,
line 17) showing that Ayodhya and Saketa were
closely connected. Saketa being the district of
which Ayodhya was a part. Line 19 describes god
Vishnu as destroying king Bali (apparently in the
Vamana manifestation) and the ten-headed
personage (Dasanana i.e. Ravana)."
The inscription speaks for itself and no further
comments are necessary.

It has been contented by the Babri Masjid
Historians that these images, architectural parts
and the inscribed slabs had been brought by the
Kar Sevaks from elsewhere and surreptitiously
placed there. This contention, however, does not
hold good, since there are photographs to
contradict this stand: for example, the two
photographs published by India Today on p. 33 of
its issue dated December 31, 1992. Here, the Kar
Sevaks are seen carrying a huge stone-slab bearing
a very long sculpted frieze, after having picked it
tip from the debris. The above-mentioned
historians also allege that the inscription has been
forged. This is behaving like the Village School
Master of Oliver Goldsmith, who, "though
vanquished would argue still." So many eminent
epigraphists of the country have examined the
inscribed slab and not one of them has even
remotely thought that the inscription is forged.
In this context, it may not be out of place to
mention that hundreds of examples are available
ofthe destruction of temples and incorporation of
their material in the mosques. Right in Delhi there
is the example of the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque
(near the Qutb Minar) which incorporated parts of
a large number of temples that had been destroyed.
Or at Ajmer, there is the well-known Arhai-dinka-
jhonpra, presenting a similar picture. From the
foregoing it is abundantly clear there did exist a
twelfth-century temple at the site, which was
destroyed and some of its parts incorporated
within the body of the Babri Masjid. Some other
parts, like the stone-pillars, were placed alongside
the piers of the Masjid, to show them off. Some
other pieces, not used in either of the foregoing
matter, were thrown away in a nearby depression,
like the ones recovered by the Public Works
Department of the Uttar Pradesh Government in
June 1992 in the course of the leveling of the
adjacent area.

Had my suggestion to carry out trial excavation
underneath the floor of the mosque without; in any
way damaging the structure itself been
implemented. it would have averted the disaster.
But who cares for sane advice? Anyway, let it be
remembered that by blindfolding yourself you
cannot alter facts of history!
 
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Archelogy of Babri Masjid | TwoCircles.net

Some controversies simply refuse to die down. In India, certain extremist Hindu groups every now and then rake up their allegation that the site of the Babri Masjid in the town of Ayodhya is really, Lord Ram’s birthplace (janam bhoomi). They further claim that since the Mughal emperor Babar was responsible for demolishing a pre-existing Hindu temple on the site, the Babri Masjid should be destroyed in totality and a temple built in its place to consecrate the site as worthy of Lord Ram’s birthplace. Babri Masjid was destroyed on December 6th, 1992.

Much blood has been shed over this issue, and sadly, every time it makes headlines, the Muslim minority populace in communally sensitive cities and towns fear a successive backlash.

TwoCircles.net determined to delve into this issue and uncover certain interesting facts unknown to the vast majority. Who better to speak to, in this regard, than Mr Sher Singh, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service known for his research in, and subsequent publishing of three volumes on the subject – The Secular Emperor Babar, authored by Surinder Kaur and Tapan Sanyal, Lokgeet Prakashan, Sirhind 1987, The Secular Emperor Babar – More Sinned Against than Sinning (Volume 2), authored by Surinder Kaur and Sher Singh, B B Prakashan, 1989 and The Secular Emperor Babar, a Victim of Indian Partition, authored by Surinder Kaur and Sher Singh, Genuine Publications, Delhi 1991. Surinder Kaur and Sher Singh are also authors of Archaeology of Babri Masjid, published by Genuine Publications in 1994 (1).

We learnt a lot about the Babri mosque in conversation with Mr Sher Singh. Read on for more…


TCN: Mr. Singh please tell us something about your background?

SS: I was born on December 3, 1946. I am a Dalit Sikh. I studied at Punjab University, Chandigarh and earned a Masters degree in English in 1970. I joined the Indian Administrative Service (1976 batch), and have spent most of my working years in West Bengal.

My Dalit background inspired me to spearhead a movement to bring Dalits into mainstream cultural, economic, political and social life. I perceive the creation of the Bahujan Samaj Party as an outcome of this enhanced awareness among leaders of the dalit masses.

TCN: Where does your interest in the Babri mosque stem from?


SS: I enjoy challenging my thinking processes. In fact, even when I was dismissed as an I.A.S. officer, I did not sit back and moan over my fate! I chose to master Cheiro’s astrology and the Jewish Kaballah school of thought. I also studied the stock market, auction trading and the reading of market trends.

Frankly, like any other Indian, I witnessed the brouhaha over the Babri mosque. I heard the claims of extremist Hindu groups and determined to get to the bottom of the matter. This was before events of 1992. My aim was to separate mythology from history. You know, Dr Sukumar Sen, India national professor and author of the Ramayana has proven that there are 23 places in the world where Lord Ram is supposed to have been born – but evidently, all these claims cannot be right. Another national professor Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterjee has written three volumes on the subject – the Ramayana. (2) Incidentally, Dr Chatterjee faced a lot of difficulty because of his work – his house was also set on fire.

Anyway, even if his birthplace is Ayodhya, I wanted to determine whether the allegations involving Babur and the Babri mosque were correct.

Luckily, I came in touch with Dr Bishambhar Nath Pande (3), an eminent historian. I consider his work exemplary, for he works with great caution, and emphasizes the need for logical dialectical reasoning, eyewitness accounts and/or documentary evidence to support any historical theory. He has clearly pointed out that much of Indian history has been written by British historians who served the vested interests of their ruling masters. It was therefore, seen fitting to pit Hindus against Muslims, or divide the masses to make it easier to rule over them. Perhaps this is the reason for so many brutal accounts of the atrocities of Mughal emperors towards native Indians flooding Indian history. Thanks to Dr Pande, today we know for certain that the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was not the tyrant he has been made out to be. Quite the contrary, he was a secular emperor who donated generously to Hindu temples across the country.

Anyway, coming back to the point, Dr Pande was most encouraging when I wrote to him about the need for someone to take up the Babri mosque controversy as a study. Fortunately, he was willing to guide my work. He reiterated the need for a three-point process, similar to what he adopts, in order for me to be certain that nobody would throw stones at me for the outcome of my findings. Hence, my research methodology focused on logical dialectical reasoning, eyewitness accounts and/or documentary evidence.

TCN: Please summarize your findings about the Babri mosque.

SS: Summarizing my findings is not easy, but I will put forward three noteworthy findings for your readers –

The first relates to the year 1528 AD, which is when Babur was supposed to have visited Ayodhya and ordered the demolishing of the temple. Babur kept a daily diary, meant to be an autobiography called Tuzk-i-Babri, of which entries spanning a duration of 5 to 6 months are entirely missing. It is believed that after Babur’s death, when his son Humayun was once on the run from Sher Shah Suri, and camping out in a tent, these pages got drenched and were thus removed from the diary. Incidentally, the rest of his autobiography minus those pages may still be seen at the Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad.

However, the absence of these pages has very conveniently been interpreted otherwise by those who desire to prove that Babur visited Ayodhya during those very months. I therefore referred to his daughter Gulbadan Begum’s diary Humayunama, wherein she has very clearly stated that during those months, her mother and she were to be received at Agra by her father, but eventually they met up at Aligarh. Babur was already in the region for a hunting expedition along the Sarda river, following a military expedition against Muslim Afghan rebels led by Shaik Bayazid. Awadh – the region in which Ayodhya lies – had already been under Muslim influence since 1030 AD, when Syed Salar Masood Ghazi entered the region from Multan. So there was never a need for Babur to exert himself on the people of Awadh.

The fact is that Babur, an Uzbek rebel ruler himself, had been driven out of his domain and headed towards India. His aim was to establish a kingdom that would be ruled by successive Mughals, but without antagonizing the Indian populace. He even had a Hindu Prime Minister named Khiwa. He is known to have advised his son Humayun never to harm temples, the places of worship of the Hindu people. So the first falsity is that Babur visited Ayodhya.

If he didn’t, then who ordered the Babri mosque to be built? This mosque was actually built by the Sharqi kings of Jaunpur, 16 years before Babur was even born. I have had the nameplate inscriptions of the Babri mosque transcribed by Persian scholars, and the date testifies this year.

Apparently, the Sharqi rajas grabbed power by stabbing the then governor of the region (including Ayodhya). The Sharqi rajas were eunuchs, who ruled for about 100 years. The Babri mosque was ordered to be built during their reign, pretty much as a food for work program of that time. It took 10,000 people 5 years to build the mosque. For this duration, all those 10,000 people were paid for in food, and thus averted starvation.

How do I know this? This fact has been documented by Dr Francis Hamilton Buchanan (3), a surgeon and botanist who had also earlier served the East India Company. However, from 1807 to 1814, he was appointed by the Governor General of India Marques Wellesley to conduct an extensive survey that would include topography, history, antiquities, the condition of the inhabitants, religion, natural productions, agriculture, fine and common arts, and commerce. In 1813-1814, he focused on Ayodhya. I obtained copies of his conclusions from the British Library in London.

Finally, I would like to say a word on the mysterious Kasauti stone that is said to have been used to construct the black pillars of the Babri mosque, which are believed to date back to the pre-existing temple.

We subjected samples of the structure to a radiocarbon dating (C 14) test. This helped prove that the structure is only around 500 years old. If the pillars were meant to date back to a pre-existing temple built of the Kasauti stone (some Hindu groups believe the temple was 1000 to 1500 years old), these should have been much older. Actually, the construction techniques of the time involved a fine polish, by which a mixture of adhesive urad dal and other substances were applied to a surface to get a blackish result. This is what was done at the Babri mosque.


TCN: Congratulations! Has anyone disputed your findings?

SS: I published my books only after writing about my findings in major newspapers, and waiting six months to see if these were disputed. No, till date these findings have not been contradicted by anyone. Perhaps this is why my book has been translated into 27 languages across the world.

I also shared copies of my work with the Honourable Justice Mirza Hameedullah Beg, ex Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who appreciated it and gave a copy to the late Rajeev Gandhi, who liked the book a lot and eventually became a family friend.

TCN: Sir, what opposition did you face after the publication of the book? Why do you believe you faced this opposition?


SS: Sadly, in 1994, the Hindu Marxists of West Bengal filed a chargesheet against me. It claimed that I had violated the All India Service Conduct Rules 3(1) and 6(2), and was subsequently suspended. The reasons cited were several – the first volume of the Babri mosque series was authored by Surinder Kaur and Tapan Sanyal, yet the chargesheet claimed I was a co-author. Secondly, it was said that I incited Muslims to the extent that they could perform acts threatening communal harmony. Thirdly, according to newspaper reports, I had received the Saudi Arabian government’s Faisal Award in 1993. However, the award [amount] was routed through me as customary through the government and I eventually never received it, even though corrupt officials tried to bargain with me to split the award. Then since I had not submitted some property statements in the years 1989-1991, this was also made part of the chargesheet. It was also said that I had defamed the BJP, by criticizing its contentions regarding the Babri mosque.

A one man inquiry committee was instituted to look into the case. I requested that a scholar be appointed to assist the inquiry, but this request was refused. In January 2000, the committee declared me guilty as charged,

I appealed the order, and on July 24, 2000, my chargesheet stood quashed by the Central Administrative Tribunal.

However, I was dismissed from service and harassed and almost driven to acute financial crisis. A case continued which eventually reached the Calcutta High Court, where it was pronounced that I (the defendant) had not been secured the legal rights that I could rightfully claim. On March 19, 2007, the honourable judges Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice K K Prasad of the Calcutta High Court ordered that I be fully compensated, as an I.A.S. officer with due consideration to the seniority I would have gained over the years I was suspended, and that pension and all other dues be paid to me. For reference this case is W.P.C.T. number 120 of 2003.

Quite asides this legal battle, I have received threatening calls, but have always taken these in my stride. I would call those who threatened me to face me, and talk things out. No one ever did.

As to why I faced all these calls and the harassment, I suggest you wait for my autobiography My Destiny, to know the answer. It will be released soon.

TCN: What are the consequences of your findings? Do these answer questions for many people, or do they throw up more questions? It appears more that the common man believes what political parties say.

SS: Do remember that my research was not aimed at the common man. It was a scholarly study, like a PhD thesis, aimed at unearthing the truth behind the Babri mosque controversy. I don’t think lay people go into so many details, but yes, I think I have taken many so-called scholars to the task for promoting a hypothesis which has no basis. I have effectively shown their theory to be humbug.

Notes
1. Surinder Kaur is Mr Sher Singh’s wife. Tapan Sanyal is an anthropologist who Mr Singh collaborated with for specialist inputs. Publisher details: B B Prakashan, 22, Panchana Tala Road, Calcutta and Genuine Publication & Media Pvt. Ltd., B-35 (Basement), Nizamuddin West, New Delhi 110013, Genuine Publication & Media Pvt. Ltd. and Qazi Publishers & Distributors

2. [Dr] Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, “Rama and his Birthplace,” Ananda Bazaar Patrika, Calcutta, Jan 17, 1976 from Re: BABRI DEMOLITION was not a mistake Also see Suniti Kumar Chatterji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Acquisition - Vol. I No. 1 Sept - Nov. 1993

3. Dr Bishambhar Nath Pande born on 23 December 1906 in Madhya Pradesh of Umreth; member UP Legislative Assembly (1952–53); member UP Legislative Council (1972–74); twice member of the Rajya Sabha (1976 and 1982); governor of Orissa state (1983–88); recipient of Padma Shri (1976); author of several books, including The Spirit of India and The Concise History of Congress; died in New Delhi on June 1, 1998) from CC October 1999

4. Francis Hamilton Buchanan, more at Francis Hamilton of Buchanan : Oxford Biography Index entry and Francis Buchanan-Hamilton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The Ayodhya Evidence Debate - Part 1

by Koenraad Elst



[The present article is adapted, with minor modifications, from the chapter of the same name in the book "ELST, Koenraad. 2002. Ayodhya, The Case Against the Temple, New Delhi: Voice of India, pp. 146-188."
The article assumes importance in view of the ongoing archaeological excavations at the disputed site, at the orders of the Indian courts of law. The reader will note that the same set of Marxist political scholars (Irfan Habib, D. N. Jha, R. S. Sharma, D. Mandal, Suraj Bhan, Sushil Srivastava etc.) who had served as counsel to the BMAC are now again siding with the Islamist party in their current media blitzkrieg. The article serves to expose, in brief, the lack of ethical behavior as well as the academic dishonesty exhibited by these political scholars - Bharatvani Team, 9 July 2003].

PART I


This paper was written as an adaptation from an earlier paper, "The Ayodhya Debate", published in the conference proceedings of the 1991 International Ramayana Conference which had taken place in my hometown, Leuven.[1] The present version represents my own text prepared for the October 1995 Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. A few notes have been added.

The atmosphere at the conference was frankly hostile. After the academic authorities, who may have been ignorant of my controversial reputation, had allowed my paper to be read, the practical organization of the panel session was entrusted to graduate students belonging to the Indian Communist organization, Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL). They scheduled me as the last speaker in a panel of four, chaired by an Indian female graduate student, a nice girl but obviously unable to perform the most difficult duty of a panel chairperson, viz. keeping the speakers to their allotted time. Moreover, they arranged for our session to be held in a room where another panel was scheduled at noon, making it impossible for the last speaker to read his paper in excess of the panel session's allotted time. Two panel speakers played along comfortably expounding and repeating the points they could have easily have made in half a minute.

It was up to people from the audience to protest and oblige the chairperson to allow me to read out my paper. When it was my turn, I was heckled somewhat by the Leftist crowd, especially by a well-known Indo-American Communist academic, who was rolling his eyes like a madman and making obscene gestures until an elderly American lady sitting next to him told him to behave. At the end, Biju Mathew came to collect a copy of my text (the book version of which I had some author's copies handy), called me a "liar", and told his buddies that they needed to write a scholarly rebuttal. Which is still being awaited today.

1. Introduction

One of the contenders in the Ayodhya history debate, the "hypothesis" that the Babri Masjid had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, had been a matter of universal consensus until a few years ago. Even the Muslim participants in court cases in the British period had not challenged it; on the contrary, Muslim authors expressed pride in this monument of Islamic victory over infidelity. It is only years after the Hindu take-over of the structure in 1949 that denials started to be voiced.[2] And it is only in 1989 that a large-scale press campaign was launched to deny what had earlier been a universally accepted fact.

In normal academic practice, the debate on an issue on which such a consensus exists, would only have been opened after the discovery of new facts which undermine the consensus view. The present debate is between a tradition which numerous observers and scholars had found coherent and well-founded, and an artificial hypothesis based on political compulsions, instead of on newly discovered facts.

In an effort to move the debate forward, the Government of India provided the contending parties with an official forum in which experts could go through the evidence produced for both sides. This scholarly exchange took place around the turn of 1991, and was briefly revived in the autumn of 1992. Both rounds of the debate were unilaterally broken off by the Babri Masjid party.

This paper is intended to fill the gap left by the general media in the information on the debate about the historical claims concerning the Rama-Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. As the only non-Indian scholar to have followed the dispute closely, I will argue that the scholars' debate has ended in an unambiguous victory for one of the two parties.[3]

2. The Object of the Debate

As is well known by now, on Rama's supposed birthplace in Ayodhya, there used to stand a disputed mosque structure. It was called the Babri Masjid because according to an inscription on its front wall it was built at the orders of the Moghul invader Babar in 1528, by his lieutenant Mir Baqi. But until the beginning of this century, official documents called it Masjid-i-Janmasthan, "Mosque of the birthplace", and the hill on which it stands was designated as Ramkot (Rama's fort) or Janmasthan (birthplace). Since 1949, the building is effectively in use as a Hindu temple, but many Hindus, and especially the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)[4], want to explicate the Hindu function of the place with proper Hindu temple architecture, which implied removing the existing structure. On the other hand, the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and its splinter, the Babri Masjid Movement Coordination Committee (BMMCC), want the building, and after its demolition at least the site, to be given back to the Muslim community.

In December 1990 and January 1991, at the request of the Chandra Shekhar Government, the BMAC and the VHP exchanged historical evidence for their respective cases. It was broken off on 25 January 1991 when the BMAC representatives, without any explanation, failed to show up at the meeting scheduled for that day. The debate was revived in October 1992 by the Narasimha Rao Government, with essentially the same teams, but the next month, the BMAC withdrew in protest against VHP's announcement of a Kar Seva (building activity) due to 6 December 1992.

It is strange (but perfectly explainable, as we shall see) that this debate has not received more attention in scholarly and journalistic writings. It was, after all, the only occasion where both parties could not manipulate "evidence" without being subject to pointed criticism from the opposing side. Many reporters on the Ayodhya conflict have made tall claims about "concoction" of bogus evidence" (not to mention "Goebbelsian propaganda"), and to substantiate these, there could hardly be a better mine of information than this Government-sponsored debate. Yet, most of them refuse to even mention it.

A report of this debate should distinguish between three possible debating issues:
1) Is the present-day Ayodhya with all its Rama-related sites, the Ayodhya described by Valmiki in his Sanskrit Ramayana? In the course of this debate, no new facts have been added to Prof. B. B. Lal's conclusion that Valmiki's Ayodhya and present-day Ayodhya are one and the same place.[5] It is a different matter that his conclusions have beend isputed, without any evidence, by the JNU historians among others. Of course, it is nobody's case that the Valmiki connection has been established in an unassailable manner, but at least, what much research is available, points in that direction. However, even if B. B. Lal's assertion is correct, this leaves open the possibility that the writer who styled himself Valmiki, may have written his version of the Rama story long after it actually took place, and that he relocated the scene of a tradition coming from elsewhere into his own area. Therefore, the next, more fundamental question might be:
2) Is the present-day Ayodhya, and more specifically the disputed site, indeed the birthplace of a historical character called Rama? The BMAC has argued that such a thing cannot be proven, assuming that Rama was a historical character at all. The VHP has refused to consider this question, arguing that religions do not have to justify the sacredness of their sacred sites: if the site was traditionally associated with sacred events and characters (as it was, at least from Valmiki onwards), or if it was treated by Rama devotees as somehow sacred (as it was since at least several centuries), then that should be enough to command respect, regardless of the historical basis of this claim to sacredness.

Compare with the Muslim sacred places: there is no historical substance at all in Mohammad's claim that the Kaaba in Mecca had been built by Abraham as a place of monotheistic worship. This story had to justify the take-over of the Kaaba from its real owners, the "idolaters" of Arabia. And yet, in spite of the starkly unhistorical nature of the Muslim claim to the Kaaba, this claim is not being questioned. Nobody is saying that the Muslims can only have their Kaaba if they give historical proof that it was built by Abraham.[6]

Therefore the VHP insists that if the disputed site is a genuine traditional sacred site, this must be enough to make others respect it as such. Moreover, if it was really a Hindu sacred site, it is reasonable to expect that this tatus was explicitated with a temple, which must have adorned the site before the Babri Masjid was built. So, the third question is:

3) Was the Babri Masjid built in forcible replacement of a pre-existing Rama temple? The Muslim fundamentalist leader Syed Shahabuddin, convener of the BMMCC (and initiator of the campaign against Salman Rushdie)[7] agrees with the VHP that this is the fundamental question. He has said repeatedly: "If it is proven that the Babri Masjid has been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, I will demolish it with my own hands."[8] So, the subject matter of the debate can be limited to the question whether a Hindu temple had been destroyed to make way for the Babri Masjid.

In November 1990, in a letter to the newly appointed Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, the late Sri Rajiv Gandhi (whose Congress Party was supporting the new Government) had also proposed to narrow down the debate to this one question. Sri Gandhi suggested that the decision of whether to leave the disputed building to the Hindus (who were using it as a temple) or to give it to the Muslims (who had used it as a mosque), should be taken on the basis of historical and archaeological evidence regarding the specific point whether the Babri Masjid had replaced a pre-existing Hindu temple. It is this letter from Rajiv Gandhi which prompted Chandra Shekhar to invite the contending parties to have a scholarly exchange of historical evidence.


3. Chronicle of the semi-official debate

Both parties met on 1 December and 4 December 1990, and they agreed to submit and confront historical material supporting their respective viewpoints. On 23 December, the VHP and the BMAC submitted their respective bundles of evidence, On 10 January 1991, both sides submitted rejoinders to their opponents' evidence bundles. At least, the VHP scholars gave a detailed reply to all the documents presented by the BMAC. But the latter merely handed in yet another pile of newspaper articles and more such non-evidential statements of opinion. This created the impression that the BMAC was effectively conceding defeat.

On January 24, the parties met in order to discuss the evidence. But the BMAC team leader, Prof. R. S. Sharma, a well-known Marxist historian, said that he and his colleagues had not yet studied the VHP material (to which the BMAC had agreed to reply by January 10). This is most remarkable, because the week before, he had led 42 academics in signing a much-publicized statement staying, that there was definitely absolutely no proof whatsoever at all for the pre-existing Rama temple. He had issued more statements on the matter and even published a small book on it.[9] There he was, pleading a lack of familiarity with the very material on which he had been making such tall statements.

The other historians for the BMAC were Athar Ali, D. N. Jha and Suraj Bhan, apart from the office bearers of the BMAC itself. The four BMAC historians have published their argumentation some months later: Ramajanmabhumi Baburi Masjid, A Historians' Report to the Nation. Tellingly, they do not mention the outcome of the debate, but reiterate the ludicrous demand they made while attending the debate as BMAC advocates, viz. that they be considered "independent historians" qualified to pronounce scientific judgment in a debate between their employers and their enemies.[10]

Of course the government representative dismissed this demand as ridiculous. Yet, the BMAC has continued to call them "independent historians", and they themselves have continued to demand that the VHP submit its case to "independent arbitration", i.e., by their own kind. These two telling details of the Ayodhya debate story have, of course, been withheld from the reader in the booklet published by the anti-temple party.

The next meeting was scheduled for the next day, January 25. But there, the BMAC scholars simply did not show up. The unambiguous result of the debate was this: The BMAC scholars have run away from the arena. They had not presented written evidence worth the name, they had not given a written refutation of the VHP scholars' arguments, they had wriggled out of a face-to-face discussion on the accumulated evidence, and finally they had just stayed away. Thus ended the first attempt by the Government of India to find an amicable solution on the basis of genuine historical facts.

In October 1992, the Narasimha Rao Government tried to revive this discussion foru. Dur to personal differences, Prof. R. S. Sharma stayed away from the BMAC team, which otherwise consisted of the same people. The debate focused almost entirely on the interpretation of the archaeological findings of June 1992: a large number if Hindu sculptures and other temple remains, found in the terrain in front of the disputed building. The BMAC team argued that these findings had all been planted. It also demanded that in view of the ongoing negotiations, the VHP cancel its programme scheduled for 6 December 1992 in Ayodhya. When the VHP refused, the BMAC stayed away from the talks once more.


4. The pro-Temple Evidence

On Ayodhya, there has always in living memory been a consensus: among local Muslims and Hindus, among European travelers and British administrators. As late as 1989, the Encyclopedia Brittannica (entry Ayodhya) reports without a trace of hesitation that the Babri Masjid was built in forcible replacement of a temple marking Rama's birthplace. When there is such a consensus on a given issue, the academic custom is not to reopen the debate until someone comes with serious evidence that the consensus opinion is wrong and that a different scenario is indicated by newfound (or newly interpreted) facts. But the only evidence to surface during the debate was presented by the VHP-mandated team and merely reconfirmed the old consensus.


The VHP's evidence bundle was not just a pile of separate documents.[11] It was centered around a careful argumentation, which can be summed up in three points:

1) A single hypothesis. Only one hypothesis is put forward, viz. that the disputed place was traditionally (since before the Muslim period) venerated as Rama's birthplace, that a Rama temple had stood on it, and that this temple was destroyed to make way for the Babri Masjid. All the material collected goes to confirm this one hypothesis. Not a single piece of documentary or archaeological evidence contradicts it. The contrast with the anti-Janmabhumi polemists is striking: they have so far not produced any document that positively indicates a different scenario from the one upheld by the VHP scholars. The BMAC effort has been only negative, viz. trying to pick holes in the pro-temple evidence, but the VHP has posited its own hyupothesis that takes care of all the relevant data.
2) Temple foundations. Archaeological findings in Prof. B. B. Lal's excavation campaign Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites 1975-80 and more recent ones as well as a large number of documents written in tempore non suspecto confirm the hypothesis. Findings of burnt-brick pillar bases dated to the 11th century in trenches a few metres from the disputed structure prove that a pillared building stood in alignment with, and on the same foundations system as the Banri Masjid. The written documents do not include an eye-witness account of the temple destruction, the way we have eye-witness accounts of the destruction of many other temples. But then, a wealth of documents by European travelers and by local Muslims, confirm unambiguously that the Babri Masjid was considered to have been built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple. These witnesses also describe first-hand how the place was revered by the Hindus as Rama's birthsite, and that Hindus always came back to worship as closely as possible to the original temple site: they could not reasonably have done this except in continuation of a tradition dating back to before the Babri Masjid.
3) The single hypothesis is consistent with known patterns. No ad hoc hypothesis are needed to support the main hypothesis, no unusual scenarios have to be invented, no unusual motives have to be attributed to the people involved, no conspiracy theory has to be conjured up. The general VHP hypothesis merely says that well-established general patterns of Hindu and Muslim behavior apply to the specific case under consideration. Among these are to be noted:


First, the fact that a temple stood on the now-disputed site, which is a hilltop overlooking Ayodhya, is in perfect conformity with a world-wide practice of putting important buildings, like castles and temples, on the topographical place of honor. By contrast, the hypothesis that the Babri Masjid has been built on an emplty spot presupposes an abnormal course of events, viz. that the people of the temple city Ayodhya had left the place of honor empty.

Second, the demolition of Hindu temples and their forcible replacement by mosques has been a very persistent behavior pattern of the Muslim conquerors. These temple demolitions were consistent with the persecution of "unbelief" carried out by Islamic rulers from Mohammed bin Qasim (who conquered Sindh in 712) to Aurangzeb (the last great Moghul. D. 1707), and more recently in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir. Though there is no lack of negationists who try to deny or conceal it, the historical record bears out Will Durant's assessment that "the Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history".[12] It is safe to affirm that the majority of pre-1707 mosques in India has been built in forcible replacement of Hindu temples. Outside India the Islamic takeover of the most sacred sites of other religions was equally systematic, e.g., the Ka'aba in Mecca, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Aya Sophia in Istanbul, the Buddhist monastery in Bukhara etc.

Third, the fact that Hindu temple materials (14 black stone sculptured pillars) have been used in the Babri Masjid is not an unusual feature requiring a special explanation; on the contrary, it was fairly common practice meant as a visual display of the victory of Islam over infidelity. It was done in many mosques that have forcibly replaced temples, e.g., the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi (in which a part of the Kashi Vishvanath temple is still visible)[13], and the Adahi-Din-ka-Jhonpra mosque in Ajmer, the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi, or, outside India, the Jama Masjid of Damascus (which was a Christian cathedral).

Fourth, the fact that Hindus used to keep on revering sacred sites even after mosques had been built on them, is attested by foreigners like Niccolo Manucci in the 17th and Alexander Cunningham in the 19th century.[14] By contrast, the hypothesis that Hindus started laying an arbitrary claim on a place firmly occupied by the Muslims (so that they courted repression for no reason at all), is pretty fantastic and without parallel.

5. No Direct Evidence

The VHP bundle also contained a large number of quotes from ancient literature to prove that the Rama cult is not a recent development, and that the status of Ayodhya as a sacred city has been uninterrupted since at least 2000 years. The one thing that is missing is the ultimate clinching evidence: a contemporary description of the forcible replacement of the temple with the mosque. But even in the absence of this item of primary evidence, the amount of secondary evidence is so overwhelming, coherent and uncontradicted, that in another, less contentious historical search, it would be considered conclusive.

It may be recalled that, in the course of the public debate on the opinion pages of the newspapers, the pro-BMAC polemists had at first demanded non-British evidence, because the whole Janmabhoomi tradition was merely a British concoction. In A. G. Noorani's categorical words" "The myth is a 19th century creation by the British."[15]

Next, the demanded pre-19th century evidence, because Hindus and Muslims had already "interiorized the British propaganda" early in that century, as is clear from a number of writings by local Muslims, brought to light by Prof. Harsh Narain. This, Mirza Jan, a Muslim militant who participated in an attempt to wrest from the Hindus another sacred site in Ayodhya, the Hanumangarhi, wrote in 1856 that "a lofty mosque has been built by badshah Babar" on "the original birthplace of Rama", in application of the rule that "where there was a big temple, a big mosque was constructed and where there was a small temple, a small mosque was constructed."[16] Therefore, Muslim leader Mohammed Abdul Rahim Qureishi has asked the pro-Janmabhoomi side "to produce any historical evidence, not only independent of the British sources but also of the period prior to the advent of the 19th century".[17]

But this type of evidence was also produced: most publicly the Austrian Jesuit Joseph Tieffenthaler's 1767 account, presented by Mr. Abhas Kumar Chatterjee in Indian Express. Tieffenthaler describes how Hindus celebrated Ram Navami (commemorating Rama's birth) just outside the Babri Masjid, and recounts the local traditions that the mosque was built in forcible replacement of Rama's birthplace temple.[18]

It was also pointed out that the Muslim writer Mirza Jan, already mentioned, had given an extensive quotation from an (otherwise unknown) letter by a daughter of Aurangzeb's son and successor, Bahadur Shah. He quotes her as writing about 1710 that the temples on the sacred sites of Shiva, Krishna and Rama (including "Sita's kitchen", i.e., part of the Ramkot complex) "were all demolished for the strength of Islam, and at all these places mosques have been constructed". She exhorted the Muslims to assert their presence at these mosques and not to five in to Hindu compromise proposals.[19]

Furthermore, a letter dated 1735 by a Faizabad qazi (judge) was shown, describing Hindu-Muslim riots in Ayodhya was shown, describing Hindu-Muslim riots in Ayodhya over "the Masjid built by the emperor of Delhi", i.e., either a pre-Moghul Sultan or Moghul dynasty founder Babar. This is only a secondary indication for the actual temple destruction, but it is first-hand evidence for the existence of the Hindu claim on the Babri Masjid site well before the 19th century. Only when this type of evidence was shown, did the pro-BMAC polemists move on to demand strictly contemporary evidence.

About this demand for eye-witness accounts, Arun Shourie has remarked: "Today a contemporary account is being demanded in the case of the Babri Masjid, Are those who make this demand prepared to accept this as the criterion - that if a contemporary account exists of the destruction of a temple for constructing a mosque, the case is made?" Shourie goes on to quote from Aurangzeb's court chronicles: "News came to Court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Benares (2/9/1669)*In the month of Ramzan, the religious-minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura*.In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this strong center of infidelity was accomplished*.A grand mosque was built on its site*.January 1670)"[20]. These accounts are as contemporary as you can get.

Shourie concludes: "If the fact that a contemporary account of the temple at Ayodhya is not available leaves the matter unsettled, does the fact that contemporary accounts are available for the temples at Kashi, Mathura, Pandharpur and a host of other places settle the matter? One has only to ask the question to know that the 'experts' and 'intellectuals' will immediately ask for something else."[21]


6. The Anti-Temple Evidence

The BMAC presented a pile of some eighty documents which can be divided into three groups: legal documents, statements of opinion, and historical documents.

The largest group consists of court documents, from court disputes over the Rama-Janmabhoomi and other contentious places in Ayodhya, most of them from the British period, a few from after the independence. However, what these court documents prove is:

First, that the Hindus kept on claiming the site in principle, even if for the time being they were willing to settle for a license to worship on a platform just outside the contentious building.

Second, that the Muslim please always focused, not on questioning the temple destruction tradition, but on the accomplished fact that they owned the place for centuries, long enough to create an ownership title no matter how and from whom they had acquired it;

And third, that the British rulers did not want any raking-up of old quarrels, and therefore upheld the status-quo, but without questioning the common belief that the Masjid had replaced a Hindu temple.

British judges have explicitly not subscribed to the thesis, now defended by the BMAC and BMMCC, that there had never been a Hindu temple on the contentious spot. On the contrary, in his verdict in 1886 a British judge observed: "It is unfortunate that a mosque should have been built on land held specially sacred by the Hindus, but as that happened 356 years ago, it is now too late to remedy the grievance."[22] So, the court verdicts that upheld the Muslim claim to the site (and have been cited by the BMAC scholars to this effect), by no means imply that the judges doubted the contention that a temple had been demolished to make way for this mosque. All the British sources, such as Edward Balfour in 1858 and Archaeological Survey of India's field explorer A. Furher in 1891, confirm the tradition that the Babri Masjid had replaced a Rama temple.

One British source, Francis Buchanan's survey (written in 1810 and edited by Montgomery Martin in 1838), has been quoted by pro-BMAC historians (who have otherwise British testimonies as "prejudiced", "part of a British tactic to foment communalism" etc.) as calling the tradition of the Rama-Janmabhoomi temple destruction "very illfounded".[23] However, Buchanan did not denounce as ill-founded "the temple-destruction theory", as the BMAC historians claim, but only referred to the fact that "the destruction is very generally attributed by the Hindus to the furious zeal of Aurangzeb", which allegation was misdirected: as proof for Aurangzeb's non-involvement Buchanan cites the inscription attributing the mosque to Babar.[24] As the last large-scale temple destroyer, Aurangzeb had become the proverbial representative of the old Islamic tradition of iconoclasm, which has already destroyed thousands of temples before his own time.

Buchanan opines that Babar had built the mosque not on empty land, but on the site of the Ramkot "castle", which to him may well have been the very castle in which Rama himself had lived. This claim only differs from the local tradition and the VHP position by being even bolder. According to him, the black-stone pillars (with Hindu sculptures defaced by "the bigot" Babr) incorporated in the Masjid had been "taken from the ruins of the palace", and at any rate from "a Hindu building". Obviously, the site was considered by the devotees as Rama's court, originally a castle and only later a temple.[25]

At any rate, the quarrel over whether the Babri Masjid replaced a "castle" or a "temple" is a false problem, considering Rama's double-role as a God-king. Buchanan gives no facts supporting an alternative origin for the Babri Masjid and upholds the essence of the local tradition, viz. that the Masjid has replaced a Hindu building.[26] The British judges have consistently accepted the view of the British surveyors and scholars.

The second largest group of BMAC documents consisted of book excerpts and newspaper articles, mere statements of opinion. They give the well-known or at least predictable opinions of politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru and Ramaswamy Naicker, of secularist journalists like Arvind N. Das and Praful Bidwai, of Marxist intellectuals like the JNU historians and Prof. R. S. Sharma (who was invited to lead the BMAC team only after this first round). In this collection of opinions essentially four points have been argued:
Firstly, Rama was not a historical character;
Secondly, Rama have been a historical character, but Ayodhya is not his real birthplace;
Thirdly, Rama worship in Ayodhya is fairly recent, and hardly existed prior to the period when the Babri Masjid was built;
Fourthly, the Babri Masjid was not built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple.

However, the cited opinions on each of these four points are not even convergent or in mutual agreement. For instance several authors say that the Babri Masjid was built on empty land; others say it replaced a Jaina temple, or a Shaiva temple, or a secular building. About Rama's birthplace, one source cited says that Rama was born in Nepal; another says it was in Afghanistan; yet another says it was in Ayodhya, but on a different spot; one writer says that Rama was in fact a pharaoh of Egypt. In all, the BMAC has given "proof" that Rama was born at 8 different places.

Methodologically speaking, these documents do not form a body of evidence supporting one hypothesis. The BMAC has merely collected all kinds of opinions which happen to be in conflict with the thesis that the Masjid replaced a Rama temple, without minding that these opinions are also in conflict with each other. Of course, this collection of contemporary, often politically motivated articles and statements does not have any proof value. At best, some of the names under the articles could constitute an "argument of authority", but even that is diluted by their juxtaposition with political agitators and plain cranks. More than an argumentation, this presentation of many conflicting opinions is a dispersionary tactic to keep the opposing party busy with refuting the weirdest viewpoints.

An important feature of the collected pro-BMAC opinions is that they have in fact limited themselves to an attempt to discredit the evidence cited in favor of the Rama-Janmabhoomi tradition. They have not given any evidence (valid or otherwise) at all for an alternative scenario that explains the presence of the Babri Masjid and the well-attested Hindu opposition against it. They have tried to explain away the Janmabhoomi tradition by means of a campaign by the British rulers, out to "divide and rule".[27] In fact, such a rumor campaign is totally unheard of in the well-documented history of British India, and would have left testimonies which the pro-BMAC historians have not been able to produce.[28] It is an ad hoc hypothesis based on nothing but the fond belief that India's "communal problem" is a British creation and not the necessary result of any religious doctrine of hostility towards alternative forms of worship.[29]

The only seemingly valid point scored by some of the BMAC sympathizers cited in the BMAC evidence bundle is the argumentum e silentio that the temple destuction is not mentioned in near-contemporary sources, notably Abul Fazl's Ain-I-Akbari and the poems of Tulsidas. However, neither Abul Fazl nor Tulsidas have written catalogues of demolished temples or even just devoted some pointed attention to the buildings of the cities mentioned in their works: they are simply not the sources that are supposed to carry the required information. Also, they are not really contemporary with Babar, but with his grandson Akbar (around 1600 A.D.).[30] For them too, the temple destruction was history, and the Babri Masjid just one of the thousands of mosques built on demolished Hindu temples.

The third part of the evidence bundle for the Babri Masjid side, is the historical evidence properly speaking. It consists of three pieces.

One is the text of the inscriptions on the Babri Masjid and its gate, declaring that the mosque was built in 1528 by Mir Baqi, who worked under Babar's command. Of course the Hindu side has no quarrel with that: the Babri Masjid was built, so it must have been built by someone. However, inspite of the inscription, the identity of the Masjid's builder happens to be disputable. It has been argued (by Sushil Srivastava and R. Nath independenly)[31] that, judging from the architecture, the mosque must have been built during the preceding Sultanate period. Sushil Srivastava even claims that the inscription attributing the Masjid to Babar (or at least to his lieutenant Mir Baqi), is a 19th century forgery.[32] At any rate, the scenario that it was built under Babar is not in conflict with the thesis that it was built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple. This dispute is not about who built the mosque, but about what preceded it.

The second piece is Babar's memoirs. In it, no mention is made of a temple demolition in Ayodhya. Unfortunately, the pages for the months when he must have been in Ayodhya and perhaps also ordered the demolition of a Hindu temple, are missing from the manuscripts. So we simply do not have Babar's own report on this matter. And if Sushil Srivastava and R. Nath are right, Babar was not the builder and his testimony is irrelevant, except insofar as it might explain why the already existing mosque got attributed to him. For instance, the Afghan rulers (against whom the invader Babar fought) or the city's inhabitants may have defended Ayodhya from the Ramkot hill, so that the existing mosque got damaged in the fighting (Babar was the first one in India to use cannon), and was subsequently rebuilt by Babar's men. But all this will remain speculation, because the relevant part of Babar's report is missing.

The third piece of BMAC evidence is Babar's testament, in which he advises his son Humayun to practice tolerance, to respect Hindu temples, and not to kill cows. This statement of religious tolerance is very nice, but unfortunately it has amply been proven to be a forgery.[33] It is quite bizarre that scholars trying to prove a point discredit their own case by using a proven forgery without any comment.

And even if Babar's testament had been genuine, it would only prove that at the end of his life, Babar had got tired of the jihad which he had been waging (on top of an inter-Muslim war), or that he had come to realize that a prosperous kingdom would be better served by religious amity than by the intolerance of which he himself had given sufficient proof during his life. Babar's emphatical concern for tolerance would certainly not prove that tolerance had been his way all through his life.

There are Hindu temple materials attributed to Babar in Sambhal (replacing a Vishnu temple, and dated by archaeologists to the Sultanate period, just like the Ayodhya "Babri" Masjid) and Pilakhana. Local tradition affirms that the Babri Masjids in Palam, Somipat, Rohtak, and Sirsa have replaced Brahmanical or Jain temples. The contemporary Tarikh-i-Babari describes how Babar's troops "demolished many Hindu temples at Chanderi" when they occupied it. Some tough Jihad rhetoric has been preserved from Babar's war against the Rajputs, such as the quatrain:

"For Islam's sake, I wandered in the wild,
prepared for war with unbelievers and Hindus,
resolved myself to meet a martyr's death.
Thanks be to Allah! A ghazi I became."[34]

It is quite plain that Babar, even when he had to fight fellow Muslims (the Afghan Lodi dynasty), never lost sight of his duty of waging war against the infidels.

So, these three documents do not prove that the Babri Masjid was built on something else than a Rama temple. The two other groups of documents are not even an attempt to give documentary or archaeological evidence, merely a collection of sympathizing statements of opinion. What is worse, the whole collection makes one wonder whether the BMAC experts had read it at all: not only are many of the documents unconvincing or beside the point, but some even support the VHP case.

Thus, a court ruling of 1951 cites testimony of local Muslims that the mosque had bot been used since 1936, which means that in 1949 the Hindus took over an unused building - hardly worth the current Babri Masjid movement with its cries of "Islam in danger!" (or its newer version "Secularism in danger!") an its hundreds of riot victoms. On 3 March 1951, the Civil Judge of Faizabad observed: "It further appears from a number of affidavits of certain Muslim residents of Ayodhya that at least from 1936 onwards the Muslims have neither used the site as a mosque nor offered prayers there*.Nothing has been pointed to discredit these affidavits."[35] Of course, even a nudge may be misinformed on occasion; but at least, this is the official view, enunciated by a Court of Law constituted under India's democratic legal system. In particular, those who have been lecturing the Hindu movement on "abiding by the Constitution" and "respecting Court verdicts" ought to show some respect for this Court verdict.

Another court document shows that the ongoing court dispute (which is the only legal obstacle to the replacement of the present structure with a proper temple) was filed well past the legal time-limit. In any case, while the BMAC wants to rule out the British Gazetteers as evidence (because they confirm that the Babri Masjid had replaced a temple), it cites court documents which reproduce excerpts from the Gazetteers as evidence and declare in so many words that Gazetteers are admissible as evidence. A number of court rulings record that Hindus relentlessly kept on claiming the site, "most sacred" to them, and made do with as near a site as possible under prevalent equations: this refutes the BMAC claim that the Rama-Janmabhoomi tradition is a recent invention for political purposes, whether colonial "divide and rule" pr Hindu "communalism".

The leading political analyst Arun Shourie has commented: "On reading the papers the BMAC had filed as 'evidence', I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe of confuse the government etc. by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap."[36] When asked in public forums about the results of the scholars' debate, both Prof. Irfan Habib (historian at Aligarh Muslim University) and Subodh Kant Sahay (who was the Home Minister at the time of the debate) have declared that "the VHP has run away from the debate". Leading newspapers have refused to publish denials of this allegation. In fact, this unfounded allegation provides an interesting illustration of the psychology of lies. Liars are often not very creative, and they tend to say things that are partly inspired on truth. Thus, Prof. Habib and Mr. Sahay are perfectly right in alleging that the debate has ended because one of the parties has "run away from the debate": to that extent, their version is transparent of the truth. Only it is not the VHP, but the BMAC which has turned its back on the debate.

7. The Anti-Temple Debating Tactics

Meanwhile, the actual course of the debate both in the official forum and in the media could have suggested some conclusions even to non-historians (like the Supreme Court judges who refused to pronounce an opinion on it in 1994). The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. That, at least seems to be a fair description of learned publications advertising themselves as "objective" studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties.

The VHP has published it argumentation including a detailed refutation of the Babri Masjid Action Committee's arguments, and like-minded scholars have published detailed presentations of specific types of evidence (e.g., Prof. Harsh Narain and Prof. R. Nath; note how the VHP, lacking a think-tank of its own, was dependent on the help of people with no prior connection to it). By contrast, the BMAC, which had the support of the Indian Council of Historical Research led by Aligarh historian Prof. Irfan Habib and of a team of scholars led by Prof. R. S. Sharma, has not felt sufficiently satisfied with its own performance in the official debate to publish its argumentation. Its numerous supporters have chosen not to refer to the debate at all and to keep the argumentation of their serious opponents out of view.

Instead, these top academics have chosen the poorest Hindutva pamphletists as their opponents and made some fun of cranky but irrelevant claims which go around in the semi-literate fringe of the Hindu movement. One point they like to highlight is the spurious claim that on 22 December 1949, the idols "miraculously appeared" in the disputed building. I do not know of anyone who would affirm that except tongue in cheek, but given that placing the idols could be construed as a criminal offence, it has nonetheless been affirmed - as an obvious ad hoc fable for purposes of self-exculpation. But note that this miracle story has long gone out fashion: in an interview in the New York Times, "Abbot Ram Chander Das Parahamahams of an Ayodhya akhara declared openly that he was one who had put the image inside the mosque."[37]

Another fairly common tactic was to lump the temple argumentation with the fringe school led by P. N. Oak, which holds that every Indo-Muslim building (e.g., the Taj Mahal)[38] was in fact a Hindu temple, not demolished but only transformed. However, this school happened to have aligned itself with the eminent historians against the VHP. Oak himself explained that the Babri Masjid itself was built by Hindus as a temple, that "Babar had nothing to do with the Babri Masjid", and that neither the Moghul nor any Muslim ruler had demolished a Hindu temple at the site.[39] Oak's version of history is of a kind with the contrived scenarios thought up by the eminent historians.

Another spokesman if this school, Heevan Kulkarni from Bombay, claimed that the Babri Masjid was a Hindu temple built by Hindus before the Muslim conquest. He even approached the Supreme Court to obtain permission to prove his point by means of thermo-luminescence and other advanced archaeological techniques, as well as an injunction to solve the dispute by preserving the building (as Muslims demand, in the "mistaken" belief that the building was built as a mosque) but allotting it to the Hindus to serve as the "restored" Rama temple which it was meant to be when it was built. Again, this school was wrongly identified with the HP position.

A similar tactic was to associate the Ayodhya evidence with the eccentric theory of the non-historian Bal Gangadhar Tilak, later adapted by the non-historian Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar in his young days, that the Aryans came from the Arctic (Tilak's attempt to harmonize the Aryan invasion theory with traditional Vedic chronology) or that Indian itself had been in the Arctic zone then (Golwalkar's attempt to harmonize Tilak with Aryan indigenousness).[40] These ideas are simply unrelated to the more recent history of Hindu-Muslim conflict, and are only brought into the discussion in order to strengthen the contrast between Hindu amateurishness and secularist professionalism: "After R. C. Majumdar, the communal interpretation has been relegated to the world of school-level textbooks, made-easies, popular magazines, newspapers and comic strips", - meaning that the positions of prestige by India's secularists who imposed denial of Hindu-Muslim conflict as the orthodox explanation.[41] This is an argument not of authority but of status.[42]

This way, India's topmost academics and journalists have avoided confronting the real evidence and have concentrated on attacking straw men instead. It is clearly an application of Mao Zedong's dictum: "Attach where the enemy is weak, retreat where the enemy is strong." That may be a legitimate principle in warfare, but in scholarship the goal is not to score points but to establish the truth.




[1] Koenraad Elst: "The Ayodhya Debate", in Gilbert Pollet, ed.: Indian Epic Values. Ramayana and its Impact, Peeters, Leuven 1995. As is all too common with conference proceedings, this book was assembled only three years after the conference, so the published version of my paper was finalized only in 1994.
[2] In the 1961 Faizabad Gazetteer, Mrs. E. B. Joshi, while not yet denying the traditional account relayed in the earlier Gazetteers, suppresses it without giving any reason for doing so, probably on orders of the Government of India under Jawaharlal Nehru. But neutral scholarly publications like the 1989 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittannica (entry Ayodhya) confirm the temple destruction scenario.
[3] One of the first scholarly publications on the dispute was my Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid, a Case Study in Hindu-Muslim Conflict (Voice of India, Delhi, July 1990), partly a reply to the statement The Political Abuse of History: Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, by Bipin Chandra and 24 other historians of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. A large part of my book has been included in Vinay Chandra Mishra and Parmamand Singh, eds.: Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid, Historical Documents, Legal Opinions & Judgments, Bar Council of India Trust, Delhi 1991.
[4] The VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad, "World Hindu Council") was founded by Guru Golwalkar, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, "National Volunteer Corps") as an instrument for the spread of Hindu culture and religion. It takes its guidelines from an assembly of traditional religious leaders.
[5] Prof. B. B. Lal has formulated this conclusion on different occasions including articles in Puratattva no. 16, 1987, and in Manthan, October 1990. In a letter to the Times of India, published on 1-3-1991, he concludes that "what is known as Ayodhya today was indeed the Ayodhya of the Valmiki Ramayana".
[6] Prof. Kamal Salibi of Beirut has proposed the theory that all the Biblical sites including Abraham's Hebron and king David's Jerusalem, were situated in the Hijaz area of Western Arabia (in his 1985 book The Bible Came from Arabia: A Radical Reinterpretation of Old Testament Geography). The double political motivation is obvious: undermining Israel's historical legitimacy and giving a foundation to Islam's claim to an Abrahamic heritage including the Ka'aba. Established Bible scholars have dismissed this theory as wishful thinking.
[7] The Ayodhya dispute and the Rushdie affair are indeed connected. The ban on The Satanic Verses was a part of a package of concessions by the Rajiv Gandhi Government to calm down Syed Shahabuddin, who had threatened a Muslim "march to Ayodhya" on the same day when the VHP would hold a rally there.
[8] Quoted for rebuttal from Shahabuddin's own monthly Muslim India by Harsh Narain in his article Ram Janmabhoomi: Muslim Testimony published in the Lucknow Pioneer (5-2-90) and in Indian Express (26-2-90), and included in S. R. Goel: Hindu Temples, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., Voice of India, Delhi 1998. In the ensuing debate between Prof. Narain, Mr. A. K. Chatterjee and Syed Shahabuddin, the latter has never denied nor cancelled his offer.
[9] Prof. R. S. Sharma: Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya, People's Publishing House, Delhi 1990.
[10] R. S. Sharma et al.: Ramajanmabhumi Baburi Masjid, A Historians' Report to the Nation, People's Publishing House, Delhi 1991, p. 4
[11] The VHP evidence bundle, its rebuttal of the BMAC argumentation, a press brief, and some articles generally supporting the VHP viewpoint, have been published as History versus Casuitry, Evidence of the Ramajanmabhoomi Mandir presented by the Vishva Hindu Parishad to the Government of India in December-January 1990-91, Voice of India, Delhi 1991. Most of it was also included in Sita Ram Goel: Hindu Temples. Vol. 1. at least in its second edition, Voice of India, Delhi 1998. The BMAC evidence bundle has not been published.
[12] Will Durant: Story of Civilization, Vol. 1, New York 1972, p. 459
[13] This incorporation of Hindu temple materials in mosques is cynically held up as a showpiece of "composite culture" and a "living evidence of secularism" by the friends of Islam such as Congress MP Manu Shankar Aiyar, cited to this effect by Swapan Dasgupta, Sunday, 10-5-1992.
[14] A testimony to the same effect is also given by the Portuguese historian Gaspar Correa, who describes the site of the Kapalishwara temple on Mylapore beach (Madras), even after the temple had been forcibly replaced with a Catholic church, vide Ishwar Sharan: The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple, Voice of India, p. 18-19 (1st ed., 1991) or p. 93-94 (2nd ed., 1995).
[15] A. G. Noorani: "The Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Question" (originally published in Economic and Political Weekly), in A. A. Engineer ed.: Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, Ajanta, Delhi 1990, p. 66.
[16] Mirza Jan: Hadiqa-I Shahada ("The Garden of Martyrdom"), Lucknow 1856, included in the VHP evidence bundle: History versus Casuitry, Voice of India, Delhi 1991, p. 14
[17] Indian Express, 13-3-1990.
[18] A. K. Chatterjee: "Ram Janmabhoomi: some more evidence", Indian Express, 27-3-1990. It is included, with the whole ensuing polemical exchange with Syed Shahabuddin, as appendix 4 in History versus Casuitry.
[19] The title of the princess's text is given as Sahifa-I Chahal Nasaih Bahadur Shahi (Persian: "Letter of the Forty Advices of Bahadur Shah". It is included in the VHP evidence bundle: History versus Casuitry, p. 13-14
[20] Percival Spear has the effrontery to declare: "Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend" (Penguin History of India, vol. 2, p. 56). The contemporary records show Aurangzeb as a pious man who faithfully practiced his religion and therefore persecuted the unbelievers and destroyed their temples by the thousands. About the denial of Islamic crimes against humanity, vide Sita Ram Goel: Story of Islamic Imperialism in India, Voice of India, Delhi, 1984.
[21] A. Shourie: "Take over from the experts", syndicated column, included in History versus Casuitry as appendix 1, and in A. Shourie: Indian Controversies, ASA, Delhi 1992, p. 411-418
[22] Quoted by the VHP-mandated experts in their rejoinder to the BMAC: History versus Casuitry, p. 61
[23] This text does not figure in the original BMAC evidence bundle, but its words "very ill-founded" are quoted by Prof. Irfan Habib in a speech to the Aligarh Historians Group (12/2/1992, published in Muslim India, 5/1991). The paragraph containing these words (but not the entire relevant passage) is quoted by R. S. Sharma, M. Athar Ali, D. N. Jha and Suraj Bhan, the historians for the BMAC, in their joint publication: Ramajanmabhumi Baburi Masjid, A Historians' Report to the Nation, People's Publishing House, Delhi, May 1991, p. 20-21).
[24] Cited in Harsh Narain: The Ayodhya Temple/Mosque Dispute, Penman, Delhi 1993, p. 8, emphasis added. Father Joseph Tieffenthaler records that the temple destruction was being attributed to Aurangzeb by some, to Babar by others, but this minor confusion never affected the consensus that the mosque had forcibly replaced a Hindu temple.
[25] In 1608, William Finch (quoted in the VHP evidence bundle: History versus Casuitry, p. 19) had witnessed the "ruins of Ramkot", i.e., of the Hindu temple which kept alive the tradition that that very site had once been Rama's castle. The entire hill was called Ramkot, "Rama's castle", and the temple complex was certainly larger than the Babri Masjid, so that Finch may well have seen some leftovers standing there beside the mosque.
[26] Francis Buchanan's report has been put into perspective by Mr. A. K. Chatterjee, in an article intended as an episode of his Ayodhya debate with Syed Shahabuddin on the opinion page of the Indian Express, sent on 14-8-1990 but not published; but included in History versus Casuitry, appendix 4.
[27] For instance, Syed Shahabuddin blames "propaganda by the British" (Indian Express, 12-5-1990), and according to Md. Abdul Rahim Qureishi, secretary of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, "The Britishers*..planted false stories and succeeded in misleading the masses to believe that Babri Masjid stood in the premises of a Rama temple which was demolished by Babar" (Indian Express, 13-3-1990).
[28] For a rebuttal of the British conspiracy hypothesis, vide K. Elst: "Party-line history-writing", The Pioneer (Lucknow edition), 19/20-12-1990, reproduced in History versus Casuitry, app. 6.
[29] It should be borne in mind that the Qur'an contains dozens of injunctions to wage war against the unbelievers, e.g." 'Make war on them until idolatory is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme" (2:193 and 8:39); "Those who follow Mohammed are merciless to the unbelievers but kind to one another" (48:29); "Enmity and hate shall reign between us until ye believe in Allah alone" (60:4), etc. The same attitude is found in the jihad chapters of the Hadis collections and the Islamic law codices. In Indian history, these verses and the precedent set by the Prophet have been systematically invoked to justify persecutions and temple demolitions.
[30] A. G. Noorani (A. A. Engineer ed.: Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy; p. 65) claims that Tulsidas "was over thirty in 1528 when the mosque was built. He lived and wrote his great work [the Ramacharitmanas] in Ayodhya." In fact, he wrote it in Varanasi, on what is now called Tulsi Ghat, and he died in 1623, which means that he was born after 1528.
[31] Sushil Srivastava: The Disputed Mosque, Vistaar Publ., Delhi 1991, ch. 5; R. Nath: The Baburi Masjid of Ayodhya, Historical Research Documentation Programme, Jaipur 1991. The latter has clearly stated that this revision of who built the Masjid, in no way invalidates the claim that it had replaced a Hindu temple: "I have been to the site and had had the occasion to study the mosque, privately, and I have absolutely no doubt the mosque stands on the site of a Hindu temple on the north-western corner of the temple-fortress Ramkot." (letter in Indian Express, 2-1-91).
[32] Srivastava (in A. A. Engineer ed: Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy; p. 36) quotes Shamsur Rehman Farooqui, a scholar of Persian, who considers the inscription written in a younger style of calligraphy common in the 19th century, and by someone not well-versed in Persian. The latter observation may as well be explained by the fact that Babar's Turkish scribes had only recently learned Persian; whereas most literature Muslims in 19th century India were very well-versed in Persian.
[33] Sri Ram Sharma: Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors (1940), p. 24-25. The same position has been taken by Mrs. Beveridge, the translator of Babar's memoirs, and other historians. Several hypotheses of who forged this "testament" and why are explored in J. N. Tiwari and V. S. Pathak (BHU): "Rama Janmabhumi Bhavana. The Testimony of the Ayodhya Mahatmya", in Lallanji Gopal, ed.: Ayodhya, History, Archaeology and Tradition, papers presented in the Seminar held on 13-15 February 1992, All-India Kashiraj Trust, Varanasi 1994, p. 282-296
[34] Quoted in Mrs. A. S. Beveridge: Babur Nama, Delhi 1970 reprint, p. 574-575. Ghazi has the same meaning as mujahid, though it is often used in the more precise sense of "one who has effectively killed infidels with his own hands".
[35] Prof. B. P. Sinha claims to know how this disuse of the Masjid came about: "As early as 1936-37, a hill was introduced in the legislative council of U. P. to transfer the site to the Hindus (*) the bill was withdrawn on an unwritten understanding that no namaz [be] performed." (in annexure 29 to the VHP evidence bundle, unpublished)
[36] A. Shourie: "Take over from the experts", syndicated column, 27-1-91, included in History versus Casuitry as appendix 1. Shourie was sacked as Indian Express editor, apparently under government pressure, after revealing that, in October 1990, Prime Minister V. P. Singh had aborted his own compromise arrangement on Ayodhya under pressure from Imam Bukhari, a prominent member of the BMAC.
[37] Cited in Peter Van der Veer: Religious Nationalism, p. 157, with reference to New York Times, 22-12-1991
[38] Though the Taj Mahal was obviously never a Hindu temple, the story of its construction may be a bit more complicated than simply one of an original Indo-Saracen construction on virgin land, vide Marvin H. Mills (Professor of Architecture, Pratt Institute, New York): "An architect looks at the Taj legend", a review of Wayne Edison Begley & Ziyauddin Ahmad Desai: Taj Mahal, the Illumined Tomb, University of Washington Press, Seattle 1989.
[39] Padmini Kumar: "Another twist to the issue!", Maharashtra Herald, 9-12-1990, based on an interview with P. N. Oak
[40] B. G. Tilak: Arctic Home in the Vedas, 1903, and M. S. Golwalkar: We, Our Nationhood Defined, 1939
[41] Aditya and Mrdula Mukherjee: "No challenge from communalists", Sunday Observer, 15-3-1992
[42] It may be noted that the no-temple school is not necessarily less communalist, for it imposes explanations by religious conflict where no such conflicts existed, e.g., in his president's address before the Panjab History Conference held at Patiala in March 1999, "Against communalizing history", D. N. Jha communalizes history by repeating the myth of Saint Thomas' "martyrdom" at the hands of Hindus as a "well known" fact.
 
The Ayodhya Evidence Debate - Part II

Dr Koenraad Elst


8. More on the British Concoction Hypothesis

The eminent JNU historians have claimed that "it is in the nineteenth century that the story circulates and enters official records. These records were then cited by others as valid historical evidence on the issue."[43] A few years earlier, they were still far more circumspect before making this assertion. In the early days of the Ayodhya dispute, in a letter to the Times of India, a group of JNU academics wrote: "It would be worth enquiring whether there is reliable historical evidence of a period prior to nineteenth century for this association of a precise location with the birthplace of Rama."[44]

Lawyer A. G. Noorani comments on the letter: "They were absolutely right. The myth is a nineteenth century creation - by the British."[45] Note however that in their 1986 letter, the JNU historians had only suggested this in question format, but later many of them, like Noorani in this passage, have asserted it quite affirmatively.

Noorani then quotes a letter by Indrajit Dutta and nine others: "The belief that the disputed place of worship in Ayodhya is a mosque built after destroying a temple consecrating Rama's birthplace originates in the first half of the 19th century. In 1813 John Leyden, a British historian, published his Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din, Muhammad Babar, Emperor of Hindustan (A translation of Babar's memoirs in Persian). In it Leyden had contended that Babar had passed through Ayodhya in March 1528 during his campaign against the Pathans. This 'historical evidence' of Babar's presence in the area was destroyed by later British authorities to propagate the belief that the 'anti-Hindu' Babar had destroyed the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple and got a mosque built on the spot - though Leyden's work makes no mention of it. Sushil Srivastava of the Department of Medieval and Modern History, University of Allahabad, has worked extensively on the history of Awadh. He substantiates his findings to show how the British authorities, specifically Colonel Sleeman, then resident of Lucknow, anxious to justify the annexation of Awadh, exploited this controversy superbly at a time when rumblings of the 1857 mutiny were ominous."[46]

Remark the illogical claim that the British "destroyed" the document cited by Leyden to substantiate his hypothesis (and the local tradition) that Babar had passed through the town of Ayodhya, when that very document and that very hypothesis would support the theory that Babar destroyed a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, precisely the theory which the theory which the ten signatories try to "unmask" as a British concoction. The claim that the British deliberately "destroyed" this of any other historical evidence is also unsupported by any evidence.

This is all the more serious considering the fact that the British archives provide a much more complete testimony of the British policies than anything from the earlier periods, and considering the ten signatories' own contention that their friend Sushil Srivastava has made a detailed study of the British machinations in Avadh. There is little doubt that the British resident was implementing policies designed to bring Avadh under British control. But what is very much in doubt (at any rate totally unsubstantiated) is the claim that he used temple history concoctions to that end.

There is actually some evidence to the opposite effect. P. Carnegy wrote in 1870 that up to 1855 both Hindus and Muslims worshipped at the mosque, which led to a lot of friction, until the British separated them: "It is said that up to that time [viz. the Hindu-Muslim clashes in the 1850s] the Hindus and Mohammedans alike used to worship in the mosque-temple. Since the British rule a railing has been put up to prevent dispute, within which in the mosque the Mohammedans pray, while outside the fence the Hindus have raised a platform on which they make their offerings."[47] As Peter Van der Veer comments on Carnegy's testimony, against the British concoction hypothesis: "The suggestion that the local tradition is entirely invented by the British thus seems disingenuous."[48]

To quote Van der Veer in full: "The implication here is that the British found the 'facts' that fitted their master narrative of the perpetual hostility between Hindus and Muslims (*) One of the problems with the above argument is that the British were not very interested in the Hindu history of Ayodhya. The most important British archaeologist of India in the nineteenth century was Alexander Cunningham. He did come to Ayodhya, not to dig up evidence of Hindu-Muslim enmity but to look for the Buddhist monuments of Saketa/Ayodhya - monuments that nobody locally was interested in, then or now. Patrick Carnegy, the commissioner, argued that the pillars of the mosque - which are now ascribed to a Hindu temple by [B. B.] Lal and others - strongly resemble Buddhist pillars, although he did not accept the local tradition that Babar built his mosque on the 'birthplace' temple. However, he also accepted the local tradition that Hindus and Muslims used to worship together in this mosque-temple until the disturbances of 1855. The suggestion that the local tradition is entirely invented by the British thus seems disingenuous."[49]

Many 19th century scholars had a strong pro-Buddhist bias in their Indian studies (setting a trend which continues till today), and the first Ayodhya surveyors display the same intellectual fashion, rather than the politically more useful interest in Hindu-Muslim friction. The dozens of scholars who have floated the British concoction hypothesis are faced with a total absence of 19th century data supporting it.

Patrick Carnegy, the first British commissioner in Faizabad and still very close in time to the episode of communal violence (1852-57) and the British take-over after the Mutiny (1857-58), would have emphasized Hindu-Muslim conflict if the British concoction hypothesis had been true. Instead, he highlights the relative Hindu-Muslim harmony which existed shortly before the time of the British take-over.

This moment of harmony may well have been exceptional and may have to be explained by the Muslim rulers' need to strengthen their position against British ambitions. But at any rate it was a fact which the British would not have highlighted if they had wanted to base their divide-and-rule on false history of Hindu-Muslim conflict. Moreover, if they had wanted to use historical cases of Hindu-Muslim tension to foment more such tension in their own day, they could have invoked numerous certified instances rather than having to invent any.

9. Archaeological Evidence

The only serious comment on the VHP evidence bundle published in the national press (but still not reporting the outcome of the evidence debate) was a derogatory piece by Bhupendra Yadav in The Tribune. In his despair at finding that "proven secularists", like R. Nath and B. B. Lal, "are now nodding assent to the argument for Ram Janmabhoomi", Yadav does try to propose an alternative to the temple destruction scenario. Acknowledging Lal's archaeological finding of 11th century temple foundations underneath the Babri Masjid, he comes up with the following explanation: "After they occupied Ayodhya in 1194 AD, the Turkish sultans found a vacant mound at Ramkot in which lay buried the burnt pillar bases. The sultans encouraged settlements of Muslims on the mound (*) To help these Muslims pray, officials of the Babar regime built a mosque in 1528 AD."[50]

Bhupendra Yadav's nice little scenario is of course purely hypothetical and unsupported by any document whatsoever, but that doesn't seem to trouble him. At any rate, after the cream of India's secularist historians have used all their resources to create a semblance of credibility for the no-temple case, all that Bhupendra Yadav can come up with, is the hypothesis that: 1) The Hindus of Ayodhya had left the geographical place of honor in the middle of their city "vacant", unlike the people of every other city in the whole world; 2) they had laid the foundations (the pillar bases of burnt brick) for a pillared building which they never constructed, and waited for others to come and put these foundations to proper use. This hypothesis is pretty far-fetched. But at least Mr. Yadav has the merit of explicitating what most people who deny the temple destruction scenario only claim by implication.

A similar howler was launched by archaeologist D. Mandal of Allahabad University in his booklet Ayodhya Archaeology after Demolition (1993). In the first week of July 1992, a team of eight reputed archaeologists, including former ASI directors Dr. Y. D. Sharma and Dr. K. M. Srivastava, had paid a visit to the Ramkot hill in Ayodhya. They went there to verify and evaluate the findings done by labourers who had been clearing the area around the Babri Masjid on orders of the Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism. The findings included religious sculptures, among them a statue of Vishnu (of whom Rama is considered an incarnation), and a lot of Masjid structure. Team members said that the inner boundary of the disputed structure rests, at least on one side, on an earlier temple".[51] They pleaded for a more systematic survey of the entire hill.

However, Mandal dismisses the post-demolition (and pre-demolition)[52] archaeological evidence for the temple as they "cannot be placed in context since the stratigraphical evidence is destroyed by arbitrary digging or wilful destruction".[53] By that criterion, much of Egyptian and Harappan history should also be nullified retro-actively. Even a few decades ago, archaeological methods were unscientific by present-day standards, and the older findings were therefore not as transparent in terms of stratigraphy and chronology as desirable, yet the artifacts found were still real and did not allow for certain conclusions even if less compelling or precise.

Moreover, Mandal seems to be trying to over-awe the lay reader with a distinction between strata which is very important in digging at prehistorical sites but becomes far less crucial in more recent sites, where the objects found are known "in context" because a lot of written evidence attests to their use and meaning and chronology. When you find different prehistoric stone tools, proper stratigraphy is essential if you want to know their chronological sequence. But when you find (a) a paleolithic flintstone scraper, (b) a medieval metal saw, and (c) a modern electrical sawing machine, you can safely deduce that (a) precedes (b) which in turn precedes (c), even if the stratigraphy of the site had been messed up. Likewise, it is not difficult to distinguish Hindu art from Muslim art. It would be a Martial who knows neither religion, but not for us who are familiar with both religions and their art histories.

Unlike findings at pre-literate sits from unknown cultures, the objects in Ayodhya were certainly found "in context". For starters, they were Hindu objects found at a site where, after centuries of Hindu presence, a mosque had been built. Even if stratigraphically less than perfect, the fact of this multifarious evidence's existence, certified a number of leading archaeologists, is undeniable.

Mandal also tries to impose a contrived explanation on Prof. B. B. Lal's old pillar bases evidence, claiming that these pillar-bases were "certainly not contemporaneous with one another" nor even "components of a single structure".[54] This would mean that every now and then, these inconsistent Hindus or Muslims just made a hole in the ground, arbitrarily planted a pillar-base somewhere, never to build a pillar on it, then forgot about it a few decades later, another joker repeated this meaningless ritual, coicindentally yielding an orderly pattern of pillar-bases. This is secularist archaeology for you.

Another strange line of argument which Mandal uses, is this: he first claims that a demolition must have involved the use of fire, then notes that "neither are there traces of burning, expected when military destruction occurs".[55] Now, apart from the fact that fire would mostly affect the overground parts while we are only left with the underground remainder, the point is that no one insists that the temple was destroyed by fire. Numerous mosques stand on Hindu temples which were demolished alright without being burnt down. Indeed, any Kar Sevak would have told Prof. Mandal that there are other ways of demolishing a building. Could it be that Mandal is only refuting his own straw-man hypothesis because he cannot face the real evidence?

For the rest, he repeats the worn-out trick of using the non-mentioning of certain facts in B. B. Lal's brief (i.e., by definition incomplete) report to "contradict" B. B. Lal's and S. P. Gupta's recent revelations of findings which would only appear in the full report.[56] The fact of the matter is that the full report of B. B. Lal's findings was withheld from publication, and that the brief report which the journalists had seen explicity refrains from giving details of the medieval findings. It is quite odd to use the brief version of the report to disprove the detailed version of the same report's relevant part which B. B. Lal himself had just made public.[57]

That the full report is still unpublished, is most likely because the secularist authorities objected to its findings. As Peter Van der Veer reported: "However, in this case the government has not allowed the Department of Archaeology to provide evidence. It has thus fallen to B. B. Lal to do so."[58]

The same counts for the inscription found during the demolition, which clearly mentions that the site was considered Rama's birthplace.[59] At that time, many academics declared without any examination that the inscription, presented by scholars of no lesser stature than themselves, was a forgery. Thus according to "a group of historians and scholars" including Kapil Kumar, B. D. Chattopadhyaya, K. M. Shrimali, Suvira Jaiswal and S. C. Sharma, the "so-called discoveries of artifacts" during and after the demolition were "a planned fabrication and a fraud perpetrated to further fundamentalist designs".[60]

If the secularists had really believe this, theory would have requested access to the findings, which would readily have been granted by the minister in charge, the militant secularist Arjun Singh. They would have invited international scholars as witnesses, and curtly demonstrated its falseness for all to see. Instead, just like B. B. Lal's report, this inscription became a skeleton in their closet, which they have to keep from public view as long as possible.

In fact, the BMAC and secularist tide has frequently opposed archaeological research at the site, while the Hindu side wanted more of it, e.g.: "Nevertheless, in a BBC interview in 1991, [B. B.] Lal argued that there had been a Hindu temple for Rama/Vishnu on the spot now occupied by the mosque and that pillars of that temple had been used in constructing the [Masjid]. Lal suggested that further digging should be carried out in order to come up with more evidence - a suggestion that was denounced in the press by the historian Irfan Habib and others as a ploy to demolish the mosque."[61]

The whole anti-temple argumentation has nothing more to offer than such pitiable attempts to wriggle out from under the weight of inconvenient evidence. Only media power has so far saved the "eminent historians" and their ilk from being exposed.

10. "The Shariat does not allow Temple Demolition"

Soft-line Hindu nationalists like K. R. Malkani, along with some secularists and Muslims, have often tried to convince us that Islam itself opposes the demolition of non-Muslim places of worship. They even argue that a mosque built on a demolished Hindu temple would be unlawful under Islamic law. The authority claimed as basis for this offer is the injunction in the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri (Aurangzeb's codex of applied Islamic jurisprudence): "It is not permissible to build a mosque on unlawfully acquired land. There may be many forms of unlawful acquisition. For instance, if some people forcibly take somebody's house and build a mosque or even a jama masjid on it, then namaz in such a mosque will be against shari'at."

Without reference to the context, this might be read as a prohibition on forcibly replacing Hindu temples as mosques. Sushil Srivastava has even used this injunction as "proof" that mosques simply cannot have been built in forcible replacement of temples. He writes that "the Quran clearly states that prayers offered in a contentious place will not be accepted (*) Thus, the whole purpose of constructing a masjid on the site of a mandir would be self-defeating (*) it is highly unlikely that even the contentious mosques in Varanasi and Mathura are located on the exact sites of temples."[62]

The Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi is very certainly located on the exact site of the Vishvanath temple, and visibly includes remains of the old temple walls. Numerous other examples can be cited from inside and outside of India, and more cases keep on being discovered."[63] To mention two less-known cases from Iran, the Masjid-I-Birun in Abarquh and the Jami Masjid of Aqda (still a Zoroastrian center of pilgrimage with a shrine in use on a mountain outside the town), "whose origin may be traced back to fire-temples" of the Zoroastrians.[64] The author reporting on them correctly introduces his finding thus: "In the Islamic world many places of worship belonging to earlier religion have been converted to mosques."

As is clear from the Islamic law books, as Prof. Harsh Narain has shown, the injunction against building mosques on unlawfully acquired land only applies to inter-Muslim disputes, because it was quite lawful and in fact also quite common to have mosques built on temple sites grabbed from Hindus and other heathens.[65] Indeed, the forcible takeover of non-Muslim religious places is a practice initiated by Prophet Mohammed himself. The best example of the practice is the Kaaba itself, a Pagan shrine forcibly transformed into the central mosque of Islam.

11. Tampering with the Evidence

In its presentation of evidence in the Government-sponsored scholars' debate in December 1990, the VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents, attempts by BMAC sympathizers to conceal, obliterate or change evidence: removing old books from libraries, adding words on an old map. Recent editions of Urdu books (by Maulvi Abdul Karim and by Shaikh Md. Azamat Ali Nami) have suppressed chapters or passages relating the temple destruction on Ramkot hill which were present in earlier editions or in the manuscript. In an English translation of a book by Maulana Hakim Saiyid Abdul Hai, the relevant passages present in the Urdu original had been censored out, and an effort was discovered to remove all the copies of the Urdu original from the libraries.

On maps included in the Settlement Record of 1861, which describe the disputed area as Janamsthan, "birthplace", someone had added "Babari Masjid"; the interpolation was obvious after comparison with a copy of the document kept in another office. The fact that this official document could be tampered with, may well be related to the fact that the then Revenue Minister of Uttar Pradesh was an office-bearer of the BMAC.

In my opinion, these petty and clumsy attempts to tamper with the corpus of evidence, are child's play compared with the concealment of evidence by professional scholars sympathetic to the Babri Masjid cause. In their publications on this dispute, A. A. Engineer and Prof. S. Gopal have simply kept out all inconvenient (mainly pre-British) testimonies out of the picture and have just acted as if these did not exist. In his reply to The Political Abuse of History by 25 historians of JNU, Prof. A. R. Khan shows grounds to accuse the eminent JNU historians of "not only concealment but also distortion of evidence."[66]

It is not unfair to conclude that some of the pro-BMAC authors have committed serious breaches of academic deontology. For me personally, seeing this shameless overruling of historical evidence with a high-handed use of academic and media power, was the immediate reason to involve myself in this controversial question.

When A. K. Chatterjee had presented the testimony by 18th century traveler Father Teiffenthaler as evidence, Syed Shahabuddin revealed in his reply that he possessed a copy of this text (in German translation) and that he was thoroughly familiar with the text.[67] This seems to imply that while he was challenging his opponents to come up with any pre-British evidence, he was fully aware that such evidence did exist (or at the very least a document which might reasonably be claimed to contain such evidence, even if one were to be persuaded by Shahabuddin's extremely contrived attempt to explain it away), but remained sitting on top of it in the hope that nobody would discover it.

The above are cases where the attempts to suppress evidence have failed. It is quite probable that other attempts have succeeded. There may well be documents containing pertinent information, particularly about the site's history during the Sultanate period (1206 - 1525), which have escaped the notice of Prof. Harsh Narain (the only scholar of Persian and Arabic in the VHP team) because they had been removed in time from the places where they could normally be found. Such documents would mostly be in Persian and available only in the libraries of Muslim institutions. In some of these, Prof. Harsh Narain has effectively been denied access as soon as his involvement in the Ayodhya argument became known. How many pieces of pertinent material have been concealed, removed, destroyed or altered is anybody's guess.

12. Conclusion

The clear-cut result of the Ayodhya evidence debate is still not widely known. Most of the Indian English-language papers, as well as the official electronic media, have all along been on the side of the BMAC, and they have strictly kept the lid on this information. Their reporting on the scholars' debate has been very partial and, from the moment the BMAC's defeat became clear, increasingly vague.

If any proof is needed that the BMAC has been defeated in this debate, it is this: no one sympathetic to the Babri Masjid cause has made any reference to the outcome of this debate all through the subsequent years, even though the Ayodhya issue frequently reappeared in the news. Politicians have made a show of their "secularism" and their opposition to "religious fanaticism" by organizing "fact-finding missions" to Ayodhya and issuing statements on the dispute, but they have not made any reference to the outcome of the scholars' debate at all, When reading about the subsequent course of the Ayodhya controversy, one might get the impression that the scholars' debate never took place.

However, it did not take place, and it has yielded sufficient evidence to consider the matter as practically closed. The Babri Masjid was built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple. With the historical question decided, that leaves only the political question to be resolved.


That political question has not been the topic of this paper, but for those who care to know, I briefly statement my position. The Rama-Janmabhoomi site has been a Hindu sacred site for many centuries. Even the JNU historians admit that it was a pilgrimage site since the 13th century. It may have been one since much earlier, but alright: Catholic pilgrimage sites like Loudres and Fatima are not even two centuries old and still they are respected. So, seven centuries is quite sufficient to certify its status of sanctity. Today, judges and governments in Australia, New Zealand and the Americas are increasingly conceding the right of indigenous communities to restart worship at their sacred sites. Consider the human right to freedom of religion, it is obvious that communities have a right to their sacred sites, and no modern or humane person would ever countenance thwarting this right for other than the most compelling reasons.

So it is completely evident that Hindus have a right to use and properly adorn their own sacred sites, including Rama Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya. The problem with Ayodhya, the cause of all this rioting and wast of lives and political energy is not that they Hindus want to adorn their own sacred site with proper temple architecture that is the most normal thing in the world. The problem is that another party, the Islamist-Christian- Marxist combine in India, is trying to obstruct this perfectly unobjectionable project of architectural renovation. Against the near-universal consensus that all sacred sites are to be respected, Islam is taking the position that it has the right to occupy and desecrate the sacred sites of other religions. Genuine secularists must oppose and thwart this obscurantist design, and allow the normal process of Hindu architectural renovation to take its course.

PART I




[43] Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra et al: "The Political Abuse of History", in Asghar Ali Engineer: Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, p. 235
[44] Letter signed by Romila Thapar, Muzaffar Alam, Bipin Chandra, R. Champalakshmi, S. Bhattacharya, Harbans Mukhia, Suvira Jaiswal, Shireen Ratnagar, M. K. Palat, Satish Sabarwal, Sarvapelli Gopal and Mrdula Mukherjee, datelined 21-10-1986, published in Times of India, 28-10-1986.
[45] A. G. Noorani: "The Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Question", Asghar Ali Engineer: Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Convtroversy, p. 66.
[46] Letter in The Statesman, 22-10-1989, quoted by A. G. Noorani: "The Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Question", Asghar Ali Engineer: Babri Masjid?Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, p. 66-67
[47] P. Carnegy: A Historical Sketch of Tehsil Fyzabad, Lucknow 1870, quoted by Harsh Narain: The Ayodhya Temple/ Mosque Dispute, Penman, Delhi 1993, p. 8-9, and by Peter Van der Veer: Religious Nationalism, p. 153; emphasis mine.
[48] Peter Van der Veer: Religious Nationalism, p. 160
[49] ibid, pp. 159-160
[50] Bhupendra Yadav: "Temple issue built on weak base", in The Tribune, 7-3-1992
[51] Indian Express, 4-7-1992
[52] Presented in Y. D. Sharma et al.: Ramajanma Bhumi: Ayodhya. New Archaeological Discoveries, published by Prof. K. S. Lal for the Historians' Forum, Delhi 1992. An earlier smaller find of religious artifacts on 10 March 1992 in diggings by the Uttar Pradesh tourism department was reported in the press, e.g., Anil Rana: "Artifacts found near Babari Masjid", Statesman, 11-3-1992. A further discovery was made a month after the demolition, vide: "New Evidence at Temple site found", Pioneer, 8-1-1993
[53] D. Mandal: Ayodhya Archaeology after Demolition. A Critique of the "New' and 'Fresh' Discoveries, Orient Longman, Delhi 1993, p. xi.
[54] ibid, p. 63
[55] ibid, p. 65
[56] E.g.,: "No pillar bases at Ayodhya: ASI Rport", Times of India, 7-12-90, and A. G. Noorani: "The Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Question", in A. A. Engineer: Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, p. 64
[57] B. B. Lal explained this matter and restated his long-held positions in his article: "Facts of history cannot be altered", in The Hindu, 1-7-1998, in reply to a slanderous editorial, "Tampering with history", The Hindu, 12-6-1998. Undaunted, D. N. Jha attempted to restore the confusion: "We were not shown Ayodhya notebook", The Hindu, 27-7-1998.
[58] Peter Van der Veer: Religious Nationalism, p. 157. On several occasions, Marxist historians had insinuated that B. B. Lal, one of the greatest living archeologists, has changed his conclusions about pre-existent temple in order to satisfy the "requirements of VHP politics" (thus the JNU historians Romila Thapar, S. Gopal and K. N. Panikkar in Indian Express 5-12-1990). Among those who came out in Prof. Lal's defence and certified his statements are K. V. Soundarajan (ASI), I. Mahadevan, R. Nath, K. V. Raman, and K. K. Mohammed (ASI, the only Muslim who participated in the Ayodhya excavations, letter in Indian Express, 15-12-1990). In a speech to the Aligarh Historians Group (12+-2-1991), published in Muslim India, (5/1991), Prof. Irfan Habib has made similar personal attacks on Prof. B. R. Grover. Prof. B. P. Sinha, Prof. K. S. Lal and Dr. S. P. Gupta, who have represented the VHP in the scholars' debate, and on Prof. B. B. Lal.
[59] Presented by Dina Nath Mishra: "Writing in the debris", Telegraph, 1-1-1993
[60] "Historians pick holes in 'evidence'", Times of India, 26-12-1992
[61] Peter Van der Veer: Religious Nationalism, p. 158-159
[62] Sushil Srivastava: "The Ayodhya controversy", in A. A. Engineer ed.: Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, p. 38
[63] E.g.: "One night during the monsoon of 1991, the rain was so heavy that it washed away the wall that was concealing the frontage of the Bijamandal mosque raised by Aurangzeb in 1682" in Vidisha, and "the broken wall exposed so many Hindu idols that the Archaeological Survey of India had no choice but to excavate", as mentioned by Prfaull Goradia: "Heritage hushed up", Pioneer, 12-12-2000.
[64] M. Shokoohy: "Two fire temples converted to mosques in central Iran", Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, E. J. Brill, Leiden 1985, p. 546
[65] Harsh Narain: "Ram Janmabhoomi: Muslim Testimony", in Lucknow Pioneer (5-2-90) and Indian Express (26-2-90), included in S. R. Goel: Hindu Temples, vol. I, 2nd ed. (1998), p. 169-175
[66] Prof. A. R. Khan": "In the name of 'history'" (originally published in Indian Express, 25-2-1990) and the whole subsequent exchange with the JNU historians has been included in History versus Casuitry, app. 2, and in S. R. Goel: Hindu Temples. Vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Voice of India, Delhi 1998), p. 243-263. We have to give the JNU historians credit for trying at least this once to refute criticism, but we cannot commend the secretiveness about this exchange in their later writings. On the other hand, their secretiveness is quite eloquent in its own way.
[67] The whole debate between A. K. Chatterjee and Syed Shahabuddhin is included in S. R. Goel: Hindu Temples, vol. 1, and 2nd ed., p. 176-211; Shahabuddin's claim to "have the German text" is on p. 198
 
I think if Indians got off this, superiority complex vs the Muslims then there is only one solution left. Rebuild the mosque, the temple never existed.
 
I think if Indians got off this, superiority complex vs the Muslims then there is only one solution left. Rebuild the mosque, the temple never existed.

What happen is some one destory the Mecca Mosque and build the Church. I know you gone built another church to remember the incident. I should clarify I am not Hindu. I am from minority other than muslim.
 
What happen is some one destory the Mecca Mosque and build the Church. I know you gone built another church to remember the incident. I should clarify I am not Hindu. I am from minority other than muslim.
But you see Makkah's mosque is documented, its in videos we know it exists. The fact that there was a temple that was destroyed by Babur has been disproved, its a lame duck theory.

The temple wasn't there. The sinister act was carried out by BJP to shoot itself to fame which was previously in no competition to the congress.
 
The fact that there was a temple that was destroyed by Babur has been disproved, its a lame duck theory.

The temple wasn't there. The sinister act was carried out by BJP to shoot itself to fame which was previously in no competition to the congress.

That's a pretty lame comment. Read the previous posts.
 
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