Koenraad Elst: Eminent historians displeased with the Ayodhya verdict
Romila Thapar, most eminent among India's eminent historians, protests against the Court verdict acknowledging the historical evidence that the Babar mosque in Ayodhya had been built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple. After two decades of living on top of the world, the eminent historians are brought down to earth.
In 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. Before long, Lourdes became the most important pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics and other Mary worshippers. France prided itself on being a secular state, in some phases (esp. 1905-40) even aggressively secular, yet it acknowledged and protected Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage. Not many French officials actually believe in the apparition, but that is not the point. The believers are human beings, fellow citizens, and out of respect for them does the state respect and protect their pilgrimage.
For essentially the same reason, the mere fact that the
Rama Janmabhumi (Rama’s birthplace) site in Ayodhya is well-established as a sacred site for Hindu pilgrimage, is reason enough to protect its functioning as a Hindu sacred site, complete with proper Hindu temple architecture. Ayodhya doesn’t have this status in any other religion, though ancient Buddhism accepted Rama as an earlier incarnation of the Buddha. The site most certainly doesn’t have such a status in Islam, which imposed a mosque on it, the
Babri Masjid (ostensibly built in 1528, closed by court order after riots in 1935, surreptitiously turned into a Hindu temple accessible only to a priest in 1949, opened for unrestricted Hindu use in 1986, and demolished by Hindu militants in 1992). So, the sensible and secular thing to do, even for those sceptical of every religious belief involved, is to leave the site to the Hindus. The well-attested fact that Hindus kept going there even when a mosque was standing, even under Muslim rule, is helpful to know in order to gauge its religious importance; but is not strictly of any importance in the present. For respecting its Hindu character, it is sufficient that the site has this sacred status today.
Secular PM Rajiv Gandhi had understood this, and from the court-ordered opening of the locks on the mosque-used-as-temple in 1986, he was manoeuvring towards an arrangement leaving the contentious site to the Hindus in exchange for some other goodies (starting with the Shah Bano amendment and the Satanic Verses ban) for the Muslim leadership. Call it Congress culture or horse-trading, but it would have been practical and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
That is when a group of "eminent historians" started raising the stakes and turning this local communal deal into a clash of civilizations, a life-and-death matter on which the survival of the greatest treasure in the universe depended, viz. secularism. Secure in (or drunk with) their hegemonic position, they didn't limit themselves to denying to the Hindus the right of rebuilding their demolished temple, say: "A medieval demolition doesn't justify a counter-demolition today." Instead, they went so far as to deny the well-established fact that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple.
Note, incidentally, that the temple demolition, a very ordinary event in Islamic history, was not even the worst of it: as a stab to the heart of Hindu sensibilities, the Babri mosque stood imposed on a particularly sacred site. Just as for Hindus, the site itself was far more important than the building on it, for Islamic iconoclasts the imposition of a mosque on such an exceptional site was a greater victory over infidelism than yet another forcible replacement of a heathen temple with a mosque. Though the historians’ and archaeologists’ ensuing research into the Ayodhya temple demolition has been most interesting, it was strictly speaking superfluous, for the sacred status venerated by most Hindus and purposely violated by some Muslims accrues to the site itself rather than to the architecture on it. The implication for the present situation is that even if Muslims refuse to believe that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a temple, they nonetheless know of the site’s unique status for Hindus even without a temple. So, they should be able to understand that any Muslim claim to the site, even by non-violent means such as litigation, amounts to an act of anti-Hindu aggression. Muslims often complain of being stereotyped as fanatical and aggressive, but here they have an excellent opportunity to earn everyone’s goodwill by abandoning their inappropriate claim to a site that is sacred to others but not to themselves.
After the eminent historian’s media offensive against the historical evidence, the political class, though intimidated, didn't give in altogether but subtly pursued its own idea of a reasonable solution. In late 1990, Chandra Shekhar's minority government, supported and largely teleguided by opposition leader Rajiv Gandhi, invited the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) to mandate some selected scholars for a discussion of the historical evidence. The politicians had clearly expected that the debate would bring out the evidence and silence the deniers for good. And that is what happened, or at least the first half. Decisive evidence was indeed presented, but it failed to discourage the deniers.
The VHP-employed team presented the already known documentary and archaeological evidence and dug up quite a few new documents confirming the temple demolition (including four that Muslim institutions had tried to conceal or tamper with). The BMAC-employed team quit the discussions but brought out a booklet later, trumpeted as the final deathblow of the temple demolition “myth”. In fact, it turned out to be limited to an attempt at whittling down the evidential impact of a selected few of the pro-temple documents and holding forth on generalities of politicized history without proving how any of that could neutralize this particular evidence. It contained not a single (even attempted) reference to a piece of actual evidence proving an alternative scenario or positively refuting the established scenario. I have given a full account earlier in my book
Ayodhya, the Case against the Temple (2002).
Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple
Unfortunately, no amount of evidence could make the deniers mend their ways. Though defeated on contents, the "eminent historians" became only more insistent in denying the evidence. They especially excelled in blackening and slandering those few scholars who publicly stood by the evidence, not even sparing the towering archaeologist BB Lal. Overnight, what had been the consensus in Muslim, Hindu and European sources, was turned into a "claim" by "Hindu extremists". Thus, the eminent historians managed to intimate a Dutch scholar who had earlier contributed even more elements to the already large pile of evidence for the temple demolition into backtracking. Most spectacularly, they managed to get the entire international media and the vast majority of India-related academics who ever voiced an opinion on the matter, into toeing their line. These dimly-informed India-watchers too started intoning the no-temple mantra and slandering the dissidents, to their faces or behind their backs, as "liars", "BJP prostitutes", and what not. In Western academe, dozens chose to toe this party-line of disregarding the evidence and denying the obvious, viz. that the Babri Masjid (along with the Kaaba in Mecca, the Mezquita in Cordoba, the Ummayad mosque in Damascus, the Aya Sophia in Istambul, the Quwwatu'l-Islam in Delhi, etc.) was one of the numerous ancient mosques built on, or with materials from, purposely desecrated or demolished non-Muslim places of worship.
Until the Babri Masjid demolition by Hindu activists on 6 December 1992, Congress PM Narasimha Rao was clearly pursuing the same plan of a bloodless hand-over of the site to the Hindus in exchange for some concessions to the Muslims. The Hindu activists who performed the demolition were angry with the leaders of their own
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for seemingly abandoning the Ayodhya campaign after winning the 1991 elections with it, but perhaps the leaders had genuinely been clever in adjusting their Ayodhya strategy to their insiders’ perception of a deal planned by the PM. After the demolition, Rao milked it for its anti-BJP nuisance value and gave out some pro-mosque signals; but a closer look at his actual policies shows that he stayed on course. His Government requested the Supreme Court to offer an opinion on the historical background of the Ayodhya dispute, knowing fully well from the outcome of the scholars’ debate that an informed opinion could only favour the old consensus (now known as the “Hindu claim”). In normal circumstances, it is not a court's business to pronounce on matters of history, but then whom else could you trust to give a fair opinion when the professional historians were being so brazenly partisan?
The Supreme Court sent the matter on, or back, to the Allahabad High Court, which, after sitting on the Ayodhya case since 1950, at long last got serious about finding out the true story. It ordered a ground-penetrating radar search and the most thorough excavations. In this effort, carried out in 2003, the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) employed a large number of Muslims in order to preempt the predictable allegation of acting as a Hindu nationalist front. The findings confirmed those of the excavations in the 1950s, 1970s and 1992: a very large Hindu religious building stood at the site before the Babri Masjid. The Allahabad High Court has now accepted these findings by India's apex archaeological body. But not everyone is willing to abide by the verdict.
In particular, the eminent historians are up in arms. In a guest column in
The Hindu (2 Oct. 2010: “The verdict on Ayodhya, a historian’s opinion”),
The verdict on Ayodhya: a historian's perspective - The Hindu , Prof. Romila Thapar claims that the ASI findings had been "disputed". Oh well, it is true that some of her school had thought up the most hilariously contrived objections, which I held against the light in my booklet
Ayodhya, the Finale: Science vs. Secularism in the Excavations Debate.
Ayodhya. The Finale -- Science versus Secularism the Excavations Debate . Thus, it was said that the presence of pillar-bases doesn’t imply that pillars were built on it; you see, some people plant pillar bases here and there once in a while, without any ulterior motive of putting them to some good use. And it was alleged that the finding of some animal bones in one layer precludes the existence of a temple (and somehow annuls the tangible testimony of the vast foundation complex and the numerous religious artefacts); and more such hare-brained reasoning. The picture emerging from all this clutching at straws was clear enough: there is no such thing as a refutation of the overwhelming ASI evidence, just as there was no refutation of the archaeological and documentary evidence presented earlier.
Today, I feel sorry for the eminent historians. They have identified very publicly with the denial of the Ayodhya evidence. While politically expedient, and while going unchallenged in the academically most consequential forums for twenty years, that position has now been officially declared false. It suddenly dawns on them that they have tied their names to an entreprise unlikely to earn them glory in the long run. We may now expect frantic attempts to intimidate the Supreme Court into annulling the Allahabad verdict, starting with the ongoing signature campaign against the learned Judges’ finding; and possibly it will succeed. But it is unlikely that future generations, unburdened with the presently prevailing power equation that made this history denial profitable, will play along and keep on disregarding the massive body of historical evidence. With the Ayodhya verdict, the eminent historians are catching a glimpse of what they will look like when they stand before Allah’s throne on Judgment Day.
Chapter I: Science Versus Secularism. Temple Denial Before and After the Ayodhya Excavations
In India, political incidents frequently pit Hindu nationalism, or even just plain Hinduism and plain nationalism, against so-called �secularism�. In practice, this term denotes a combine of Islamists, Hindu-born Marxists and consumericanized one-dimensionalists who share a hatred of Hindu culture and Hindu self-respect. What passes for secularism in India is often the diametrical opposite of what goes by the same name in the West. Recent events in the Ayodhya temple/mosque controversy confirm the disingenuous character of Indian secularism.
1.1 Introduction: secularism and the Ayodhya excavations
Genuine secular states have equality before the law of all citizens regardless of religion. By contrast, India has different civil codes depending on the citizen�s religion. Thus, for Christians it is very hard to get a divorce, Hindus and Muslim women can get one through judicial proceedings, and Muslim men can simply repudiate their wives. The secular alternative, a common civil code, is championed by the Hindu nationalists. It is the so-called secularists who, justifying themselves with specious sophistry, join hands with the most obscurantist religious leaders to insist on maintaining the present unequal system. Likewise, legal inequality in matters of temple management, pilgrimage subsidies, special autonomy for states depending on their populations� religious composition, and the right to found religious schools is defended by the so-called secularists (because it is invariably to the disadvantage of the Hindus) while the Hindu nationalists favour the secular alternative of equality regardless of religion. In India,
sharia-wielding Muslim clerics whose Arab counterparts denounce secularism as the ultimate evil, call themselves secularists. Just as the word
deception differs in meaning from its French counterpart
d�ception (= disappointment), the word
secularism has a sharply different meaning in Indian English as compared to metropolitan English.
The point is illustrated once more in the contrived controversy about the recent archaeological findings at the contentious temple/mosque site in Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of the deified hero Rama. Here, the supposed Hindu fundamentalists have been abiding by the findings of science, while the so-called secularists have been on the opposite side, the side of dogmatism and obscurantism.
The Hindu claim and the Muslim counterclaim to the disputed site have been
sub judice at the High Court of Allahabad since 1950, weeks after Hindus had taken control of the mosque by installing statues of Rama, his wife Sita and his brother Lakshman. On 22 August 2003, after 53 years of judicial pussyfooting, the Archaeological Survey of India handed a highly sensitive report to the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. The ASI had been mandated by the Court to excavate the foundation level underneath and around the demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. This mosque, attributed to the Moghul dynasty�s founder Babar (1528) was deconstructed in 1992 by Hindu activists eager to see a temple built right there.
In the winter of 2002-2003, the Court had secretly ordered a search of the site with a ground-penetrating radar by the company Tojo Vikas International Ltd., which had gained fame with its role in the construction of the Delhi underground railway. Canadian geophysicist Claude Robillard concluded from the scans that �there is some structure under the mosque� (
Rediff.com, 19 March 2003). The Court then ordered the archaeologists to verify these findings in greater detail. If you expected secularists to welcome this replacement of bickering between religious hotheads with the objectivity of a scientific investigation, the subsequent developments provide you with an opportunity to learn.
Chapter II. Preceding stages of the debate
2.1. A consensus amply confirmed
Strictly, there was no need for the Court-ordered excavation, for the existence of the medieval temple had long been firmly established. There was testimony upon testimony of Hindus bewailing and Muslims boasting of the replacement of the temple with a mosque; and of Hindus under Muslim rule coming as close as possible to the site in order to celebrate Rama�s birthday every year in April, in continuation of the practice at the time when the temple stood.
None of the written sources, whether Hindu, Muslim or European, contradicted the pre-existence of a Rama temple at the site. None described a forest chopped down to make way for the mosque, none referred to (or better still,
was) a sales contract delivering someone�s secular real estate to the Muslim ruler eager to build a mosque. Until 1989 there had been no dispute about it: �Rama�s birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babar in 1528 on the site of an earlier temple�, according to the 1989 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry �Ayodhya�.
There was already plenty of archaeological evidence as well. In the 1970s, an ASI team led by Prof. B.B. Lal dug out some trenches just outside the mosque and found rows of pillar-bases which must have supported a larger building predating the mosque. Moreover, in the mosque itself, small black pillars with Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples to flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism. (There are many examples of this practice inside and outside India, including the two other mosques at sites reclaimed by Hindus: Krishna�s birthplace in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath, the principal pilgrimage site of Shiva in Varanasi.) In 1992, during excavations around the mosque in June and during the demolition on December 6, many more pieces of temple remains, mainly sculptures of Hindu gods and godlings, were discovered.
2.2. Eminent denial
Yet, in 1989, all the existing evidence was brushed aside in a statement,
The Political Abuse of History, by 25 so-called �eminent historians� from Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), mostly declared Marxists. In this
fatwa, they denounced the history of Islamic iconoclasm in Ayodhya as a myth but didn�t offer any newfound data to overthrow the consensus. Yet, the sympathy of the Indian and international media for their purported motive of �upholding secularism� assured the immediate adoption worldwide of the new party-line: the demolished Rama temple had merely been a malicious invention of the ugly Hindu nationalists.
Note that they didn�t just settle for a political rejection of any plans to replace the mosque with a temple. They could have argued that the demolition of the temple happened long ago and could not now be a reason for reversing the event. That exactly had been the verdict given by a British-Indian judge in 1886 when ordering a status quo at the site. But no, instead they went as far as to base their rejection of a new temple construction on the claim that no demolition had ever taken place because no temple had existed there. This was reckless, for if the political choice for the preservation of the mosque were based on the historical non-existence of the medieval temple at the site, then the eventual discovery of such a temple would justify
a contrario the replacement of the mosque with a restored temple. At least in theory, but the Marxists were confident that their opponents would never get the chance to press this point. Under the prevailing power equation, they expected to get away with a plain denial of history rather than a mere insistence on divorcing history from politics.
Ever since, the secularist historians have been bluffing their way through the controversy. In December 1990, the government of Chandra Shekhar invited the two lobby groups involved, the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Babri Masjid Action Committee, to discuss the historical truth of the matter. Misled by the media into believing that the Hindu claims were pure fantasy, the BMAC office-bearers arrived ill-prepared. They were speechless when the VHP team presented dozens of documents supporting its case.
For the next meeting, they invited a team of proper historians chaired by Marxist professor R.S. Sharma, who declared that they hadn�t studied the evidence yet. This was a strange statement from people who had just led 42 academics in signing a petition confirming once and for all that there was no evidence whatsoever for a temple. The BMAC team also put forth the demand that they be recognized as �independent scholars� entitled to sit in judgment on the controversy between their BMAC employers and their VHP opponents. The government representative did not grant this hilarious demand. At the meeting scheduled for 25 January 1991, they simply didn�t show up anymore. In a booklet issued months later, pompously called �
A Historians� Report to the Nation�, they tried to save face by nibbling at the evidential value of a few of the numerous documents presented by their opponents (and of course, historical evidence is rarely absolute), but failed to offer even one piece of evidence for any alternative scenario.
When more temple remains were found in 1992, a cry went up among the Marxist academics that the sculptures had been stolen from museums and planted at the site. The central government (Congress) had the pieces locked away. During the scholars� debate in 1990-91, the VHP-mandated team had discovered no less than 4 documents on which references to the �birthplace temple� had been altered or removed, or which had been removed from public access (and those were only the ones where the foul play was discovered; who knows how many times the tampering succeeded?). Here the secularists had their great chance to get back at them and expose them in turn as cheaters who had planted false evidence. Yet, the minister in charge, Arjun Singh, though a militant secularist and eager to embarrass the Hindu activists, forewent the opportunity to have the sculptures investigated by international experts to certify the allegation of forgery. Once more, it was sheer bluff and the secularists didn�t want it subjected to scrutiny.
2.3. The Demolition
In October 1992, the central government of Narasimha Rao (Congress) tried to revive the scholars� discussion. This time, the BMAC team quite reasonably protested that there was no point in talking unless the VHP called off its announced demonstration in Ayodhya scheduled for December 6. The VHP was adamant that Hindu society�s right to the site could not be made dependent on mundane factors such as judicial verdicts and academic disputes. This was an instance of the Hindu nationalist movement�s long tradition of smashing its own windows and of spurning the intellectual struggle which in this case had been going in its favour. On the plea that �you don�t need arguments to love your mother�, meaning Mother India, the Hindu nationalists had always neglected intellectual and favoured a mindless activism. Except for one (S.P. Gupta), all the scholars who had argued their case at the government-sponsored discussion had been outsiders to the movement; the VHP leadership itself, like its BMAC counterpart, never took the evidence debate very seriously.
So, activism replaced argument on December 6, 1992. The official leadership represented at the demonstration in Ayodhya by L.K. Advani, the later Deputy Prime Minister, had wanted to keep the affair purely ceremonial, singing some hymns to Rama as a sufficient act of confirming the Hindu claim to the site. But an elusive leadership within the crowd had other plans. A small group had come well-prepared for a demolition job, and once they broke ranks from the official ceremony to methodically pull down the mosque, much of the crowd joined in. Hindu movement officials tried to stop them, even when the police withdrew from the scene, but to no avail.
The BJP state government resigned at once, but the central government refrained from physically intervening until the next morning, when the activists had cleared the debris and consecrated a little tent with the three statues as the provisional new Rama temple. In a typical instance of the duplicitous Congress culture, Narasimha Rao declared on the one hand that the mosque should be rebuilt, but on the other, he created an accomplished fact which practically precluded the prospect of rebuilding the mosque. Duplicitous, yes, but under the circumstances perhaps also a wise move. The riots started by Muslims in the following days could have been much larger and more violent if the Prime Minister had not given them this verbal appeasement.
It is an odd but highly significant fact that the Indian media subsequently refused to open a search for who exactly organised the demolition. None of them seemed to care for the scoop of the year: �
This man (photograph) organized the demolition.� Clearly, they thought it politically most profitable to pin the blame on the so-called �hardliner� Advani, the one Hindu leader who was most definitely not behind it. He had burst into tears upon seeing the fabled discipline of his activists break down and had been narrowly dissuaded from resigning as party leader in his post-demolition confusion.
During the demolition, an inscription tentatively dated to ca. 1140 came to light. It detailed how it was part of a temple to �Vishnu, slayer of Bali and of the ten-headed one�. Rama is considered an incarnation of Vishnu, and the two enemies he defeated were king Bali and king Ravana, often depicted as ten-headed in recognition of his brilliant mind. This evidence too was locked away and strictly ignored by the secularists until 2003, when
People�s Democracy, the paper of the Marxwadi Communist Party, alleged foul play. It seemed that the Lucknow State Museum mentioned in its catalogue a 20-line inscription dedicated to Vishnu, satisfying the description of the piece discovered during the demolition, and missing since the late 1980s.
However, museum director Jitendra Kumar declared that the piece had never left the museum, even though it had not been on display, and he showed it at a press conference for all to see (
Hindustan Times, 8 May 2003). In spite of many similarities, it differed from the Ayodhya find in shape, colour and text contents. So, the only allegation of fraud against the archaeologists or against the Hindu nationalists which was more than a knee-jerk reaction of the losers against the winners in the debate, the only one in which some homework had been done and the outlines of a real intrigue had been sketched, proved to be mistaken.
Meanwhile, in 1993 the central government had approached the Supreme Court with a request to evaluate the historical evidence. It is clear that Narasimha Rao, the most pro-Hindu Prime Minister of independent India so far (more so than the wobbly BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee), hoped to use a positive verdict as the basis for a settlement favouring the Hindu claim. But in October 1994, the Supreme Court turned down the request.
2.4. Findings, no findings
In early 2003, the Court ordered the ASI to start excavations and either confirm or disprove the provisional conclusions of the radar scan. Strictly speaking, the existence or otherwise of the medieval temple never depended on the results of the radar scanning nor on the excavations: it had already been proven by a wealth of documentary and archaeological evidence, which in any other circumstance would have been deemed conclusive. It was only because of the brutal denial of the evidence by a group of vocal academics and allied politicians that the Court considered it wiser to come up with a new and as yet unchallenged type of evidence.
We should be clear in our minds about what kind of evidence could be expected, as this digging took place at the foundations level. This is not where sculptures or furniture normally reside (though a few objects were found nonetheless) but where the unadorned foundations of walls and pillars have quietly survived the onslaught that destroyed the �over-ground� constructions they supported. Foundations do not by themselves inform us of the type of building they supported, whether secular or religious; but for that, we can rely on other types of evidence. The temple had never gone underground, had never been covered with layers of soil; instead, it had been demolished and its components removed, destroyed or re-used. Earlier layers, by contrast, may approximate the normal stratigraphic pattern better: a building layer covered with stray debris, then a new building layer, etc.
In the months when the digging took place, the newspapers reported new findings once in a while. Thus, �an ancient stone inscription in the Dev Nagari script and a foundation were discovered in the ongoing excavation in the acquired land in Ayodhya today�, while �stone pieces and a wall were found in other trenches� and �a human figure in terracotta, sand stone netting, decorated sand stone in three pieces were found in one trench� (
The Hindu, 5 May 2003).
In this light it is understandable that a Babri Masjid supporter, Naved Yar Khan, approached the Supreme Court with a petition to prohibit all archaeological digging at the contentious site (which was rejected: �SC rejects plea against excavation�,
The Hindu, 10 June 2003). The secularists had always opposed archaeological fact-finding at the site, arguing that this would open a Pandora�s box of similar initiatives at the literally thousands of mosque sites where temples used to stand. They typically omitted to mention their fear that in Ayodhya itself, this digging was sure to prove them wrong, as it now has.
As journalist Bulbul Roy Mishra (�Temple and the truth�,
Indian Express, 6 Sep. 2003) recollects: �When the Allahabad High Court ordered the excavation, [Prof. Irfan] Habib and [Prof. Suraj] Bhan insisted there was no need to do so. In their opinion, nothing lay beneath the former site of the Babri Masjid. They also questioned the competence of Tojo Vikas, which had reported anomalies beneath the surface after an imaging survey.�
Isn�t that funny: people wearing the mantle of the academic quest for knowledge who denounce the search for knowledge on the dogmatic plea that the outcome is known beforehand? As we shall see (ch.3.8), after the excavation results became known, both Irfan Habib and Suraj Bhan have told the public at some length that all kinds of things were found below the Babri Masjid surface: elements of an earlier mosque, elements of Muslim habitation, anything as long as it wasn�t a temple, but at any rate not �nothing�. This way, they have implicitly conceded that their initial opposition to an archaeological investigation was ill-founded. Even back then, given all the earlier evidence, everything indicated that something would be discovered. They themselves cannot have been ignorant of this, so their opposition was a deliberate attempt to obstruct the progress of scientific knowledge.
2.5. The great Indian vanishing trick
On June 11, after the ASI had been registering new findings for months, the world learned to its surprise that the final tally somehow amounted to zero. Readers of secularist newspapers came away with the impression that Habib�s and Bhan�s scepticism had been vindicated, and that nothing had been found: �No proof of structure in Ayodhya: ASI report�, according to
Rediff.com, which confidently asserted that �the report also contradicts the Ground Penetration Radar survey�, but didn�t quote the ASI report. It only quoted Zafaryab Jilani, counsel for the Muslim claimant to the site, the Sunni Central Waqf Board, who alleged that �the ASI report does not speak about any such evidence� (viz. evidence of the type revealed by the radar scan).
For more of the same: �Nothing found below Babri site: ASI�, titled
The Asian Age. �ASI finds no proof of structure below Babri Masjid: report�, claimed the
Times of India. The occasion was the ASI�s filing of an interim report, yet none of these papers quoted the report, only �sources�. Most papers attributed the conclusion of �no evidence� to the ASI, which is a pure lie; and this is implicitly revealed even in their own reporting, for none quotes the ASI report to that very effect.
Six days later, the
Times of India still tried to keep up its story, now citing an unnamed �senior ASI official� who admitted finding new archaeological evidence such as sculptures and inscriptions but not the type of structural evidence suggested by the radar scan: �But the structural bases so far do not lend credence to the mandir theory.� Questioned further, he turned out not to base this belief on the new digging results but on older ones: �According to him, the theory of �a pre-existing temple because of structural bases� has been demolished �convincingly� over the years. He points to the discovery of pillar bases by B.B. Lal in the mid-1970s during his excavation of Ramayana sites in Ayodhya and says: �It has not been found to be fit evidence for a temple�.� (
Times of India, 17 June 2003) This when B.B. Lal himself had confirmed that his findings
do support the temple theory.
Yet, some of these papers clumsily let out the truth indirectly. The Marxist-controlled Chennai daily
The Hindu of June 11 claimed the ASI �is reported to have said in its progress report that no structural anomalies suggesting the existence of any structure under the demolished Babri Masjid had been found in 15 of the new trenches dug up at the site�, - but those 15 were not the only ones investigated. So, at the very end of the article, there was an almost laconic addition: �Structural anomalies were, however, detected in 15 other trenches, the report said.� But the impression the paper sought to convey, was summed up in the title: ��No evidence of structures in some trenches��. It is as if someone is hit by two bullets, one scratching his arm but the other lethally penetrating his heart, and a newspaper reports: �Man repeatedly shot at; one bullet harmless�.
In disinformation campaigns, the first stage of planting false news must be followed up with a second stage of making the false news into a familiar presence. Once it is repeated in women�s magazines, in TV chat shows, even in jokes, it is becoming part of the collective consciousness. That is the ambition of every disinformation operative worth his salt. In this case, indeed, we have seen secularists grab the ball and run with it from day one. In interviews of Hindu or Muslim leaders, questions were opened with a reference to the �fact� that nothing was found underneath the Babri Masjid. Some Hindu leaders, such as the Kanchi Shankaracharya (who had just led a failed initiative to negotiate an amicable solution), were so little informed that they didn�t even contradict the claim. Columnist Saeed Naqvi, known as a moderate within the spectrum of Muslim opinion, spices an otherwise reasonable opinion piece (�Muslims must be generous�,
Indian Express, 13 June 2003) with the off-hand statement: �The ASI has found nothing under the mosque.� Clearly, some people were leaving no stone unturned to make this claim part of the received wisdom.
Meanwhile, a few papers did try to be truthful in presenting the findings of the interim report, especially after taking the time to properly read it, e.g.the internet version of
The Hindu, Hinduonnet.com (22 June 2003), mentioned �structural anomalies in 46 trenches� of the 84 trenches investigated, as well as �pillar bases and drains in some of the trenches�.
In
Outlook India (23 June 2003), Sandipan Deb gave a more detailed overview of the report. Finding that �most papers covering the new ASI report last week said that it claims there was no structure under the Babri Masjid�, he went on to read the actual report: �Among the structures listed in the report are several brick walls �in east-west orientation�, several �in north-south orientation�, �decorated coloured floor�, several �pillar bases�, and a �1.64-metre high decorated black stone pillar (broken) with
yaksha [= demigod] figurines on four corners�.� He also points out that �what many people have missed out on � due to bias or sloth � is that these are findings only from the period of May 22 to June 6. This is not the full list. If they read the earlier reports, they would also find listed several walls, a staircase, and two black basalt columns �bearing fine decorative carvings with two cross-legged figures in bas-relief on a bloomed lotus with a peacock whose feathers are raised upwards�.�
For good measure, we should also quote a Hindu nationalist�s observations. On the website of the National Volunteer Corps, or RSS (
www.rss.org, 24 June 2003), Chetan Merani wrote: �The excavations so far give ample traces that there was a mammoth pre-existing structure beneath the three-domed Babri structure. (�) The bricks used in these perimeters predate the time of Babar. (�) More than 30 pillar bases have been found at equal spans. The pillar-bases are in two rows and the rows are parallel. The pillar-base rows are in North-South direction. A wall is superimposed upon another wall. At least three layers of the floor are visible. (�) These facts prove the enormity of the pre-existing structure. (�) Moulded bricks of round and other shapes and sizes were neither in vogue during the middle ages nor are in use today. It was in vogue only 2,000 years ago. Many ornate pieces of touchstone (
kasauti stone) pillars have been found in the excavation. (�) The Gupta and the Kushan period bricks have been found. Brick walls of the Gahadwal period (12th Century CE) have been found in excavations.�
And according to Merani, it was not just a �structure�, but definitely a structure with a religious purpose: �Beautiful stone pieces bearing carved Hindu ornamentations like lotus,
kaustubh jewel, alligator facade, etc., have been used in these walls. (�) An octagonal holy fireplace (
yajna kund) has been found. (�) Terracotta idols of divine figurines, serpent, elephant, horse-rider, saints, etc., have been found. Even to this day terracotta idols are used in worship during Diwali celebrations and then put by temple sanctums for invoking divine blessings. (�) The excavation gives out the picture of a vast compound housing a sole distinguished and greatly celebrated structure used for divine purposes.�
Even the attentive reader of the papers which on June 11 starkly denied the findings could have seen that something was wrong, for on the very same day, they carried the following news item: �ASI fabricating evidence in Ayodhya, says Waqf Board� (
The Hindu). All the papers carried this news, citing the Board�s counsel, Mr. Zafaryab Jilani: �ASI fabricating evidence: Waqf Board� (
Times of India); �Foul play alleged at Ayodhya dig� (
The Pioneer). The party most likely to be elated over the non-finding of traces of a temple should have been the anti-temple lobby, including the Sunni Central Waqf Board, yet it complains that the ASI team
did find evidence, only it was of the pro-temple kind, hence �fabricated�. In the free-for-all of Indian secularism, we needn�t fuss over the fact that this grim allegation against the integrity of highly qualified scientists was levelled without any evidence. The decisive point is that, against the secularist claims and against their own interest, the Muslim plaintiffs admitted that the ASI excavators had not come up from their trenches empty-handed.
2.6. Sheer bluff
�Too strenuous an effort to make a point is usually a dead give-away. And if somebody shows an absolute lack of scruple about the methods used in making a point, there is likely to be very little substance in the argument.� Thus opens Sukumar Muralidharan�s comment on the interim report in the Communist fortnightly
Frontline (�Excavating truth�, 19 July 2003). While he meant to attack the VHP, his statement neatly described the behaviour of the secularists themselves in the Ayodhya debate from the 1980s till 2003.
Their effort has indeed been very strenuous. They were all over the press with petitions and statements and columns, insisting on the temple�s non-existence, or slipping claims to that effect into texts which focused on other aspects of the �communalism� problem. During the latest excavations, they had teams of historians on the spot to scrutinize the ASI team from day to day. They were issuing statements all the time, grim one day, furious the next, scholarly never.
By contrast, the VHP took a very lackadaisical attitude towards the excavations, arguably the moment of truth for the temple party. It had never attached too much importance to the history debate, firstly because it was a false and contrived debate about a demolished temple which all honest observers
knew to have existed; and secondly because the Hindu claim to the site rested less on past history than on the continuous and present fact that Hindus consider the disputed site as a sacred site
today. On Hindutva internet discussion forums, you could see temple enthusiasts criticize the VHP leadership for its passivity. Only at the end of the excavations did the VHP-affiliated archaeological team, led by Dr. S.P. Gupta, give a modest press conference, where the political VHP leaders sat in the back and refrained from commenting. It seems they trusted in India�s national motto, �truth shall prevail�, even and especially against the decibels of those who rely on propaganda rather than on the quiet convincing power of the facts.
So, Prof. Muralidharan was quite right: the party which didn�t have the facts on its side, betrayed its lack of confidence in the outcome by displaying �too strenuous an effort to make a point�. But far be it from a Marxist historian to be cowed by mere facts. To his knowledge, the interim ASI findings were either false or non-existent, which is why he saw the VHP smarting under �the disarray within their ranks after the archaeological excavations at the site turned up empty�. This disarray was completely imaginary: the VHP knew perfectly well that the excavations were bringing up more confirmation by the day of the existence of the temple. But if the ASI�s findings had been negative, then the VHP would be in disarray, so Muralidharan posits not just negative findings but also the VHP�s disarray. This shows what accomplished liars the Marxists are: they posit not just one lie, as amateurs would, but also all the ramifications of that lie.
Sentence after sentence in Muralidharan�s text is filled with denial and hateful insinuation against scientists doing their jobs. Thus, it was hardly a controversial fact that the Tojo company had carried out radar scans at the site, but under Muralidharan�s pen, even this becomes questionable: �In February, Tojo Vikas (�)
claimed to have deployed some of its devices in Ayodhya and discovered �structural anomalies�� (emphasis mine). Nor is there any benefit of the doubt for the ASI, whose professional excavations with the most careful modern methods are put down as follows: �With the ASI�s ongoing excavations, the entire archaeological record has been destroyed.� If at all the ASI has behaved properly, it must have been due to outside pressure: �Indications, however, are that the relentless vigil exercised by observers on both sides has induced a degree of discipline amongst the ASI excavators.� The Marxist hate campaign targets the ASI, a scientific institution, as much as it targets the VHP.
2.7. Ad hoc crank theories
Like the secularist dailies,
Frontline reports on the ASI findings without reference to any ASI documents, citing its own handpicked experts instead: �After the thorough excavation of 52 trenches in the area � each four metres square � the ASI filed a preliminary report before the Lucknow Bench on April 24. With inputs from this and other sources on the ground, a team of historians put forward the conclusion that every significant fact recorded either pertained to the Babri Masjid or to the many preceding years of Muslim settlement. These findings, announced at a press conference organised by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in Delhi on May 6, have so far remained uncontested.�
It may be true that nobody bothered to reply to the wild claim made at the press conference of the Communist forum SAHMAT, but the implication that everyone has accepted the claim is as ridiculous as the claim itself. The archaeologists have found objects dating as far back as 1300 BC, and then all through the Sunga, Kushana and Gupta periods, all of them predating the genesis of Islam, let alone the arrival of Islam in Ayodhya in 1194. Yet, the SAHMAT historians want us to believe that all those ancient artefacts belonged to a Muslim settlement. Just how silly can you get? While papers and columns keep on being written about the true meaning of �secularism�, shouldn�t someone try the meaning �buffoonery�?
At the same time, this secularism also has traits more commonly found in revealed religions, such as a terrifying intolerance of those who break ranks. Thus, reporting on Prof. B.B. Lal�s statement in 1990 that pillar-bases had been found during excavations in the 1970s, Muralidharan claims: �The professional community of historians and archaeologists was appalled at the veteran archaeologist�s
apostasy.� (emphasis mine) Well, not all of them, to be sure, but at least the vocal Marxist group which was then still firmly in control of the guiding history institutions.
For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India�s academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians� short-sightedness, they left the Marxists� hold on the cultural sector intact. In the good old Soviet tradition, they at once set out to falsify history and propagate their own version through the official textbooks. After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect
glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called �saffronization� of history.
Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as �McCarthyist� anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that acclaimed secularist historians like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore�s
Dictionary of Marxist Thought. The BMAC team�s argumentation of 1991 and several other anti-temple pamphlets were published by the People�s Publishing House, a Communist Party outfit. One of the textbook innovations most furiously denounced as �saffronization� was the truism that Lenin�s armed seizing of power in October/November 1917 was a �coup d��tat�. And while they were unchaining all their devils against glasnost, in early 2003, the Marxists ruling West Bengal deleted from a textbook a passage in which Mahatma Gandhi�s biographer Louis Fischer called Stalin �at least as ruthless as Hitler�. Such are the true concerns of the �secularists� warning the world against the ongoing
glasnost in India�s national history curriculum.
The Marxists� power position also led to a development of which Muralidharan inverts the meaning, viz. that after B.B. Lal�s excavations, �the ASI proved curiously reticent about yielding up the records that could clear the confusion�. Why was this? He insinuates that over a decade ago the ASI, the same institution which has now embarrassed the secularists by finding temple foundations, was unwilling to reveal evidence of the mendaciousness of B.B. Lal�s claims. The real reason is the exact opposite. Of course the ASI proved reticent: the records confirmed B.B. Lal�s statement, while the ASI administrators, then still beholden to the Congress-cum-Leftist establishment, had preferred to stick to the secularist party-line and pretend that no pillar-bases had been found.
To drive a final nail in the coffin of his own credibility, Muralidharan quotes the Marxist archaeologist D. Mandal who has, at least since the publication of his booklet
Ayodhya after Demolition (Delhi 1993), led the charge against the evidence of the pillar-bases. In Mandal�s view, these were but �brickbats laid haphazardly�. Most people who plan a building first conceive a plan and then lay foundations in a pattern dictated by the building-plan. Hindus, by contrast, are like perennial children playing in the sand: they put some stones in the ground here, and a few more there, then a next generation puts in a few more, all without rhyme or reason and definitely without building anything on all these buried stones, so as to keep the site empty for any incoming Muslim invaders to build their mosque on it. Fifty-three years after India adopted a Constitution which calls on all citizens to �develop the scientific temper� (Art. 51.A.h), the country�s academic positions are occupied by crackpots.
Half-educated people, including many journalists, tend to judge a statement by the status of the speaker rather than by its contents. That is one reason why Marxist academics have been quoted as Gospel in the media, no matter how transparently unbelievable their explanations were. D. Mandal�s cranky theory has reappeared in many newspaper stories, e.g. in the
Times of India: �Babri pillar bases do not support temple theory� (17-6-2003). At least the article acknowledged the existence of some pre-Babri artefacts, viz. the pillar-bases, but it insisted on denying the existence of the temple. Now, how can there be foundation structures such as pillar bases in the ground unless they had been put there to support a building? The paper cites an unnamed �ASI official� as saying: �The excavated structural bases are neither aligned nor belong to a single period.� For most human beings, it must be inconceivable to just put a pillar base into the ground once in a while, and then another one, without alignment, without any plan to make them support a preconceived building. But I suppose this has to be the secularist way of doing things.
2.8. The world press as blind amplifier
In spite of a very aggressive campaign of lies by a few spearheads of �secularism�, the broad outline of the true story was in the public domain for anyone with the curiosity to find out. Yet, the international media�s reporting on the interim report consisted exclusively in copying the most mendacious version. The
Reuters despatch for 11 June 2003 was titled: �Dig finds no sign of temple at Indian holy site�. More than 90% of the text rehashes the story of riots and other incidents that have punctuated the whole Ayodhya dispute. What little it says about the new findings, is this: �A three-month excavation has found no evidence yet to back nationalist claims of a Hindu temple under the ruins of a mosque in northern India (�) The state-run Archaeological Survey of India has submitted an interim report saying digging so far at the site in Ayodhya town had �not found remains of any structure that remotely resembles a temple�, a source at the Survey said on Wednesday.�
Note that the actual report is not quoted, merely what �a source� at the ASI has claimed about it. Note also the slanted phrase about �nationalist claims of a Hindu temple�, as if there were anything typically nationalist about acknowledging historical facts. The existence of that temple had been a matter of consensus among Muslims, Europeans and Hindus, both nationalist and anti-nationalist, until the JNU professors issued their
fatwa to disregard the evidence and deny history. Note also that no mention is made of the wealth of evidence extant before the radar scanning and the recent diggings: a fine example of how the public is led by the nose into seeing only a very small selected part of the matter rather than the full perspective which one is entitled to expect from quality media.
Like a babe in the wood, the world press never thought of taking a critical look at the secularist version. The
BBC News titled: ��No sign� of Ayodhya temple� (11 June 2003). Here again, no information from the horse�s mouth, only from �widespread reports across the Indian media�.
The next day, the peripheral part of the world press was relaying the story, e.g. the Flemish tabloid
De Morgen (12 June 2003) called the fact that a temple had been forcibly replaced by a mosque �an evil fairy-tale�, for: �The temple, it turned out yesterday, is a phantom. For three months, experts have dug for traces of it, all in vain. By the end of the month their definitive report should follow, but for now Rama�s home remains unfindable. Bad luck for the ultranationalists, who had hoped to base their next election campaign on the fairy-tale. But they still might manage to, some fear. Yesterday already, the first politicians expressed doubts about the archaeologists� findings. Other Hindu leaders said, and this is even more dangerous, that the facts don�t matter. What counts is what you believe. We now know that Rama didn�t live in Ayodhya, while Allah did until 1992.�
This passage is symptomatic for most of what is wrong with India reporting. Firstly note the ignorance about a rather significant detail: Allah is unlikely to have stayed around in the idol-house which His mosque had become after three idols had been installed in it on December 22, 1949. Clearly the paper�s Asia desk editor didn�t know that the building had functionally been a temple for almost 43 years before the demolition.
The article is totally based on sources which are not only unreliable on facts and background data, but are also quite open about their partisan involvement, indeed about their unreserved hatred for the Hindu nationalists. Attributing a claim that �the facts don�t matter� to �Hindu leaders� is a pure lie, though they may have said something to the effect that the Marxist historians�
opinion doesn�t matter, even if falsely presented as fact. In defence of the overseas babes in the wood, we acknowledge that it is uncertain at which point along the line of transmission this lie was inserted. (Most probably close to the source, by an Indian correspondent of a Western news agency.)
Another striking aspect of this particular instance of distorted reporting is that much of it is purely deductive: from a small core of primary information, all manner of seemingly logical assumptions are added to put flesh on the bones of the poorly understood Indian situation, and these speculations are presented as fact. Thus, it may seem plausible that the BJP wants to use Ayodhya in its elections campaigns, which it did in 1989 and 1991. However, to the frustration of its more activist sympathizers, the BJP has effectively disowned the Ayodhya issue immediately after reaping the benefits in the 1991 elections (when it became the leading opposition party), and has stayed away from it in the campaigns of 1996, 1998 and 1999. Indeed, the demolition was partly an outcry of the activists against the BJP leadership, whose participation in the ceremony they correctly saw as perfunctory and insincere. Once the BJP came to power and proved time and again how it was in no mind to build the temple, criticism from the hardliners has only increased. Given the infighting between temple loyalists and pragmatists, the last thing the BJP now wants is an election campaign focused on Ayodhya.
A second example of this deductive reporting is the deduced claim that Hindu nationalists object to the archaeological investigation of the site. In reality, the first politicians to express doubts about the archaeologists� findings have not been the Hindu nationalists but the Babri Masjid lobbyists. All through the past 14 years, the secularists have always opposed archaeological research at the site. Yet, because the interim report was falsely presented as going against the Hindu nationalist position, distant India-watchers deductively assume that the opposition against the diggings must have come from the Hindu nationalists.
Many Western media have devoted more attention to the interim report on June 11 than on the final report on August 25. Within the logic of the media, even politically neutral media, this was normal. The interim report was the first, and India being only of marginal interest, many editors didn�t think the issue worthy of a second look when the final report came out. Moreover, the handful of Delhi correspondents who control almost the whole information flow from India, had presented the interim report to them as having very clear-cut conclusions, viz. �no evidence for the temple at all�. By contrast, the final report was falsely presented as indecisive, hence less newsworthy and less apt to inspire catchy headlines. Indeed, it is likely that those who misinformed the world about the interim report�s findings had foreseen and planned that this would help in neutralizing the inevitable pro-temple impact of the final report.
2.9. Why the anti-Hindu distortions?
Distorted or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism. There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation. No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindu nationalists. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish. And foreign correspondents used to trusting their Indian secularist sources have likewise developed a habit of swallowing and relaying highly distorted news stories.
Yet, in the instance under consideration, the brutal distortion of the facts pertaining to the recent archaeological findings may be a matter of more than just a bad habit. Some people learn from their failures, but these disinformation specialists may also have learned from their successes. Consider a few earlier instances.
After the BJP came to power in 1998, India should have witnessed a genocide of the minorities, gas chambers and what not. At least if you believed the predictions made by the secularists in the preceding years. Nothing of the kind happened, so in the next two years the secularists tried to make the most of what few incidents did take place. In particular, all manner of small incidents within the Christian community were at once blamed on the evil hand of Hindu nationalism. In Kandhamal, Orissa, a Christian man murdered a girl and her little brother. At once, a cry went up in the secularist and Christian media that Hindu nationalists had perpetrated the crime. When the official investigation revealed the true story, it was reported only marginally in Indian papers and not at all in the international media, which had eagerly carried the initial allegations.
Likewise, in the Central-Indian town of Jhabua, a quarrel among mostly christianized tribals led to the rape of four nuns. With no Hindu nationalists in sight, the media decided nonetheless that this was an act of Hindu nationalist cruelty against the poor hapless Christian minority. Though the official investigation confirmed the total innocence of the Hindu nationalists in this affair (more details on these and similar cases in Arun Shourie,
Harvesting Our Souls, ch.1), their guilt has been consecrated by endless repetition in the media. While the media in India couldn�t prevent the truth from quietly making itself known, the international media have never published a correction, and the story of �four nuns in Jhabua raped by Hindu nationalists� now keeps on reappearing as an evergreen of anti-Hindu hate propaganda.
Similarly, a series of bomb blasts against Christian churches in South India was automatically blamed on the Hindu nationalists. In that version, the story made headlines around the world: Hindu bomb terror against Christians. Hindu organizations alleged that it was a Pakistani operation, a blame-shifting exercise which only earned them ridicule and contempt. Yet, when two of the terrorists blew themselves up by mistake, their getaway car led the police to their network, and the whole gang was arrested. It turned out to be a Muslim group,
Deendar Anjuman, with headquarters in Pakistan. But this was not reported on the front pages in India nor made the topic of flaming editorials; and in the international media, it was not reported at all. In the worldwide perception of Hindu nationalism, the association with raping nuns and bombing churches has stuck.
So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindu nationalists. Even if you are found out, most of the public will never hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences. Striking first is what counts. Any second round in which the truth comes out, will hardly be noticed. Indeed, conditioned by the initial lie, many readers and viewers will deride the correction as an attempt at �denial� of the grim facts which �everybody knows well enough�. And the audience abroad will never even be informed that there has been a correction.
In the present case, lying about the interim report was a very clever move. When the Ayodhya issue came up again with the presentation of the final report, many an editor dismissed it as uninteresting: �Haven�t we already done something on those Indian excavations lately?� And even where the report did get adequate coverage, it could never entirely undo the impression created by the initial story. So, apart from being the natural implementation of a bad habit, this particular lie about the interim report may well have been part of a deliberate ploy to condition public opinion against the true story if and when it was to come out. For fourteen years, the secularists had worked hard to keep the lid on the Ayodhya evidence and they didn�t want some puny radar scanner or muddy-handed archaeologist to bring the facts to light and thereby expose their mendaciousness.
Chapter III. Escaping the ASI�s final conclusions
3.1. Denial encore
After all the wild claims made about their findings, the experts themselves have finally spoken. Their report confirms that the disputed site contains the foundations of a large building complex. And this time too, the religious purpose of the building can be inferred from the numerous religious artefacts found in between the pillar-bases. In a normal setting, the ASI findings should finish once and for all the campaign of history denial by the Marxists and their Muslim camp followers. But the world of Indian secularism is a fantasy-land where hard facts don�t count for much. So, a great many diehards unflinchingly reject the findings of science. We will look into what few arguments they could muster.
Predictably, the unflinching deniers were parroted by many uncomprehending foreign correspondents, e.g. the Flemish broadsheet
De Standaard (26 Aug. 2003) relays an Associated Press report opening thus: �Four months of excavations could not answer the question whether there ever stood a Hindu temple underneath the mosque of Ayodhya.� In fact, the excavations did answer the question of the temple�s existence unambiguously. Perhaps the journalist didn�t express himself carefully, calling the report indecisive when he meant that the most vocal segment of public opinion was indecisive, i.e. divided. If not, it is the kind of bold-faced lie so common throughout the secularist interventions in the debate for fourteen years, but one would have hoped to see it banished from the debate by this very report. And effectively, other reporters and commentators of a less extremist temper have made concessions to the newly published conclusions of science, though they downplay them and continue their struggle against the Hindu project of a new temple.
3.2. Deflecting attention
The editorial of the
Hindustan Times (�Structural flaws�, 27-8-2003) refuses to accept that any discovery worth the name was made. But it sets out first of all to deflect attention from the historical findings by emphasizing the alleged political implications over the obvious historical contents of the report.: �The �discovery� of an ancient �structure� underneath the demolished Babri Masjid by the Archaeological Survey of India has far more political overtones than historical or legal ones. (�) Nor does the �discovery� make any difference to the various court cases, including those concerned with the title deeds of the site.�
Whether the findings have any legal implications is for the judges to decide, not for the newspaper editors. And it is they who ordered the excavation in the first place, clearly on the assumption that the findings do make a difference to the court cases. Rajiv Dhawan, an anti-temple lawyer quoted by
BBC News (Jyotsna Singh: �Experts split on Ayodhya findings�, 26-8-2003) indirectly admits the relevance of the findings to the court case: �However, Mr. Dhawan says, as the land was owned by the Sunni Waqf Board (an elected body of Muslim theologians) until 1945, the Hindus could have only moral right over the land if the existence of a temple were proven.�
But the dominant position certainly is to minimize the importance of the ASI findings. This is a general phenomenon in the whole secularist press: instead of a thorough analysis and a lively debate worthy of the importance and unequivocal verdict of the report, the page is turned as quickly as possible. This is, of course, a strong indication that the report�s findings are embarrassing for the secularists because they go against what the secularists have been saying for all these years. Like spoilt children, the secularists are used to having it all their own way, and when reality interferes, they close their eyes, shut off their ears and refuse to know. And they will lie and cheat in order to prevent others from knowing.
For anti-temple lawyers too, this same hurry to get past the archaeological findings is the favourite approach. In their case it is almost defensible, as their concern is not the truth but courtroom victory. Jyotsna Singh reports: �But although the study is expected to have far-reaching implications in moves to solve who holds claim over the site, legal experts say it cannot be taken as a conclusive evidence. �As far as the legal case in concerned, it is a title suit about the ownership of the land between Hindus and Muslims�, lawyer Rajiv Dhawan told the BBC. �The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report cannot be taken to be conclusive. This is only part of the evidence. The report will be analysed, its authors will be cross-examined to find out whether they are right or wrong. It will be a long, drawn-out process�, he said.�
At first sight, Dhawan seems to be announcing a very thorough analysis of the findings. It is, however, sheer bluff when a lawyer pretends that his cross-examination is going to decide on the truth of archaeological findings, for how does he hope to make scientists renounce in a boisterous courtroom the conclusions they arrived at in the quiet and concentration of their study? By threatening and bullying them? To be sure, court debates are not very scientific, and a clever lawyer may well succeed in fooling the judges into believing that the scientists had it all wrong while the secular agitators were right all along. But Dhawan doesn�t intend to seriously discuss archaeology. The whole juristic point is precisely that the archaeological truth is not the point: �Mr. Dhawan said the legal case did not relate to the question of whether a temple existed on the site or not.�
Another way to deflect attention from the evidence is to dismiss the whole historical dimension of the Ayodhya dispute as an unwanted extra load imposed on everyone by history-crazy Hindu fanatics. Thus, Jyotsna Singh claims: �The existence of the temple became part of Hindu rhetoric in the dialogue process begun in 1989 between the All India Babri Mosque Committee and the hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).� This is a plain lie, which I assume she has borrowed in good faith from influential secularist sources. In reality, the existence of the medieval temple was a matter of long-standing consensus. What became part of someone�s rhetoric towards 1989 was its
denial, launched by the secularists and picked up by the Muslims. As for the VHP, it didn�t base its claim on historical events (not truly in doubt anyway) but on the permanent
and present status of the site as a Hindu sacred place.
By the way, note how our BBC correspondent reserves the qualification �hard-line� for the Hindu side and withholds it from the Muslim side. It�s always useful when a medium is so candid about its partisan predilections.
3.3. The interim report�s second life
The
Hindustan Times editor then goes on to denounce the report as contrary to facts established earlier: �Doubts have already been cast on the findings, not least because there was no hint of such a �structure� in the earlier reports on the excavation although their accuracy may be questioned. Even then, if a massive structure of the kind which has been mentioned in the final report had been located, surely reports about it would have filtered out.�
So, this is one paper which chooses the option of total denial of the findings, continuing the line taken since at least 1989. As its only argument against the veracity of the final report, it uses the media�s misrepresentation of the interim report on June 11. Reports about the structure did of course filter out, but the
Hindustan Times didn't want its readers to know about it in June, and it still wouldn�t tell them about it in August. This is really quite rich: the
Hindustan Times falsely pretended that the interim report�s finding was negative, and later used the purported interim report�s negative result as a �fact� contradicting and overruling the final report�s positive findings.
The same argument has been used by the lawyers of the Muslim lobby groups, such as the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board: ��This report is totally inconsistent with the interim reports submitted earlier�, Board secretary Mohammed Abdul Rahim Quraishi (�) said in a statement.� (Hinduonnet.com, 25 Aug. 2003) As a general rule, you can predict what the secularist position on any issue will be once you know what the militant Islamist position is. From justifying terrorism to misrepresenting the Ayodhya evidence, the two are rarely very different.
3.4. Ad hominem
The
Hindustan Times editor (�Structural flaws�, 27-8-2003) also questions the integrity of the archaeologists: �Insinuations have also been made about the ASI coming under political pressure. Since the first among the ruling parties at the Centre has long been insistent on the existence of a demolished temple at the disputed site, it is obvious that a government organisation would have been uncomfortably aware of the stance, although that doesn�t mean that it affected its professional judgment.�
Alex Perry in
Time magazine (�Bloody Monday�, 8 Sep. 2003) quotes historian Prof. D.N. Jha to the same effect, except that the academic feels entitled to use more extreme language than a mere journalist would: �This is a totally doctored report. They�ve created this temple out of nothing.� And he is not the only one, reports Perry: �Last week, on the same day as the latest Bombay blasts, the government-run Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) lent official support to the Hindu fundamentalist cause, declaring that new excavations at Ayodhya reveal the mosque was built over an elaborate Hindu temple. Several academics scornfully dismissed this as a BJP political manoeuvre rather than a legitimate archaeological revelation. (�) To many Indian Muslims, this timely discovery is just the latest example of continuing discrimination by the Hindu majority�.
Of course, the ASI is not a �government-run� institution. Like most universities, it is supported by state funds but enjoys functional independence and academic freedom. How historical findings can constitute �discrimination� is not explained. Perhaps Perry thinks findings should be proportionately satisfying to all the contending parties? Or is only fifty-fifty non-discriminatory? No mention is made of the findings supporting the ASI�s conclusion, all the attention goes to its deniers, except: �ASI archaeologists declined to comment, saying they are forbidden to talk to the media.� That was indeed part of the deal given them by the Court. But surely Perry could have found at least one other scholar capable of defending the ASI and its excavation results?
Even if the archaeologists had wanted to manipulate the findings, one wonders how they would have been able to pull it off. They were permanently scrutinized by archaeologists and historians employed by the Muslim parties. Moreover, many of the excavators were Muslims, unlikely to be willing accomplices in a pro-Hindu manipulation. Thus, according to the
Press Trust of India (11 June 2003): �There were 131 labourers including 29 Muslims engaged in the digging work today�.
Jyotsna Singh of
BBC News (�Experts split on Ayodhya findings�, 26-8-2003) quotes Prof. Irfan Habib with the same allegation: �The ASI is using the same language that the VHP uses by calling the mosque a disputed structure. The ASI has said what the Hindu nationalists wanted to hear. There is a legal issue and this is a long debate. The ASI report has only confirmed the fears about the objectivity of this exercise."
This allegation against the integrity of the archaeologists is loosely made, without any evidence, on no other grounds than that their findings are to the liking of the Hindu nationalists. As if it could have been otherwise. The findings have uncovered the material remains of historical facts, and these facts were public knowledge for centuries, viz. that a Hindu temple had been forcibly replaced by a mosque. Before and after 1989, the Hindu nationalists have simply stood by this public knowledge, while the secularist lobby led the Muslims into disbelieving their own chronicles (which amply attested their pride in having performed the Islamic duty of iconoclasm at Ayodhya) and denying the facts.
Jyotsna Singh casts suspicion on those who hesitate to join in this slandering exercise by identifying them with the �Hindu hardliner� party: �Archaeologists supported by Hindu hardliners dismissed these allegations, saying the report justified their long-held observations.� In reality, at the present state of the argument,
any neutral observer or judge would throw out the allegations against the archaeologists and condemn Irfan Habib and his ilk for libel. The accused is innocent until proven guilty, and no proof nor even the faintest indication has been given for foul play by the archaeologists.
Jyotsna Singh�s presentation exemplifies a more sophisticated form of secularist disinformation. A false semblance of even-handedness is created: she mentions some who uphold and some who deny the allegations against the archaeologists. But first of all, to report on a document only in the most general terms (�the report said there was indeed evidence��:
one sentence) and then devote half your space to a discussion of the archaeologists� integrity, means you are already leaving the public with the impression that bias rather than hard evidence is the news of the day. Moreover, the two sides quoted are presented very differently.
On the pro-archaeologist side, she quotes Dr. S.P. Gupta. She tells us nothing about his status as a leading archaeologist, e.g. as former director of the Allahabad museum, and merely locates him in an ideological corner: �S.P. Gupta, of the Indian Archaeologist Society (IAS), a VHP-backed organization�. By contrast, Irfan Habib, whose support base is not at all described as �hardliner�, is introduced as simply a �professor of history at Aligarh Muslim University�. Though he collected the scholars� team that had to save the Babri Masjid Action Committee during the government-sponsored debate in 1990-91, we are not expected to know that he is as closely involved with the Muslim lobby as Gupta is with the Hindu lobby.
Likewise, Prof. D.N. Jha�s status as a BMAC employee is left unmentioned in
Time (�Bloody Monday�, 8 Sep. 2003), as is Prof. Suraj Bhan�s in the
Times of India (�No evidence of temple at Ayodhya: expert�, 25 Aug. 2003). Fortunately, the
Times of India did once reveal that �Shereen Ratnagar, Suraj Bhan, D. Mandal and Sita Ram Rai� constituted the �[Sunni Waqf] Board�s own team of archaeologists� (�ASI fabricating evidence: Waqf Board�, 11 June 2003). It is best to keep that in mind when you see those names cited as arguments of authority.
Now that we are at it, we may as well quote Jyotsna Singh�s report on the �Hindu� findings: �S.P. Gupta, of the Indian Archaeologist Society (IAS), a VHP-backed organisation, said: �The ASI report is nearly the same as our reports, because we are also archaeologists. We have seen the digging. It is a science so our observations based on scientific facts are bound to be similar.� A colleague of Mr. Gupta, K.N. Dixit, added: �Our excavations in Ayodhya in 1978 proved the existence of a temple dating to the 11th century. The ASI report just pushes it back by 50 or 100 years.� Another archaeologist, R.K. Sharma, said the motifs found �proved the existence of a 7th century Shiva temple�."
Gupta�s team also seems to agree with the ASI team on a point which refutes the charges of manipulative pro-Hindu bias for both of them. An archaeologist who would like to please the VHP with the desired digging results at the Rama Janmabhoomi site, would claim to find habitation down to a depth corresponding to the traditional date of Rama, viz. at least 3700 BC. Yet, the ASI reports only on finding remains of human habitation down to the level corresponding to 1300 BC. Perhaps a thick layer of soil conceals a far older and deeper layer of human remains, but the report doesn�t even hint at such a possibility. The stated result is compatible with the Western chronology of ancient India, with the �Aryan invasion� in ca. 1500 BC and Aryan heroes like Rama a little later. In that scheme of things, Krishna is moved from ca. 3130 BC to ca. 900 BC, at which rate Rama�s date should be brought down to ca. 1200 BC. But it so happens that Hindu nationalists have recently gotten rather excitedly involved in the debate over ancient history, insisting on a high chronology. That school at least should not be pleased with the ASI findings.
For this and other reasons, it is only logical, then, that some observers have dismissed the allegations against the ASI as politically motivated propaganda. Dilip Chakrabarti, lecturer in Archaeology in Cambridge University, asserts: �To cast a slur on the findings of what is undoubtedly the best and most dependable professional archaeological organization in the country is an act of pure political expediency. Whatever we can accuse the ASI of, conscious falsification of data cannot be one of them. (�) I have no doubt that they have done their duty professionally and faithfully.� (�It�s the archaeology, stupid!�,
Hindustan Times, 29 Aug. 2003).
In a normal situation, the reckless accusations against the ASI team�s integrity should not go unpunished. In academe, reputation is almost everything, and personal smears by professors against fellow scholars are not treated lightly. So, unless Prof. Habib, Prof. Bhan, Prof. Jha and their followers come up with evidence to back up their allegations, they themselves stand guilty of libel and deserve to be punished accordingly, whether by their academic superiors or by the judiciary.
3.5. False explanations for Islamic iconoclasm
Let us return to the
Hindustan Times editorial of August 27. The editor makes an implicit concession to reality: "The point, however, is not whether a temple has been found, but its historical relevance." He wouldn't have written that if he had been confident that no temple had been found. In that case, he would have focused on the truth of the matter and not hidden behind the question of its "relevance".
Then follows an explicit concession to reality: "On this count, the �discovery� adds nothing to what is already known. It is an accepted fact that Muslim invaders had demolished any number of temples..." Which at once he tries to explain away: "... when tolerance of the faiths of others was virtually unknown." As if a tick of the clock, viz. the arrival of the Middle Ages, could cause the widespread destruction which India suffered. Tolerance remained the rule in medieval Hinduism: for all its untouchability and other flaws, it did tolerate Syrian Christians, Parsis and Jews in its midst (who, unlike in their countries of origin, also learned to tolerate one another in India), and the lively debates between its own numerous sects rarely if ever spilled over into physical confrontations. The problem was not the age but the Islamic doctrine of iconoclasm. Unfortunately, secularists have developed a habit of staring past uncomfortable historical facts, particularly those disturbing the progressive image of any anti-Hindu group or movement or religion.
And then we are served another old lie, peddled so often in the preceding years by the secularists: "Moreover, the places of worship were regarded with suspicion since they were the meeting places of ordinary people and, hence, could facilitate the hatching of a conspiracy. So if Babur�s general, Mir Baqi, did demolish a temple and built a mosque in its place, it is not surprising.�
But conspiracies were typically the work of those close to the ruling clique (and not of "the ordinary people", as this pop-Marxist interjection wants us to believe), which in those days meant that they were Muslims and their places of worship were mosques. Yet these mosques were never destroyed by Muslim rulers. The conspiracy gambit is one of those escape routes used by people who realize that the massive Islamic destruction of Hindu temples cannot be denied forever, but who refuse to pin any blame on Islam itself.
At any rate, in the case of the
Hindustan Times editorial, the whole concession about medieval Muslim iconoclasm was only meant as a background setting for blaming the Hindus: �However, that doesn�t justify the emulation of medieval norms, as on December 6, 1992.� This is an all too predictable diversion: now that a report puts the spotlights on the demolished Hindu temple, the Indian media insist on eclipsing it behind their evergreen pet reference to �December 6, 1992�, the most glorious/shameful
(cross out the wrong alternative) day in independent India�s history.
3.6. The Buddhist gambit
More or less since the beginning of the historical dispute, some secularists have felt that the denial of Islamic iconoclasm in general and of its application to Ayodhya in particular would be unsustainable. So, to weaken the Hindu position vis-�-vis the historical debt which Islam has incurred, they attributed a similar iconoclasm to Hinduism, with Buddhism as the victim. But in the present round of the Ayodhya debate, there has not been more than a vague hint at this scenario, and for good reason.
There was a little problem with this thesis, viz. the inconvenient fact that Buddhism has flourished in India for 17 centuries under almost uninterrupted non-Buddhist Hindu rule, and that many Buddhist monasteries and universities were still functioning in India at the time of the Muslim invasions. It was the Muslim conquerors who destroyed the entire Buddhist establishment of North India in just a few years following the fatal battle of Tarain (1192), where Mohammed Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan to storm into the Gangetic plain. But here again, the secularists counted on their own overwhelming grip on the influential media to get away with their newly launched myth. So now, numerous people in India and abroad (most damagingly in Buddhist countries which should have been India�s natural allies) actually believe that there was a time when Hindus demolished Buddhist temples and slaughtered Buddhist monks.
From there, it was but a small step to claiming that, if the Ayodhya site had been taken by Muslims from a native Indian religion at all, the aggrieved party must have been the Buddhists, not the Hindus. Or better still, if there had been a Hindu temple at the site when the Muslim conquerors came to level it, that temple itself had forcibly replaced an earlier Buddhist building as part of the massive Hindu persecution of the poor hapless Buddhists. However, in the documentary record, there is not the slightest indication of a Buddhist presence at that particular site, even though elsewhere in Ayodhya the Buddhist presence (including that of the prominent philosophers Asanga and Vasubandhu) is well-attested. The Jains still have a number of sites in Ayodhya associated with several of their
Tirthankaras, but neither Buddhist nor Jain tradition ever laid claim to the Rama Janmabhoomi site.
The material implication of anti-Buddhist iconoclasm at the site, whether Hindu or Muslim, is that distinctively Buddhist temple remains should be found below the mosque, either directly below it or underneath a layer of Hindu architecture. However, the archaeological search in the 1970s and in 1992 has not uncovered any such exclusively Buddhist artefact. And in 2003 again, nothing specifically Buddhistic has surfaced at the site.
To be sure, it is rather artificial to conceive of Buddhism as a separate tradition from Hinduism, and in their artistic conventions, the two have a lot in common. So, some artefacts could be Buddhist as well as Hindu, e.g. the new ASI report, in describing the �massive structure below the disputed site�, states that one of the architectural fragments belonging to the 12th century, is �similar to those found in Dharmachakrajina Vihara of Kumaradevi at Sarnath which belongs to the early 12th century� (quoted by Anjali Mody: �ASI report raises more questions�,
The Hindu, 27 June 2003). Kumaradevi was the Buddhist wife of Govindachandra, king of Kanauj, and the remains of the building she patronized have been interpreted as those of a Buddhist monastery. But this interpretation has been disputed (as Mody recounts), and the said type of architectural fragments could not decide the matter precisely because it formed part of a pan-Indian culture in evidence in both Hindu and Buddhist buildings. By contrast, what was found at the contentious site in Ayodhya, when not part of this indistinctive pan-Indian register, was distinctively part of the non-Buddhistic traditions of Hinduism. Interestingly, in the pre-medieval layers, indications of Shiva and Devi (goddess) worship have been found, so the history of the temple site was not exclusively Vaishnava. But it was definitely not Buddhist.
So far, the Buddhist escape route has not been tried anymore after the ASI report was presented. Apparently the evidence for the site�s non-Buddhist history is just too overwhelming, and the secularists already have enough to deny.
3.7. A tactical retreat from the evidence debate
Some commentators simply accept the scientific findings. Thus, in his regular column in the
Indian Express(�A tale of three cities�, 28 Aug. 2003), T.V.R. Shenoy acknowledges that the ASI report �makes it clear that a temple existed on the site dating back at least to the tenth century�.
Others hasten to assure us that they won�t let the scientific findings stand in the way of their ongoing crusade against Hindu nationalism and particularly against the project of building a new temple, but they do renounce the struggle against the scientific evidence as such. Among these, surprisingly, we meet the editorialist of the
Times of India (�Temple tide: ASI report a green signal for saffron�, 27 Aug. 2003), who effectively throws in the towel as far as the historical aspect of the Ayodhya affair is concerned, for he opens thus: "Let's drop the charade." In the next sentences, he still tries to identify the scientific findings with the VHP, he also puts the word �evidence� in quotation marks, but he never actually tries to challenge the truth of the findings anymore.
That doesn�t mean that this war-horse of secularism is giving up the struggle, but it shifts the debate definitively to the purely judicial level: "The 'findings', of course, have no force in law", etc. And then the editor reverts to some good old moralizing on the 1992 demolition, clearly avoiding any further focus on the evidence. For on the issue of the historical facts, he knows that his side has lost the debate for good. We must at any rate thank him for admitting that all those years of polemic against the historical consensus on the temple demolition were merely a �charade�.
The Pioneer (�What lies ahead�, 27 Aug. 2003) betrays the same attitude. It likewise acknowledges the ASI�s findings, it even rejects the allegations of bias and fabrication against the ASI, but then swiftly shifts the focus to the judicial dispute: �For, the ASI�s findings can scarcely be the sole determinant in finding light at the end of the Ayodhya tunnel.� So, it�s back to Court now with the message: �We were wrong, Your Honour, to deny the existence of the temple, but we plead you still don�t grant the Hindus the right to rebuild it.�
All very well, but we should not forget that that point could have been reached fourteen or more years ago. What the recent excavations have merely confirmed was already well-known in 1989. The only problem was the mendacious denial of the historical facts by screaming and bullying secularists. Which, in turn, emboldened the Muslim hardliners into the most intransigent position in Court, in the political arena and on the streets. Think of the riots and the waste of energy that India could have been spared if the secularists had not obstructed the course of justice (or inter-communal negotiations, or a political settlement) with their denial of the historical reality underlying the Ayodhya dispute. I venture to put forth the view that these secularists have blood on their hands.
3.8. A mosque before the mosque?
Jyotsna Singh (�Experts split on Ayodhya findings�,
BBC News, 26-8-2003) reports: �Although there is no dispute that objects were recovered from the site, the interpretation is the key. Professor of history at Aligarh Muslim University, Irfan Habib, told the BBC: �The floors of the mosque have been declared to be a temple. Broken bricks and stones used for filling up the floor of the mosque have been declared as pillars of the temple. Glazed pottery common to Muslim architecture has been completely ignored. Flower motifs are common to Muslim architecture but the ASI has interpreted it as a Hindu pattern.�"
Of course, any dispute about the Hindu or Muslim origin of artefacts only makes sense for the time when there were Muslims in that part of India, i.e. after the Ghorid conquest in 1192, which reached Ayodhya itself in 1194. As Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants destroyed all the temples and monasteries they came across, literally thousands of them, it is nearly impossible that a large temple overlooking a city could have survived. By contrast, it is possible that Babar did find some kind of minor makeshift Hindu temple at the site, not necessarily in a proper temple building (just as the Babri Masjid itself served as a Hindu temple in 1949-92), because Hindus often managed to wrest or negotiate concessions from Muslim rulers in times when the latter were weak and in need of Hindu goodwill. A well-known case in point is the Somnath temple in coastal Gujarat, which was destroyed, restored as a temple and destroyed again no less than eight times.
At any rate, the decisive destruction of the large medieval temple took place in 1194, not in 1528. Therefore, I for one have never had any problem with the hypothesis of a mosque and Muslim habitation at the disputed site in much of the pre-Moghul Muslim period, i.e. between 1194 and 1528.
But the ASI�s search was precisely for the Hindu temple built in the
preceding period. And of this temple, they did find appropriate foundations. This hasn�t kept them from acknowledging the existence of Muslim habitation around the mosque, obviously in the centuries when the mosque was standing. But glazed ware was not the decisive evidence in this regard: though this is found in late-medieval Muslim buildings, it cannot be identified
exclusively with Muslim culture.
As archaeologist Nayanjot Lahiri (�Not a treasure hunt�,
Hindustan Times, 2 Sep. 2003) admits: �I am surprised that the Survey�s critics think that it is with the establishment of the Sultanate that what they call �Muslim� glazed tiles and pottery came to be used�, with reference to 11-th-century pre-Sultanate counter-evidence from Multan and Tulamba. Likewise, Bulbul Roy Mishra (�Temple and the truth�,
Indian Express, 6 Sep. 2003) remarks: �Habib and Bhan continue to mislead the public by contending the presence of glazed tiles, mortar and lime proves the structure beneath the Babri mosque was a Muslim one, as Hindus did not know the use of these materials. Glazed ware has been found used as early as the Kushan period. Lime and mortar were used in the Sanchi stupa, second century BC, as well as in the Gupta period.�
Moreover, apart from such objects, of which the Hindu or Muslim origin is disputable, plenty of artefacts are unambiguously Hindu. As Mishra notes: �It is not understood how Habib and Bhan ignored numerous terracotta figurines and divine sculptures suggestive of Hindu origin. Their silence in this regard is baffling.�
Irfan Habib is also counting on the readers� forgetfulness concerning one of the central findings in the ASI report: there was a very large temple, the foundations of which
far exceed the circumference of the Babri mosque. He wants us to believe that the pillar-bases were actually the floor of the Babri Masjid, but a large part of the foundations was located outside the confines of the mosque and hence cannot possibly be confused with the mosque floor, except by a highly prejudiced mind.
Along the same lines as Habib, Muslim Personal Law Board secretary Mohammed Abdul Rahim Quraishi �said a team of well-known archaeologists including Prof. Suraj Bhan had visited the site and inspected the excavated pits and was of [the] opinion that there was evidence of an earlier mosque beneath the structure of the Babri Masjid�. (�ASI �finds� temple, Muslim front says no�,
Hinduonnet.com, 25 Aug. 2003)
The two agree on a pre-Babri Muslim presence, but note how Quraishi�s �interpretation� of the findings is already starkly at variance with Habib�s: the latter saw no mosque underneath, while Quraishi�s employee Bhan did. This indicates the non-seriousness of at least one of these interpretations, possibly both: clutching at straws, they hurriedly fell for
any interpretation as long as it could contradict the ASI reading. By contrast, the ASI team could settle for a single interpretation, just one, which also converges with S.P. Gupta�s, K.N. Dixit�s and R.K. Sharma�s reading. That�s what you get when you stay close to the empirical data rather than imposing a contrived interpretation on them.
But never mind, we gladly concede a Muslim presence, mosque and all, in the period from 1194 to 1528. In fact, this point had been made a decade ago by anti-temple historian Prof. Sushil Srivastava (
The Disputed Mosque, Delhi 1991, p.90-92) as well as by pro-temple archaeologist Prof. R. Nath (
The Baburi Masjid of Ayodhya, Jaipur 1991, p.18), independently from one another. They did not posit the existence of a mosque beneath the mosque, but suggested that the Babri mosque itself preceded Babar by two or three centuries, because its architectural style was more in keeping with fashions and construction skill levels known from 13th-century buildings. Also, the circumstances of Babar�s and his lieutenant Mir Baqi�s brief stay in Ayodhya, viz. in the middle of a hectic war campaign, are hardly compatible with the construction from scratch of an important building.
What is certain is that a major Hindu temple at the site was demolished by Islamic iconoclasm and replaced with a mosque symbolizing the victory of Islam over Infidelism. Of that, evidence is plentiful and of many types. But it remains an open question why the mosque was attributed to Mir Baqi and named after Babar. Anomalies in style between different parts of the building, some in Moghul and some in earlier styles, indicate repair after serious damage, reports R. Nath (
The Baburi Masjid, p.11). �Mir Baqi might have had the mosque renovated and then re-dedicated to Babur�, opines Srivastava (
The Disputed Mosque, p.88), leaving open the question why this was needed at all. One possibility is that in the declining years of the Lodi dynasty, Hindus had gained control of their sacred site including the mosque building, and the victorious Mir Baqi chased them from there and restored it as a mosque. In that case, he also gave some finishing touches to the mosque architecture in replacement of any Hindu elements that had come to adorn it.
But in science, one has to be able to live with provisional ignorance, which is always better than a false pretence at knowledge. So, let us drop all speculations and accept that there is still a lot we don�t know about the site�s history, particularly for the time between 1194 and 1528. Given that Prof. Harsh Narain, Dr. Arun Shourie and others have discovered attempts to conceal or alter Muslim documents confirming the temple tradition (discussed in the VHP evidence bundle, � 7.3:
History vs. Casuistry, Delhi 1991, p.28-29), we cannot exclude that in some cases, similar attempts at concealment of highly informative documents have succeeded and remained undiscovered. In that case, a secret drawer in some library may contain a written testimony to the events of Hindu-Muslim interaction under the declining Sultanate, waiting to be found and clear up our ignorance. Otherwise, or until then, we will just have to live with a hole in our knowledge.
But we may at any rate accept that there are indications for a Muslim presence at the site in that very time bracket, 1194-1528. Prof. Habib and Mr. Quraishi may not realize it, but their insistence on a Muslim presence before Babar actually fits the traditional consensus and the Hindu interest better. For suppose the opposite scenario: the magnificent medieval Hindu temple had remained standing all through three centuries of harsh Muslim rule until Babar�s arrival. Given the temple�s importance and its central location in what became a provincial capital of the Muslim (Sultanate) regime, its continued presence would have been a remarkable counter-example against the consensus view of Islamic iconoclasm for that period, viz. that no Hindu temple was left standing if the Muslim rulers could help it. That the Muslim occupation of this Hindu sacred site started with the Ghorid conquest, is consistent with all we know about that conquest as an unparalleled orgy of iconoclasm.
A second reason why the pre-Moghul date of the mosque supports the Hindu position concerns the presence of Hindu temple artefacts inside the building�s walls, including an inscription describing the building as a Rama temple, which came to light during the demolition. Hindu masons who were employed in the construction, either as slaves or as paid labourers, worked remains of the demolished temple into the mosque in an apparent bid to preserve some of the site�s sanctity. But how could they do this in 1528 if the temple had been destroyed in 1192? One can think up scenarios, but it is simpler if the mosque�s construction followed more closely in time upon the temple�s demolition. This way, Habib�s and Quraishi�s insistence on a Muslim presence at the site in 1194-1528 actually adds to the credibility of the most sensational proof for the temple.
We may repeat R. Nath�s conclusion (
The Baburi Masjid, p.78): �The foregoing study of the architecture and site of the Baburi Masjid has shown, unequivocally and without any doubt, that it stands on the site of a Hindu temple which originally existed in the Ramkot on the bank of the river Sarayu, and Hindu temple material has also been used in its construction.� Science has been speaking for so many years already, but some undeserving professors just refuse to listen.
3.9. Counterbalancing the findings
Internationally, the most popular approach to the unwelcome ASI findings has been to swiftly concede the essence of the report�s conclusions, then to elaborate the thesis that even this final report isn�t conclusive because it is counterbalanced by other opinions. Whence the title in the conservative
Daily Telegraph: �Archaeologists fail to end Ayodhya temple site row� (26 Aug. 2003), by its Delhi correspondent Rahul Bedi, who incidentally is a collaborator of the Communist fortnightly
Frontline.
The leader of this trend was predictably the BBC. Jyotsna Singh of
BBC-News (�Experts split on Ayodhya findings�, 26-8-2003) claims: �A key report by Indian archaeologists on the disputed Ayodhya religious site has split not only Hindus and Muslims but experts too.� She acknowledges: �The report said there was indeed evidence of an earlier temple built beneath a 16th century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu activists in the northern city in 1992.�
So, science has spoken, but it doesn�t have the last word. For, there is a split of opinions. Firstly and predictably: �Hindus welcomed the findings while Muslims rejected the report.� As if any scientific study is ever invalidated, even partially, just because some outsider doesn�t like its conclusions. Secondly and less trivially: �Several historians opposed to the VHP's claim have questioned the validity of the ASI findings.� Then follow Irfan Habib�s comments, just discussed.
While the true fanatics led by Irfan Habib simply deny the new evidence as they have denied the old, we see the slightly more cautious secularists retreat to the next line of defence. They use these fanatics as a counterbalance to the scientific findings, which they in turn conflate with the "Hindu hardliners", to create a semblance of even-handedness with themselves in the reasonable middle position between two fanatical parties, one of these in effect including the ASI. This way, they can still maintain that there is no conclusive proof for the temple, as if dogmatic denials are equal in value with the scientific findings of a team of top archaeologists.
The BBC correspondent and most Western media claim that the issue remains unresolved. But if you read on, you find that this only means that some of the long-standing evidence deniers merely keep on denying the evidence. So yes, there are still two positions: those who stand by the evidence and those who deny it or explain it away with contrived stories. But no fair reporter would treat those two positions, science and anti-science, as being of equal validity or equal seriousness in any other controversy.
When scientific investigations pin-pricked fond beliefs, e.g. concerning the purported Roswell UFO extraterrestrials or the Shroud of Turin (a medieval artefact believed by some to have covered Jesus), the press did report the feeble protestations of the devotees; but it never gave them equal rank with the findings of science. It never used these opposing voices to argue that the scientific findings were less than solid and definitive.
This remains true when some of the objectors are people of academic status but whose ideological constraints are known. Of course Soviet historians have kept on denying that the Katyn massacre was Stalin's rather than Hitler's work. Given that they risked their lives if they took the opposite position, they would, wouldn't they? And their supporters in the West stood by them as long as feasible. But nobody in his right mind thought that these predictable denials by the usual suspects added any weight to the contrived case against the evidence.
Likewise, the politically motivated protests of an Irfan Habib or a Zafaryab Jilani deserve to be treated as so much sound and fury signifying nothing. Science has spoken. All responsible citizens will now repudiate the anti-scientific campaign of temple denial and allow justice to be done.
3.10. Public opinion engineering
These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician�s two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter, who came forward to clarify that she happened to be in the US at the time of the �facts�. Harsh Mander has already been condemned by the Press Council of India (decision 14/106/02-03 dd. 30 June 2003, Dr. Krishen Kak vs.
Times of India) for spreading false rumours about alleged Hindu atrocities in his famous column
Hindustan Hamara (
Times of India, 20 March 2002; incidentally a title borrowed from a poem by Mohammed Iqbal, who claimed �our India� for Islam and became the spiritual father of Pakistan).
These riot vultures do a lot of damage to India, among other reasons because they are so eagerly believed abroad. Yet they don�t interest me too much, if only because they pale in comparison with the past master of their art, the one who was already doing the same job long before these newcomers had discovered the uses of riot �reporting� in anti-Hindu hate-mongering. I mean Asghar Ali Engineer.
Since approximately the Stone Age, Engineer has been travelling to riot spots in India (butchering of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh somehow doesn�t interest him as much) with prefabricated riot reports invariably showing the same ingredients: Hindu pre-planning, Muslim victimhood, anti-Muslim complicity of the police and some local politicians. With the �facts� of the matter fixed beforehand, the main purpose of his visits is to note down some local names in order to give his reports more credibility.
Admittedly, Engineer is of a different calibre than his followers, in the sense that he doesn�t mix his mendaciousness in the service of the hate cause with mendaciousness for self-promotion. People like Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy easily come across as laughable because their corrupting concern for their own image-building detracts mightily from the force of their propaganda against Hinduism: Roy posturing as an environmentalist all while setting up shop in a villa in a protected forest zone, Mander taking early retirement in peacetime from the civil service but falsely claiming that he had �resigned� (which implies loss of pension rights and other privileges) as an act of protest against the Gujarat riots, etc. Engineer won�t be an impeccable human being, but at least his human defects don�t come in the way of his effectiveness as an anti-Hindu campaigner.
In the present debate, he has predictably contributed his two cents� worth: �Archaeological excavations and temple�,
Secular Perspective, 1 Sep. 2003. The text goes through most of the tactical moves discussed in the preceding sections. Engineer is not an archaeologist nor a historian, but he makes the most of newspaper reports as if these were primary and reliable sources. He is not above quoting even anonymous sources as arguments of authority.
His best source, a �senior archaeologist� who was �speaking on condition of anonymity�, has �stated categorically, �There is no evidence of a temple. In fact, as we go deeper, we are seeing more evidence of Islamic influence.�� Surely Mr. Engineer should know that Islam originated in 7th-century Arabia, yet at the Ayodhya site where findings date back two thousand years earlier, it only gets more Islamic as you recede deeper into the past? Could it be that under Hindu influence, Islam in India had a few previous incarnations?
Predictably, Engineer invokes the authority of �noted archaeologist� Suraj Bhan and of �historian� Irfan Habib without informing the readers about their status as long-standing servants of the Babri Masjid lobby. Yet, in his case this may be due to mere carelessness, as elsewhere he does reveal that one Supriya Verma of Panjab University �spent months in Ayodhya as an expert of the Sunni Waqf Board�. Indeed, he knows from lawyer Zafaryab Jilani that the Waqf Board has six archaeologists under contract to follow the diggings and study the conclusions at length. It just makes you wonder where the Waqf Board is getting all this money from.
But it�s good to see what Engineer quotes Habib for: �When digging was ordered, many historians like Irfan Habib had warned that excavation could not lead to a clinching evidence for the existence of a temple.� Which merely amounts to saying that those historians, knowing how the evidence would go against them, had prepared their escape from facing the facts by declaring these impossible beforehand.
As for Waqf Board emissary Supriya Verma, she makes the most of the animal bones found at different layers: �If any shrine and a temple existed, how can anyone account for the animal bones?� As per the ASI findings, the site lay in ruins several times, circumstances in which animals may have made their home in it. Is she really an archaeologists that she doesn�t know how the strangest objects accumulate at sites of interest over the millennia? Or did she mean to say that the animals indicate a Muslim rather than a Hindu presence, with mosques as sanctuary for our four-legged brethren? It seems the anti-temple experts are clutching at straws in desperation.
Like so many others, Engineer uses the counterbalancing posture, pretending that the ASI�s scientific findings are evened out by the obstinate anti-scientific protests of the usual suspects: �However, the report will be subject to different interpretations and would not go unchallenged.� Yes, just as even the most cast-iron evidence in a court case never goes unchallenged by the disfavoured party�s lawyer.
It�s also what he had heard Irfan Habib predicting: �The artefacts could be interpreted differently.� True enough, Engineer notes with satisfaction: �And this is precisely what is happening. The final report submitted by ASI seems to be highly controversial and is bound to be challenged.� Well, well, those who were predicting trouble are now exulting in the realization of their prediction. Only, everyone can see that it�s merely they themselves who are creating the predicted trouble.
Like many others, Engineer disingenuously plays off the interim report with its allegedly �negative� result against the final report: �Now we have the final report of the ASI which says that there could have been a temple-like structure below Babri Masjid. Is it not a glaring contradiction? All through the digging no definite indications of any temple-like structure were found and suddenly the final report discovers temple-like structure there.� Once more, old lies are falsely presented as facts to counter new facts.
This had been done before, viz. with B.B. Lal�s findings. Like most secularists in 1990-91, Engineer is still contrasting B.B. Lal�s public statements about his excavation results with his remark in his published ASI report summary that �the late period was devoid of any special interest�. To our crusading secularist, this means that B.B. Lal speaks with forked tongue: �But later in 1990 Lal began to claim that certain brick bases he had excavated in the seventies were meant to support pillars and thus suggested �the existence of a temple-like structure in the south of the Babri Masjid�.�
The true story has been explained threadbare long ago, but for poor listeners like Mr. Engineer, we may repeat that Lal�s excavation focused on the ancient period and that from the viewpoint of Ramayana studies, the medieval layer with its unmistakable temple foundations was indeed devoid of much interest. The discovery of temple remains was nothing unexpected or controversial at the time, given the consensus (still prevalent in the late 1970s) on the site�s known history of Islamic iconoclasm. Yet, after the normal bureaucratic and human-inertial delays, as the 1980s were advancing, the ASI started deliberately postponing the formal publication of Lal�s findings because secularist opinion had started mobilizing against the longstanding historical consensus. The reason for the endless procrastination must have been the same reason why the court case has been dragging on for decades: fear of getting involved in controversy, particularly one where the facts would force a stance favoured by the Hindu side. In other words, fear of being demonized by the secularist establishment with its bloodhound attitude towards dissent.
If anyone expected Mr. Engineer to be above personal attacks on the ASI experts, he�d better wake up. Taking umbrage behind two Waqf Board lawyers whom he quotes with approval, he has Abdul Mannan dismiss the report as a �saffron report�, while Zafaryab Jilani is quoted as saying: �It was prepared under political pressure.� Not meaner than what most secularist reporters have alleged, but just as unfounded.
[Engineer of course does not mention, just as Irfan Habib and �secularist� publications never do, that four out of the twenty authors of the ASI report itself were Muslims. Are these Muslim archaeologists also �saffronized�? It seems more likely that Irfan Habib is an Islamist masquerading as a Marxist. � Vishal Agarwal]
Finally, another false semblance of balance in Engineer�s text is the one between two evaluations of the report. All manner of experts and so-called experts are quoted as denouncing the excavation report, but neither the ASI team, nor other archaeologists nor even VHP-affiliated experts were called to contribute even one sentence in defence of the ASI findings. For his semblance of balance, however, Engineer had to also relay a pro-evidence voice. So he has picked one, only one, and that one is the voice of �RSS spokesman Ram Madhav�, not an expert but a political leader. This way, our spin-doctor creates the impression that on the one hand you have �the expert archaeological opinion�, which �may not give much credence to the ASI report�, while on the other hand you only have partisan Hindu nationalist opinion. When in reality, the opposite asymmetry holds good: genuine expert opinion supports the ASI report and only politically motivated secularists, whether sporting academic titles or not, denounce it.
Undeniably, Asghar Ali Engineer remains a formidable master of disinformation. This makes him an excellent representative of Indian secularism and of the anti-temple campaign in particular.
Chapter IV. Secular guilt, secular solution
We could look at the Ayodhya affair from the Hindu angle. The contentious site is a Hindu sacred site, it is not a Muslim sacred site, so it should simply continue as a Hindu place of pilgrimage and be adorned with the appropriate architecture.
We could look at the Ayodhya affair from a Muslim angle. Of course Ayodhya is not sacred to Muslims. It would amount to blasphemy to claim any sacredness for Ayodhya: Allah is everywhere so He doesn�t need sacred sites, and to the extent that any place on earth can be called sacred, it is Mecca, not Ayodhya. Yet, Muslim warriors have performed their duty of iconoclasm, replacing an idolatrous temple with a mosque. This creates a clear new situation under Islamic law: once a mosque, always a mosque. Muslims should fight to re-conquer the site, and in case Hindus manage to rebuild their temple, a well-planned bomb attack should remedy that anomaly.
But let us rather look at the Ayodhya affair from a secular viewpoint.
To a secularist in the Western tradition, the whole Ayodhya controversy was a non-issue. For that very reason, he would have favoured a solution that satisfied the community which is the largest, the most attached to the contentious site, and already in possession of the site. That solution would cause the least amount of bad blood, an amount that could certainly be compensated for somehow. The Muslims would get something in exchange for the abandonment of their claim to the site, which doesn�t have any special significance in the Islamic worldview. They would even receive something expensive, just to make sure that all sides would be sufficiently accepting of the deal. Appease the clerics on all sides a little bit, so they don�t cause any trouble for the rest of us. Not the most principled policy, but a highly secular one and, thank God, a blood-less one.
One such secularist, a modern man ready to deal with the matter pragmatically, was Rajiv Gandhi. He allowed the Hindus to prepare for the construction of a new temple with the ceremonial laying of a foundation stone (
shilanyas) on November 9, 1989. He pressured the Chandra Shekhar government, which was dependent on Congress support, into organizing the scholars� debate about the historical evidence, in the full knowledge that the temple party would win such a debate hands down. The thrust of his Ayodhya policy was to buy off Muslim acquiescence with some of the usual currency of the Congress culture: maybe nominating a few more Mians as ministers, banning a few Islam-unfriendly books (hence the
Satanic Versesaffair), raising the
Hajj subsidy, providing cheap loans to the Shahi Imam�s constituency, donating government land for some Islamic purpose, things like that. Meanwhile, Hindus would get their temple. Muslims would have scolded their leaders for selling out, Hindus would have lambasted theirs for cheapening a noble cause with such horse-trading, but in the end, everybody would have accepted it.
Whatever may be said about and against Rajiv Gandhi, he had the calibre and the cool secular distance from religious passions to see such a policy through. Even his anti-temple confidants M.J. Akbar and Mani Shankar Aiyar, the self-described �secular fundamentalist�, could certainly be brought (or bought) into line. But in 1991 India�s top pilot was killed, and worse, in his years as India�s most important politician, dark forces had started fighting his reasonable and pragmatic policy tooth and nail. The problem was not with the obscurantist Mullahs, because in those days, a seasoned Congress leader knew how to strike win-win deals with them. The poison issued from the secularist intellectuals who raised a media storm against the historical consensus, the one factual certainty underlying all the political confusion. Their stance hardened Muslim intransigence, emboldened the Left in its anti-Hindu strategy and created international public opinion against the temple plan.
The irresponsible and downright evil campaign of history denial by the secularist opinion-makers has prolonged the Ayodhya dispute by at least a decade. Denouncing all pragmatic deals, these secular fundamentalists insisted on having it their way for the full 100%, meaning the total humiliation of the Hindus. They exercised verbal terror against Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and all politicians suspected of wanting to compromise with the Hindu movement, making them postpone the needed steps towards the solution. This way, they exacerbated the tensions in return for the pleasure of indulging their self-image as implacable secularists. A real secularist would have sought to minimize a religious conflict, but this lot insisted on magnifying it and turning it into a national crisis. For them, it was a holy war, a
jihad, just as it was for their Islamist pupils and paymasters.
So, the blood of all the people killed in Ayodhya-related riots from 1989 onwards is at least partly on their heads. The spate of violence in Gujarat in 2002, the �genocide� about which they can�t stop talking, and which was triggered by the Godhra massacre of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, may well have been a late result of their slanderous effort to identify Ayodhya with deceitful Hindu fanaticism. Those holier-than-thou secularists are not so innocent.
But now, the historical evidence has definitively been verified. After every single historical and archaeological investigation had confirmed the old consensus, the secularists have now been defeated in the final test. The deceit turns out to be their own. Their lies stand exposed and recorded for all to see. Their strategy to sabotage peace and justice in Ayodhya was based on history falsification. With all the blood on their hands, they have disgraced the fair name of secularism. Henceforth, we should be kind enough to ignore them except to hear the confession of their sins.
Ideas have consequences, and so do lies. Before the �eminent historians� and other militant secularists are called up to purgatory, they would do well to clear their conscience by offering restitution to the scientists and Hindus they have smeared. And by begging forgiveness from the families of the Hindu and Muslim victims of riots triggered by a controversy that could have been old history already by 1989, had there not been the secularist obstruction.
............ you are free to spin and demolish similar Strawmen.
....Pathetic. 
