The Proof of the Past

WHEN MIR BAQI, a general in Babur’s army, destroyed a temple in Ayodhya in 1528, he demolished much more than a place of worship. He also laid the foundations of historical denialism in 20th-century India. This denial persisted in the face of mounting evidence for the existence of a temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya to the point when the judiciary discounted much of what a section of Indian historians had propagated about Ayodhya.

The story of Indian historians and Ayodhya is a fascinating study of how ideology and power ran riot in the study of India’s past. Right until Independence and for a couple of years thereafter, Indian history was dominated by a Rankean outlook (after the German historian Leopold von Ranke, 1795-1886). This was source-based history in which historians like Jadunath Sarkar and Govid Sakharam Sardesai excelled. But soon after that, this history fell into disfavour even as ‘scientific’ and interpretive history became the norm in Indian academia. Some of this had to do with advances in the discipline but a large part was due to ‘pre­sentism’ that had gripped Indian history writing by then. The past was put to the political service of the present.

In such a setting, anything to do with ancient India was either outright taboo or was put in ‘safe hands’ that would not explore or bring to light anything that would disturb the present. This included anything that even remotely touched on the ‘communal question’ given the recent partition of the country. The result was that historical and archaeological enquiries into epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata were out of the question.

When the issue whether the Babri mosque had been built by the de­struction of a Hindu temple and the issue of other Hindu monuments that were destroyed in medieval India began to gain public attention, Indian historians began taking sides in the matter. It was a one-sided affair to begin with as almost all these historians were of a Leftist persuasion. From 1984 onwards, the Indian History Congress (IHC), the vehicle of this class of historians, began passing resolutions almost every year, urging the gov­ernment to ‘protect’ the Babri Masjid. There was not a hint of exploring the issue from a historical perspective whether there had been a temple at the disputed site. The problem was simply assumed away. On October 2, 1986, 12 historians led by Romila Thapar wrote a long and angry letter in The Times of India against a report published in that newspaper about the desecration of Hindu temples and idols by Muslim rulers in Delhi and Mathura. That letter set the tone of the ‘debate’ that was to ensue for the next two decades. Irfan Habib, another historian of this persuasion, openly questioned if the Babri Masjid had even been built by destroying a temple at that location. Habib asked why the fact was not mentioned in the two inscriptions located at the mosque. His argument being that when Muslim rulers destroyed temples, they explicitly mentioned the fact in inscrip­tions and that this was missing in the case of Babri Masjid. Habib repeated his claims in the CPM organ People’s Democracy on December 8, 2002. It is worth noting that these historians were dead set against gathering archaeo­logical evidence in the matter. On September 17, 1996, nearly four years after the disputed structure was destroyed, 17 historians and archaeologists led by Suraj Bhan—who was to play a role in the archaeological story of the disputed structure—‘protested’ against ‘unauthorised’ excavation at the site of the demolition. Even at that late stage, there was no effort to discover facts; only the opinions and beliefs of these historians mattered.

Inthiscontext, thecareerofthelateBBLal, thearchaeologistmost closely associated with the archaeology of Ramayana, is interesting to observe. Lal joined the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the 1940s and finally left the organisation sometime in 1972 to join Gwalior University. In these decades, he excavated a number of sites acrossIndiabutfinallyleftASIsothathecouldgetbacktotheexcava­tions of his choice. Thus was born the Ramayana Sites Project (1977- 1986) under which sites at Ayodhya (Janmabhoomi, Hanumangarhi, Kausalya Ghat, and Nal Tila), Sringaverapura (in Allahabad district) and Bharadvaja Asrama, among other sites, were excavated.

This was perhaps the first, pioneering, effort to explore the ar­chaeological basis of an ancient epic in India. The results were inter­esting. At Ayodhya, it was found that there were continuous settle­ments through the Sunga, Kushana, and Gupta periods. Lal wrote in his memoirs that after these periods, at some point, some parts of Ayodhya were deserted. “However, the Janmabhumi area was reoccupied around the 11th-12th centuries CE. Over here, the uppermost parts of a trench that lay immediately to the South of the Babri Masjid, a series of brick-cum-stone pillar bases were discovered. Affixed to the stone pillars of the Masjid there were stone pillars bearing Hindu motifs and sculptures.” (Piecing Together: Memoirs of an Archaeologist, 2011, page 141).

While the Ramayana project dated from 1977 to 1986, the controversy it elicited was the product of later years, from 1990 onward. There were allegations and counter-allegations between Indic and Leftist historians and ar­chaeologists. In this high-decibel fight, politics—between academics and in its larger domain—became dominant. A proper investigation of recoveries from the Janmabhoomi site, without ascribing motives to the project, was never un­dertaken. First, it was denied that there was ever a temple at the site. Once that position became untenable, it was admit­ted that there might have been a temple but the pillars and other recoveries were brought to the site from outside.

One such example was the detailed Ramjanmabhumi- Babri Masjid: A Historians’ Report to the Nation issued by his­torians RS Sharma, M Athar Ali, DN Jha, and Suraj Bhan. The report was issued on May 13, 1991. This was at a time when politics around the dispute was very intense. These histo­rians cast doubts whether there was a temple dedicated to Lord Rama at the site at all. This they did based on “missing motifs” that are usually found on pillars of Vaishnava temples, such as chakra (wheel), sankha (conch), gada (mace) and padma (lotus). They argued that the mere engraving of a vanmala (garland) in the pillar in the mosque was not conclusive proof that the pillars were from a temple. If that was not enough, these scholars went into civil engineering details of the construction and compared the pillars in question and the height necessary for load-bearing capacity in the mosque. On this basis, they concluded that these pillars were brought from outside and were not part of a temple that was demolished, and a mosque was built over it.

As is the wont in such cases, the bitterness and acrimony between some of these scholars and BB Lal came to light after Lal published his memoirs. There, he highlighted how one of the authors of the report—Suraj Bhan—claimed that the pillar bases excavated to the south of the Babri Masjid belonged to a “cow-shed” (This development and the acrimony between the two are detailed on pages 184-185 of Lal’s memoirs). On the face of it, the ‘sophisticated’ report seemed to have weight given the slew of allegations made against Lal by these scholars.

The turn of events on December 6, 1992, however, cast a very different light on the historical question. After the demolition on that day, the kar sewaks at the site recovered a stone slab of 1.10×0.56 metres that had 20 lines of inscription on it. This inscription was partially translated by Ajay Mitra Shastri of Nagpur University in Puratattva: Bulletin of the Indian Archaeological Society, issue number 23, 1992-93. In the article ‘Ayodhya and God Rama’ in that issue, Shastri went on to analyse a large number of inscriptions from the region on temples there. He noted that the inscription was com­posed in high-flown Sanskrit verse and is engraved in the chaste and classical Nagari script of the 11th-12th century. He says that “Line 15 of this inscription, for example, clearly tells us that a beautiful tem­ple of Vishnu-Hari, built with heaps of stones (sila-samhati-grahais), and beautified with a golden spire (hiranya-kalasa-sri-sundaram) unparalleled by any other temple built by earlier kings (purvvair-apy-akritam kritam nripatibhir) was constructed. This wonderful temple (aty-adbhutam) was built in the temple-city (vibudh-alayani) of Ayodhya situated in the Saketmandala (district-Line 17) showing that Saketa and Ayodhya were closely connected, Saketa being the district of which Ayodhya was a part.”

Line 19 of the inscription refers to the killing of King Bali by Lord Vishnu, apparently in his Vamana avatar. The same line also refers to the slaying of Dasanana, the ten-headed personage, or Ravana. Even more interestingly, Line 20 of the inscription alludes to the serious threat from the West (paschatya-bhiti), apparently Sultan Ibrahim and his son, Mahmud of Ghazni.

These facts were buttressed by the translation of KV Ramesh of ASI which was part of the evidence submitted to the Allahabad High Court as evidence in 2002. The sum and substance of the Ramesh translation are identical to the Shastri translation.

Shastri’s short article is a tour de force in summarising epigraph­ic evidence that pointed to the existence of a temple at the site and the divinity of Rama. But interesting studies as this one have either been met by sullen silence or by wanton attempts to puncture such studies. There is little doubt that academic fights are often brutal, and perhaps that is how knowledge is burnished and re­fined. But here, in the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, a different—far more virulent and political—kind of bare-knuckled fight ensued. It had nothing to do with the study of the past or the evaluation of archaeological evidence at hand. It was about the soul of India. It is, of course, an open question if archaeologists and historians should even be engaged in such politics at the behest of the ruling powers of the day. But once that threshold was crossed, the matter was liable to be decided by different means. In this case, the so-called archaeological evidence against the existence of a temple at Ayodhya was finally weighed in a court of law. Here, the ruling establishment of historians finally lost the battle.

THE DENOUEMENT OF these layers of historical de­nial came at the hands of the judiciary. In March 2003, the Allahabad High Court ordered the ASI to carry out an ex­cavation of the Janmabhoomi site and give a report on its findings. The ASI did that in August that year. It was a carefully worded report and one that restricted itself to the data that was gathered during the excavation. The report did not answer allegedly ‘controversial’ questions. Based on its findings, the Allahabad High Court con­cluded that Babri Masjid had not been constructed on vacant land, the claim that was made repeatedly by India’s history establish­ment when it denied the existence of a temple at the Janmabhoomi location. The High Court also said that the excavation indicates the presence of an underlying structure below the disputed structure. Further, the underlying structure was not of Islamic origin.

These leads were clearly available in BB Lal’s work, one that was vehemently opposed by archaeologists like D Mandal of Allahabad University and Suraj Bhan. Interestingly, Suraj Bhan later told the court “I agree with the report of ASI about the remains of Temple to the extent that these remains may have been of some temple.” Mandal, too, admitted as much to the court, “It is correct to say that construction activities had been carried out at the disputed site even before the Mughal Period. As an archaeologist, I admit discovery of structures beneath the disputed structure during excavation.”

A more damning verdict on historians and their denialism in Independent India is yet to be found. What was at best a dis­pute over facts was turned into something much bigger. That happened because these historians abandoned neutrality and aligned themselves to a particular political position. Their so-called evidence was shredded at the hands of the judiciary.

The Allahabad High Court also took the Ramjanmabhumi-Babri Masjid: A Historians’ Report to the Nation to task. One historian among the authors, DN Jha, had not signed the report. Another historian, Suvira Jaiswal, associated with providing evidence against the existence of the temple, was criticised by the court as she did not have direct knowledge of the destroyed site and what she knew was based on newspaper reports and the work of other historians. The High Court also observed that she was the student of RS Sharma, one of the authors of the report. These historians were innocent of the notion of conflict of interest in such matters.

This report was also wholly discarded when the matter reached the Supreme Court when the judgment of the Allahabad High Court was appealed. The apex court went on to say: “The inferences which have been drawn by the historians with regard to the faith and belief of the Hindus in the birthplace of Lord Ram constitute their opinion.” The court further said, “This court can­not rest a finding of fact on the report of the historians and must evaluate the entirety of the evidence.”

In retrospect, some things were quite obvious. Over time, there was an accumulation of evidence that pointed to the existence of a temple that dated to the 11th-12th centuries. As more such evidence accumulated, the vehemence of denial on the part of historians who denied the existence of the temple kept on rising. The effort all along was to prevent the proper archaeological and historical gathering and evaluation of evidence. Ultimately, when the judi­ciary approached the problem from the perspective of weighing evidence—something that these historians should have done themselves—the entire scheme of denial was blown away.

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