Scanning for the underground remains

The resumption of the evidence debate took place in late 2002, when the Allahabad High Court secretly ordered the scanning of the site's underground.  The Tojo India Vikas International Company carried out a Ground Penetration Radar survey and found indications of a structure in and around the mosque site.  Canadian geophysicist Claude Robillard, invited by Tojo to give his expert reading, couldn't say just what building had been there, but: "All I know is, there is some structure under the mosque." (Rediff.com, 19 March 2003)

The existence or otherwise of the medieval temple never depended on the results of the radar scanning: 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.

To the Court, the radar findings were sufficient encouragement to order a further dig at the site in order to verify that there were foundations of a building predating the Babri Masjid.  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 overground constructions they supported.  Also, foundations do not by themselves inform us of the type of building they supported, whether secular or religious.

In the months when the digging took place, the newspapers mentioned some 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 (The Hindu, 10 June 2003).  The secularists had always opposed archaeological fact-finding at the site; they don't like science.

The great Indian vanishing trick

After the ASI had been registering new findings for months, a handful on Monday, one on Tuesday, several on Wednesday, the world learned to its surprise that the final tally somehow amounted to zero.  "No proof of structure in Ayodhya: ASI report", according to Rediff.com (11 June 2003)  The article confidently asserts that "the report also contradicts the Ground Penetration Radar survey", but it doesn't quote the ASI report.  It only quotes Zafaryab Jilani, counsel for the Muslim claimant to the site, the Sunni Central Waqf Board, who alleges that "the ASI report does not speak about any such evidence". 

According to The Asian Age (11 June 2003), "The ASI team that conducted excavations at the disputed site where the demolished Babari masjid once stood in Ayodhya has not found any proof of a structure".  However, when you take the trouble of reading the subsequent fine print, you discover that this paper admits that while the radar findings of structural remains of a pre-Masjid structure were not confirmed at some indicated spots, they were confirmed at others.  Yet the title falsely sums this up as: "Nothing found below Babri site: ASI".

The Marxist-controlled Chennai daily The Hindu of 11 June likewise lets out the truth indirectly: the ASI "is reported to have said in its progress report that no structural anomalies suggesting the evidence [sic; 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 is an almost laconical addition: "Structural anomalies were, however, detected in 15 other trenches, the report said."  But the impression the paper seeks to convey, is 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 shot at, unharmed by one of the bullets".

Likewise, the Times of India of 11 June announced that there was absolutely definitely no sign whatsoever at all of a pre-Babri structure: "ASI finds no proof of structure below Babri Masjid: report".  Six days later, it still tried to keep up this version, 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 turns 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.

The Times of India article is titled: "Babri pillar bases do not support temple theory".  So at least it acknowledges the existence of some pre-Babri artefacts, viz. the pillar-bases.  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 question is logical, but a bit too logical for the fanciful world of Indian secularism.  The unnamed ASI official explains: "The excavated structural bases are neither aligned nor belong to a single period."  Now this is sensational.  What it means is that we have discovered a culture where people (Hindus, as it happens) once in a while put a pillar base into the ground, and then another one, and another one, without alignment, without any plan to make them support a straight wall or a preconceived building.  And then they would leave it at that, and a century later some other fellow would add a few more pillar bases, again without plan, just for the fun of it.  And all this foundational work would never be crowned with an overground building, it would just remain sitting in the ground waiting for the Muslim invaders to build a mosque over it.  That's secularist archaeology for you.

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, at least, 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) with the off-hand statement: "The ASI has found nothing under the mosque."  Clearly, some people are leaving no stone unturned to make this claim part of the received wisdom.