The Ayodhya Evidence Debate  - Part I

Koenraad Elst

[The present article is adapted, with minor modifications, from the chapter of the same name in the book "Elst, Koenraad. 2002. Ayodhya, The Case Against the Temple, New Delhi: Voice of India, pp. 146-188." - Editor]

PART I

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

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

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

1. Introduction

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

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

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

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

2. The Object of the Debate

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

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

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

A report of this debate should distinguish between three possible debating issues:

1) Is the present-day Ayodhya with all its Rama-related sites, the Ayodhya described by Valmiki in his Sanskrit Ramayana? In the course of this debate, no new facts have been added to Prof. B. B. Lal's conclusion that Valmiki's Ayodhya and present-day Ayodhya are one and the same place.[5] It is a different matter that his conclusions have beend isputed, without any evidence, by the JNU historians among others. Of course, it is nobody's case that the Valmiki connection has been established in an unassailable manner, but at least, what much research is available, points in that direction. However, even if B. B. Lal's assertion is correct, this leaves open the possibility that the writer who styled himself Valmiki, may have written his version of the Rama story long after it actually took place, and that he relocated the scene of a tradition coming from elsewhere into his own area. Therefore, the next, more fundamental question might be:

2) Is the present-day Ayodhya, and more specifically the disputed site, indeed the birthplace of a historical character called Rama? The BMAC has argued that such a thing cannot be proven, assuming that Rama was a historical character at all. The VHP has refused to consider this question, arguing that religions do not have to justify the sacredness of their sacred sites: if the site was traditionally associated with sacred events and characters (as it was, at least from Valmiki onwards), or if it was treated by Rama devotees as somehow sacred (as it was since at least several centuries), then that should be enough to command respect, regardless of the historical basis of this claim to sacredness.

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

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

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

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