5. No Direct Evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. The Anti-Temple Evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The second largest group of BMAC documents consisted of book excerpts and newspaper articles, mere statements of opinion. They give the well-known or at least predictable opinions of politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru and Ramaswamy Naicker, of secularist journalists like Arvind N. Das and Praful Bidwai, of Marxist intellectuals like the JNU historians and Prof. R. S. Sharma (who was invited to lead the BMAC team only after this first round). In this collection of opinions essentially four points have been argued:

Firstly, Rama was not a historical character;

Secondly, Rama have been a historical character, but Ayodhya is not his real birthplace;

Thirdly, Rama worship in Ayodhya is fairly recent, and hardly existed prior to the period when the Babri Masjid was built;

Fourthly, the Babri Masjid was not built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"For Islam's sake, I wandered in the wild,

prepared for war with unbelievers and Hindus,

resolved myself to meet a martyr's death.

Thanks be to Allah! A ghazi I became."[34]

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

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

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

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

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