The Ayodhya Evidence Debate - Part II

Koenraad Elst

8. More on the British Concoction Hypothesis

The eminent JNU historians have claimed that "it is in the nineteenth century that the story circulates and enters official records. These records were then cited by others as valid historical evidence on the issue."[43] A few years earlier, they were still far more circumspect before making this assertion. In the early days of the Ayodhya dispute, in a letter to the Times of India, a group of JNU academics wrote: "It would be worth enquiring whether there is reliable historical evidence of a period prior to nineteenth century for this association of a precise location with the birthplace of Rama."[44]

Lawyer A. G. Noorani comments on the letter: "They were absolutely right. The myth is a nineteenth century creation - by the British."[45] Note however that in their 1986 letter, the JNU historians had only suggested this in question format, but later many of them, like Noorani in this passage, have asserted it quite affirmatively.

Noorani then quotes a letter by Indrajit Dutta and nine others: "The belief that the disputed place of worship in Ayodhya is a mosque built after destroying a temple consecrating Rama's birthplace originates in the first half of the 19^th century. In 1813 John Leyden, a British historian, published his Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din, Muhammad Babar, Emperor of Hindustan (A translation of Babar's memoirs in Persian). In it Leyden had contended that Babar had passed through Ayodhya in March 1528 during his campaign against the Pathans. This 'historical evidence' of Babar's presence in the area was destroyed by later British authorities to propagate the belief that the 'anti-Hindu' Babar had destroyed the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple and got a mosque built on the spot - though Leyden's work makes no mention of it. Sushil Srivastava of the Department of Medieval and Modern History, University of Allahabad, has worked extensively on the history of Awadh. He substantiates his findings to show how the British authorities, specifically Colonel Sleeman, then resident of Lucknow, anxious to justify the annexation of Awadh, exploited this controversy superbly at a time when rumblings of the 1857 mutiny were ominous."[46]

Remark the illogical claim that the British "destroyed" the document cited by Leyden to substantiate his hypothesis (and the local tradition) that Babar had passed through the town of Ayodhya, when that very document and that very hypothesis would support the theory that Babar destroyed a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, precisely the theory which the theory which the ten signatories try to "unmask" as a British concoction. The claim that the British deliberately "destroyed" this of any other historical evidence is also unsupported by any evidence.

This is all the more serious considering the fact that the British archives provide a much more complete testimony of the British policies than anything from the earlier periods, and considering the ten signatories' own contention that their friend Sushil Srivastava has made a detailed study of the British machinations in Avadh. There is little doubt that the British resident was implementing policies designed to bring Avadh under British control. But what is very much in doubt (at any rate totally unsubstantiated) is the claim that he used temple history concoctions to that end.

There is actually some evidence to the opposite effect. P. Carnegy wrote in 1870 that up to 1855 both Hindus and Muslims worshipped at the mosque, which led to a lot of friction, until the British separated them: "It is said that up to that time [viz. the Hindu-Muslim clashes in the 1850s] the Hindus and Mohammedans alike used to worship in the mosque-temple. Since the British rule a railing has been put up to prevent dispute, within which in the mosque the Mohammedans pray, while outside the fence the Hindus have raised a platform on which they make their offerings."[47] As Peter Van der Veer comments on Carnegy's testimony, against the British concoction hypothesis: "The suggestion that the local tradition is entirely invented by the British thus seems disingenuous."[48]

To quote Van der Veer in full: "The implication here is that the British found the 'facts' that fitted their master narrative of the perpetual hostility between Hindus and Muslims (*) One of the problems with the above argument is that the British were not very interested in the Hindu history of Ayodhya. The most important British archaeologist of India in the nineteenth century was Alexander Cunningham. He did come to Ayodhya, not to dig up evidence of Hindu-Muslim enmity but to look for the Buddhist monuments of Saketa/Ayodhya - monuments that nobody locally was interested in, then or now. Patrick Carnegy, the commissioner, argued that the pillars of the mosque - which are now ascribed to a Hindu temple by [B. B.] Lal and others - strongly resemble Buddhist pillars, although he did not accept the local tradition that Babar built his mosque on the 'birthplace' temple. However, he also accepted the local tradition that Hindus and Muslims used to worship together in this mosque-temple until the disturbances of 1855. The suggestion that the local tradition is entirely invented by the British thus seems disingenuous."[49]

Many 19^th century scholars had a strong pro-Buddhist bias in their Indian studies (setting a trend which continues till today), and the first Ayodhya surveyors display the same intellectual fashion, rather than the politically more useful interest in Hindu-Muslim friction. The dozens of scholars who have floated the British concoction hypothesis are faced with a total absence of 19^th century data supporting it.

Patrick Carnegy, the first British commissioner in Faizabad and still very close in time to the episode of communal violence (1852-57) and the British take-over after the Mutiny (1857-58), would have emphasized Hindu-Muslim conflict if the British concoction hypothesis had been true. Instead, he highlights the relative Hindu-Muslim harmony which existed shortly before the time of the British take-over.

This moment of harmony may well have been exceptional and may have to be explained by the Muslim rulers' need to strengthen their position against British ambitions. But at any rate it was a fact which the British would not have highlighted if they had wanted to base their divide-and-rule on false history of Hindu-Muslim conflict. Moreover, if they had wanted to use historical cases of Hindu-Muslim tension to foment more such tension in their own day, they could have invoked numerous certified instances rather than having to invent any.