It is a measure of S P Gupta’s and T P Verma’s ignorance that they take Ajodhan to mean Ayodhya, and then, as if to make assurance double sure, identify Satrikh too with Saket and so with Ayodhya! Local tradition too relates Salar Masud’s story to Satrikh only and not, at all, to Ayodhya. Thus there is absolutely no evidence that any temple at Ayodhya was vandalised or destroyed by Muslims in or before the 12th century.

‘Historical’ Rationale for Babri Demolition

 Irfan Habib

THE present prime minister of India flagged off the notorious rathyatra and the present home minister personally led the final assault on the Babri Masjid, effecting its destruction on December 6, 1992. The government of India, which had promised to protect the structure, looked the other way, and the Supreme Court punished the brazen defiance of its own stringent orders by just detaining one person for one day. No one, including the present home minister, has been brought to justice as yet. (Apparently justice for some people, like rioters, has very short arms!). Once the destruction of the 475 years old mosque had taken place, it began to be justified by the Sangh Parivar on various grounds. The demolition was loudly proclaimed to have been a great act of “nationalism,” a second and greater Dandi March, as it were --- though this act brought only shame and dishonour to the country. For the less unsophisticated, there was another argument: the destruction was necessary since it had at last yielded evidence showing that the Masjid was indeed built at the site of an earlier Ramjanmabhoomi temple. For the last ten years this “evidence” has been trumpeted about as absolutely confirming the rioters’ rationale for pulling down the mosque.

ILL-FOUNDED CLAIM

Before one studies the “evidence” allegedly uncovered, it is important to note that the securing of such evidence by the act of destruction was very much in the mind of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar much before the final act of vandalism. There was till then no acceptable proof that the Babri Masjid had been built at the site of a Hindu temple. If such had indeed been the case, it was, to say the least, very strange that none of the fourteen inscribed Persian verses of the time of the original construction (1528-29) (fully published in the official Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement, 1965, pp 58-62) even remotely mentioned this. Surely, given the intolerance attributed to the mosque builders, the destruction of the earlier temple should have figured prominently in these verses as a meritorious act. As the Historians’ Report to the Nation by R S Sharma, M Athar Ali, D N Jha, and Surajbhan, (1991) conclusively showed, there was no reference in any of the several relevant documents to the mosque having been built on the site of a temple. Not until nearly 250 years after its construction was such a claim made; and a British reporter before whom this was stated in 1811 still considered it “very ill-founded.” 

Faced with such lack of substance, the Pariwar had turned to “archaeology” and so to Professor B B Lal, the creator of “Mahabharata archaeology,” who, in his search for a “Ramayana archaeology,” had received generous supply of public funds under the Congress regime. He had dug near the Babri Masjid, on which he had given a report in 1976-77 (Indian Archaeology — a Review, 1976-77, p 53). Now, in 1990, in an article in the RSS mouthpiece Manthan (October 1990), he sought to reinterpret his earlier report, arguing that some “pillar-bases” he had found had really carried pillars of the extension of the original temple at whose site the Babri Masjid had been allegedly built. The suggestion was a sheer piece of speculation, and D Mandal, in his Ayodhya: Archaeology after Demolition, 1993, pp 26-40, has exposed, by meticulous analysis, the baselessness of Lal’s suppositions. Lal was apparently himself conscious of the weakness of his hypothesis and so began to argue that the truth could be found out only when one was able to dig under the foundations of the Babri Masjid --- that is, if the Masjid was first demolished! The idea, therefore, had germinated that evidence could be secured (or planted) while destroying the Babri Masjid.

A preview of what could be expected was provided during the illegal transfer by the BJP Government of a large area of land adjacent to the Babri Masjid to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. It was claimed that while “the ground was being levelled” in June 1992, a pit was encountered from which certain iconographic sculptures were recovered. It was strange that when these sculptures were “found,” the Archaeological Survey of India was not informed --- as is legally binding in the case of antiquities --- to enable it to examine them in-situ (in their original position). Rather, their discovery was suddenly announced by the VHP and they were pronounced by such “experts” as Swaraj Prakash Gupta (who has done no work on early medieval sculpture) as belonging to the eleventh century. It seems certain, on the other hand, that the sculptures do not belong to a single period at all, but range in their individual dates from the 7th to the 16th century (R S Sharma in The Hindu, November 10, 1992) and thus could not have all come from the same temple. Furthermore, as Mandal points out, the colouration of some of the objects suggests that they have remained only partly buried, and could not thus have been taken out from a pit (Mandal, Ayodhya, pp 44-45). There is every likelihood then that these sculptures were simply brought from outside at a time when the VHP and the BJP, through the state government, had full and absolute control of the site. This explains their various dates and varied decoloration.

We then come to the day of the destruction. On December 6, 1992, as the mosque was being destroyed, an inscribed slab was found embedded within its between behind the right and central domes (as one looks from the west) --- so it was claimed. Now in the Babri Masjid, as in all major medieval buildings of the time, the thick outer wall essentially comprised two walls, which enclosed between them a large amount of ‘rubble,’ i e brickbats, stone fragments, etc, mixed with lime mortar. The claim was that the inscribed slab came from this space. The inscription is said to have fallen from the wall during the demolition, from a height of nearly 3 metres above the ground. According to the VHP’s own witness, an RSS journalist, the slab as it fell was much covered by mortar. But the slab, now being presented as the one that allegedly fell off the wall, is in a seemingly mint-fresh condition. There is no trace of mortar on it on any side, even on the back, nor are there any marks that must result, if the strong medieval mortar was later removed from it. It has obviously remained totally untouched by mortar, whether in its original position (wherever it was) (no mortar was used in pre-Muslim buildings, in India) or later. It must, therefore, have come like the pit-sculptures from some private collection, and certainly, not from the Babri Masjid.

While the inscription is certainly a plant as far as the mosque is concerned, it does not seem itself to be a forgery, and may palaeographically be placed within a long period, 11th to 14th centuries. Compared to the script of other Gahadavala-period (11th-12th centuries) inscriptions, it has some archaic and some modern forms, so that the range of time cannot be further narrowed down on purely palaeographic principles. The word mandira used for a temple (and not as in earlier inscriptions, a court) suggests a late rather than an earlier date. There may therefore be some room for doubt about its belonging to the 12th century. But even if we grant that it was inscribed in the 12th century at Ayodhya (for which it uses the name Saketa), it does not at all say what the VHP claims for it.

VHP’S CASE

The VHP’s case has been put in a book of over 200 pages, Ayodhya ka Itihas evam Puratattva, jointly authored by S P Gupta, the principal RSS archaeologist, and T P Verma, a litigant at the Allahabad High Court  (Lucknow bench) on behalf of the VHP in the Babri Masjid case. By the device of giving only a free translation and a highly imaginative commentary (pp 175-77), the reader is made to understand that the inscription was set up at the temple built on the exact site of Lord Rama’s birth (Ramjanmabhoomi), and that this temple itself was reconstructed at that site, because the earlier one had been destroyed by Muslim marauders, and it was in its own turn destroyed again in 1528-29 for building the Babri Masjid.

The fact is that the inscription says nothing of the kind. The janmabhoomi it speaks of has nothing to do with Lord Rama’s birth-site. We can do no better than quote the translation of K V Ramesh, a VHP witness, but an epigraphist of repute and a former director of epigraphy, ASI. This translation has actually been presented by VHP as a document at the High Court in the Babri Masjid case. Ramesh translates the crucial lines 4-5 as follows:

“Noble was that very family [of the local rulers], which was the birth-place (janmabhoomi) of valour which had successfully removed the sufferings of the other (Kshatriya clans).”

There is thus here no reference to any particular site as a janma-bhoomi, let alone of Rama, but only to an aristocratic family that was a source of valour among its members.

We then come to lines 14-15, which refer to a Vishnu-Hari temple. Ramesh holds that the builder of the temple was Meghasutra, who had superseded Anayachandra as lord of Saketa (lines 13-14). Katti, another professional epigraphist, interpreting these lines, holds that it was Anayachandra who was made the lord of Saketa and built the temple. In either case, the temple was not important enough to involve the Gahadavala sovereign, Govindachandra (1114-54 AD) himself, whose capital was Varanasi.

Moreover, it is by no means certain that this inscription was set up within the temple it mentions. It says that Meghasutra/Anayachandra built a beautiful temple for the god Vishnu Hari; and “this” (idam) great work was on a scale not achieved by earlier kings. (Ramesh’s translation may here be compared with Katti’s, for the placing of the adjective “this”.)

What is, however, of crucial importance is that the inscription nowhere refers to the temple being “reconstructed.” On this, there is full agreement between the translations by Ramesh and Katti and the description of its contents by the late Ajay Mitra Shastri, a reputed epigraphist. All mention it as being simply “built,” “erected,” etc.

NO REFERENCE TO MUSLIMS

Finally, there is the alleged reference to Muslims, which, as we shall see, is of crucial importance to the VHP’s case. Lines 19-20, in Ramesh’s translation read: “And now, the fierce arms of the ruler.... annihilates even the fear caused by the westerners (pashchatyas).” So too A M Shastri. Katti more freely (but without justification) reads “western enemies”; D P Dubey still more freely has “inimical forces coming from the East and the West.” Yet practically all the translators, except Dubey, make the reference apply to Muslims, especially the Ghaznavids. But, first, though the word “westerners” now comes to our lips easily (though not for Muslims), Muslims or the Ghaznavids have never, in any inscription or Sanskrit text, been called pashchatyas. Moreover, not the Ghaznavids, but the Rashtrakuts of Kanauj and Badaun, were the western neighbours of the Gahadavalas in the first half of the 12th century time (see H C Ray, The Dynastic History of Northern India, I, pp 551-55), so that they rather than the Ghaznavids would be the pashchatyas for anyone sitting at Ayodhya. Finally, pashchatya normally means one coming in the future, so that the ruler praised was really warding off future dangers, and not any current “western” enemies.

We are thus left with an inscription brought from somewhere else, which merely says that a local lord of Saketa, among other things, built a beautiful temple for Vishnu-Hari. This was not built at the birth-site of Lord Rama, nor at the site of any earlier temple. (Lord Rama is, indeed, not at all referred to in the inscription.) There is no certainty, at all, as we have seen, that the inscribed slab was intended to be placed in the temple, the reference to which occupies only one out of its 20 legible verses. The inscription, finally, has no reference at all to any Muslim danger or any earlier temple having been destroyed by Muslims.

MEASURE OF THEIR IGNORANCE

These points are important because according to the VHP’s claims, as underlined again and again by S P Gupta and T P Verma in their magnum opus, Ayodhya ka Itihas evam Puratattva, the birth site of Lord Rama had always been known and a temple had always stood there. If, by their own reading of the planted inscription, the temple at that site needed to be built there in the 12th century, then, it could only have been because earlier still the Muslims must have come to Ayodhya, and destroyed the Ramjanmabhoomi temple. These Muslims, they go on to say, were led by Salar Masud (whose tomb is at Bahraich), a supposed nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni (d 1030). Before we go further, let us first note that Salar Masud is a pure figment of legend, not mentioned anywhere before the 14th century, and the Mirat-I-Masudi which professes to describe his exploits in detail was composed as late as 1611 AD. Muhammad Nazim, in his Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, pp 13-14, has no hesitation in dismissing the whole story as “pious legend.” But even if we take the “pious legend” for a fact, Ayodhya figures nowhere in it. Salar Masud is shown in the Mirat-I-Mas`udi as proceeding from Multan to Ajodhan (Pakpattan on the Sutlej), Delhi, Meerut, Satrikh (in Barabanki district, near Lucknow) and Bahraich, where he was killed. It is a measure of S P Gupta’s and T P Verma’s ignorance that they take Ajodhan to mean Ayodhya, and then, as if to make assurance double sure, identify Satrikh too with Saket and so with Ayodhya! (pp 110-11). Local tradition too relates Salar Masud’s story to Satrikh only (Bara Banki Dist. Gazetteer, ed H R Nevill, p 266) and not, at all, to Ayodhya. Thus there is absolutely no evidence that any temple at Ayodhya was vandalised or destroyed by Muslims in or before the 12th century.

This being the case, the VHP’s planted inscription turns against its own case. If, indeed, there was a temple in which the inscription had been set up in the 12th century, it had nothing to do with Ramjanmabhoomi, and there was no previous temple at its site. The entire claim that Hindus all through history have believed that Lord Rama was born exactly where Mir Baqi chose to build the Babri Masjid, thus falls to the ground. As for the Babri Masjid having been built at the site of any temple, let us now remember that all the archaeological evidence adduced by VHP is heavily tainted. No professional archaeologist was allowed to be present when the claimed “discoveries” of the sculptures and the inscription were made. Their colour and surface condition cry out that they have been planted. They can carry no weight with any historian worth his salt.

What the Sangh Parivar is doing in the case of the history of the Babri Masjid is just a sample of how it distorts the past of this country (as the new NCERT textbooks have so amply made clear). This is all the more reason why it is necessary to nail down all its lies and manipulations. The BJP openly claims to have come to power over the ruins of the Babri Masjid; it is time to show ever more clearly that it has done so only by practising fraud and deception through and through.