People's Democracy

THE LATEST FROM BABRI MASJID EXCAVATIONS

How Official Archaeologists Clutch At Straws To Please Their Saffron Masters

ON March 12, 2003 the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) began its excavations at the Babri Masjid site, Ayodhya, in accordance with the directions of the High Court, Lucknow bench. These excavations were undertaken with a view to finding out whether there are any remains of a Hindu temple beneath the ruins of the Babri Masjid, destroyed on December 6, 1992.

According to the report submitted by the ASI to the High Court on April 28, as many as 33 trenches (each 4 m x 4 m) had by then been excavated to various depths within the area of Babri Masjid and the adjacent Ram Chabutra (these two covering an area of roughly 41 m x 24 m.), as well as outside of it.

The report on the excavations submitted by ASI cast gloom among supporters of the saffron brigade who had been led to expect that the official archaeologists would be able, post facto, to justify the 1992 demolition of the mosque through digging out stone-slabs, pillars, images, etc, of a pre-existing splendid Rama temple. The ASI’s report nowhere even mentions the word “temple” or “shrine” which it was supposed to look for. Yet if its report is disappointing for the VHP supporters, it is clear from the way the ASI has drafted its report, with motivated suggestions and wilful omissions, that its (saffronised) heart is in the right place, and though what it can clutch at are only straws, it is determined to clutch at them all the same.

Three finds on which it lays great stress, with words like “interesting,” “significant,” etc, need particularly to be scrutinised.

(1)               In the Ram Chabutra, the ASI reports the discovery of “five levels of structure,” each “comprising a flat surface of lime-surkhi mortar.” It carefully avoids to note that the “lime-surkhi mortar” proclaims it to be a “structure” that could not have been a part of an earlier Hindu temple, because such mortar came with the Muslims. What it finds to be “interesting” is “that protruding out of the fifth [lowest]” level there was a “squarish” block of “calcrete” (the same material as used in the mortar-bonded levels) of a size no larger than 1.55 x 1.48 m. Beneath this, the excavators describe a mysterious “chamber,” without mentioning what material marks its base or walls. From the presence of this mysterious “chamber,” the ASI jumps to the conclusion that it was “some place of importance.” The reality simply is that the so-called “chamber” has not been exposed to its base, but only to a few courses of bricks from the top, and these are bonded by lime/surkhi mortar. In other words, both the “chamber” and the stone block were manifestly part of the structural layers associated with Muslim construction, and are not at all pre-Islamic. The ASI’s uncalled-for reference to its being “some place of importance” is just a petty effort to instil some life into the later legend of Ram Chabutra.

(2)               The ASI observes that the “foundation wall” of “the disputed structure” (“Babri Masjid” is a forbidden word for ASI!) was “constructed mainly of calcrete stone block veneer on both the faces with brickbats filled inside.” Such was the characteristic method for building thick walls in the construction techniques brought by Muslims (“rubble” encased within brick or stone). It is unknown in pre-Muslim architecture. The ASI team members must have learnt something of the history of architecture, but they refuse to make explicit the obvious affiliation of the wall to the mosque. Rather, after pointing out that a few sandstone blocks have been “re-used” and that one is a “decorated” block (curiously enough, the kind of decoration it bears is left unstated), the ASI goes on to a mystification at par with that of the “chamber” under Ram Chabutra: “This [mosque foundation wall] lies over a brick wall having 16 courses of bricks with decorated stone blocks used in its foundation.” The ASI suggests here that there was an earlier brick wall, whose “decorated stone blocks” (the decoration again left unspecified) might lead a reader, who overlooks the report’s next sentence, to imagine that here at last was a remnant of the temple wall. But the next sentence shows that the entire exercise is vain: “Another alignment of stone blocks with brickbats filling in its core was observed lying below the brick wall.” Alas, here is, again, the characteristic Muslim construction below the 16-course brick wall! There is thus no escape from the fact that the entire wall down to the foundation was built as part of the Babri Masjid and owes nothing to any earlier structure. One cannot get away from feeling that the whole mode of description on the ASI’s part has been simply designed to provoke rumours of a temple wall with “decorated slabs,” when it must know full well that it was nothing of the sort, but only a part of the mosque’s original foundation wall.

(3)               The third discovery that the ASI reports is that of “eleven squarish or circular structural bases having brickbats at the base with two rectangular blocks of calcrete stone over three or four courses of brickbats.” We have here an immediate suggestion of an anology with the temple “pillar bases” sprung on the public by B B Lal in 1989 through a revised version of the decade-earlier report of his “Ramajanmabhumi” mound excavations. The ASI forbears from explicitly referring to Lal’s theory, but its excitement at the discovery of these bases is palpable. However, its own description shows that these cannot be the remains of any pillar bases of an earlier temple at all. The ASI holds them to be “significant,” as “some of [these] are sealed directly by the original floor of the disputed structure.” In other words, only some of these brickbat heaps topped by “calcrete stones” are found below the original Babri Masjid floor, while others are found above that floor. Indeed, the ASI report itself recognises that some of these bases are “contemporary to” the Babri Masjid floors --- thereby ruling out their belonging to any earlier structure.

The report is so badly worded that it is not clear whether all these eleven “bases” have been found in the 14 trenches dug in the southern portion of the site. This may, however, be presumed, for it is, then, stated that “the same type of structural bases have been found in the northern area also.” How many, is strangely left unstated. Moreover, the northern bases are not of “the same type” at all. For they have a sandstone block [not “calcrete”] at the top having “encasing of sandstone slabs/pieces on its four sides.” In other words, these are quite differently made; and the technique of sandstone blocks encasing brickbats suggests a firm Muslim affiliation.

The ASI report does not assert that the “structural bases” stand in any alignment, except to say that they are located at 3.30 to 3.50 m (centre to centre) from each other --- again, characteristically omitting to make clear whether they mean the “bases” on the northern side only, or those on the southern side as well.

We, finally, come to the curious term “structural bases.” What structure could a 4-course of brickbats, presumably only mud-bonded, of no great length and width (these measurements being not “significant” enough to be mentioned in the report), topped by a “calcrete” or sandstone block, support? What kind of structure could be put upon so flimsy a base?

It would seem to anyone not tied to saffron expectations that the so-called “bases” in the southern area (brick-bat base with “calcrete” tops) could only have supported wooden posts carrying thatched roofs (chhappars) over shops and hovels along possibly a lane (so a possible rough alignment). Some of these could belong to a time before the Babri Masjid was built, and so such (but not all) are “sealed” by the Masjid floors. Others were made while the mosque’s original floors were being laid out. Those in the northern side are obviously of a different sort (as shown above) and are possibly of a later time. No temple-structure is in any case involved here. What is especially important in interpreting these “structural bases” is to relate their positions to the mosque wall. In the 15^th-century Lal Darwaza Masjid, Jaunpur, “square pilasters” were provided for on the external walls for rows of shops alongside the walls. And B B Lal’s associate K V Soundara Rajan told Frontline that Lal’s “pillar bases” were really bases for wooden posts for shops ranged along the wall of the Babri Masjid. The ASI’s report practically exhausts all its space in raising the three issues we have examined above, in the apparent hope of providing some sop to its masters at Delhi and to the VHP. At the same time, it takes much care to overlook the evidence that definitely negates the existence of a pre-existing temple.

First, it never mentions that in all layers and pits down to considerable depths, and much below the Babri Masjid floors, pieces of glazed ware, associated with Muslims, and never used in temples, are met with in practically every trench. These are accompanied, as universally and down to similar depths, by animal (usually goat/sheep) bones with cut-marks. No greater evidence for the absence of a temple can be found than these. Finer artifacts have been practically absent from the finds, suggesting strongly that before the Masjid was built it was the site of a large poor Muslim habitation.

Secondly, while it mentions encountering, within Ram Chabutra at beyond 4 metres, “stratified deposits... which belong to the early two or three centuries of the Christian era,” the report nowhere divulges the fact that so far in all the 33 trenches not a single find has been found that could be attributed to either the (pre­-Muslim) Gahadavala period (11^th-12^th centuries AD) when, according to the VHP’s claims, a grand Rama (“Vishnu-Hari”) temple was built here, or to any period going back to 300 AD. Up till now no Brahmanical temple has been discovered anywhere in India, datable to a time before 300 AD. Thus, of the period in which a Hindu temple could have been built at the Babri Masjid site the ASI team has been able to get nothing --- whether in the shape of potsherds or coins or any other datable artifact. One looks in vain in the ASI’s report for any recognition of this simple fact.

Whatever then be the ASI’s manipulations in the text of its report, one simple fact stands crystal clear: there was no Hindu temple beneath the Babri Masjid.

(The write-up has been prepared by the SAHMAT and Aligarh Historians Society.)