ram janmabhoomi

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. B\1\BRI MASJID

RAM JANMABHOOMIvs.

BABRI MASJID

A Case Study in Hindu-Muslim Conflict

Koenraad Elst

VOICE OF INDIANew Delhi

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Notes on TranscriptionSome Indian-English terminologyBibliographyIntroduction

1. The historians' debate1.1 A British hoax?1.2 Hideaway communalism1.3 More arguments1.4 Political misuse of history1.5 Date of Ram's life1.6 Valmiki's Ayodhya and other religions1.7 "The secular emperor Babar"1.8 Any evidence for the demolition?1.9 Evidence for the Janmabhoomi tradition1.10 The larger picture

2. Political implications2.1 The proposed solutions2.2 Similar cases2.3 Hinduism no better than Islam ?. .2.4 "This isn't really Hindu"2.5 The insecure minorities3. The Ram Janmabhoomi I

Babri Masjid's recent history3.1 History before 18573.2 The judicial debate3.3 The Ram Janmabhoomi and

Babri Masjid campaigns3.4 Ram Janmabhoomi and the elections

Index

Table of contents

© Koenraad Elst 1990

First edition: 1990Second impression: 1990Third impression: 1990

Published in India by Voice of India, 2/ 18, Ansari Road,New Delhi-110 002.and Printed at D.K. Fine Arts Press, Delhi-ll0 052.

Notes on transcription

. Throughout the text, I have used for terms andnames in Indian languages, the transcription mostcommon in journalistic and non-indological academicwriting. This is not because I am so enthusiastic about thistranscription into ordinary English spelling. On thecontrary, among the Roman-written languages, English isthe single most clumsy one when it comes to unambiguous transcription. It systematically leads to mispronunciation, for native English speakers and more so for others. Itmakes people say "Delhi" instead of "Dilli", "Meerut"instead of "Merath". Moreover Indians themselves tend tomake it worse by overdoing the EnglIshness of theirnames in transcription, e.g. "Tewary" instead of "Tiwari","Iye(" for "Ayyar", "Thackeray" for "Thakre", "Maneka" for"Menaka" , "Panicker" for "Panikkar", "Lucknow" for"Lakhnau", "Cauvery" for "Kaveri". However, it is for theIndians themselves to get their act together and to rectifyand uniformize their transcription policy. For now, I havedecided to just follow the more common practice fot thesake of easy recognition. ,

For Islamic terminology, I again have followed thepredominant practice of transcribing the Persian-Urdupronunciation, even when it differs from the originalArabic. Thus, "Ramzan" instead of "Rarrtadan", "Hadis"instead of "Hadith".

, -,';It .

tabligh

Shiv Sena

RamzanRSS

high-priest of a temple.temple, mainly Hindu.mosquecaller to prayer in Islam.foot-march.teacher-pupil chain, tradition.devotional ritual.States' Assembly, elected from the StateAssemblies.month of fasting for Muslims.Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (=NationalVolunteer Corps), a Hindu massorganization.march with a chariot, procession.committee.ideology of keeping religion out of publiclife.Shiva's Army (named after the anti-Moghulleader Shivaji), a Hindu party in Bombay.purification of the Muslim population fromnon-Islamic practices.

talaq Muslim unilateral divorce.tattva element.tilak mark on forehead.tirthankara ford-maker, Jain sage.vedi altar.Vidhan Sabha : Legislative Assembly of the states.VHP : Vishva Hindu Parishad (= World Hindu

Council)yajna (yagya) : sacrificial ritual.zamindar : landlord.

mahantmandirmasjidmuazzinpadyatraparamparapujaRajya Sabha :

rathyatrasamitisecularism

Some Indian-English terminology

akhand : unbroken, unintenupted.avatar : incarnation of a god.bhajan : devotional song, psalm.Bharat : India.BJP : Bharatiya Janata (= Indian People's) Party.bodhi : awakening, enlightenment.chabootra : platform.communalism : ideo~ogy championing the political unity

and mterests of a religious community.Congress-I : Indira Congress.CPI Communist Party of IndiaCPM Communist Party of India (Marxist).crore : ten million.dacoit armed robber, criminal.dalit oppressed, the depressed castes.doordarshan : television; India's TV network.fatwa Islamic'judicial verdict.garbha-griha : "womb-house", sanctum sanctorum.ghat bathing-place. 'goonda : (hired) rowdy.gurudwara : a Sikh temple.ha~~s traditions of the prophet Mohammed.hanJan people of God, name given by Mahatma

Gandhi to the untouchable castes.imam prayer-leader in mosque.!D Janata Dal (= People's Group)Janmabhoomi : birthplace.k~atib : reader in mosque.kutan devotional chant.lakh one hundred thousand.Lok Sabha People's Assembly, directly elected.

Bibliography

Hans Bakker :Ayodhya, Groningen University, 1986.

Dipak K. Barua :Buddha Gaya Temple and its History, Buddha GayaTemple Management Committee, 1981.

Bipan Chandra :Cammunalism in Modern India, Vikas Publ.,Delhi1987(1984).

Devahuti, editor :Bias in Indian Historiography, D.K. Publ., Delhi 1980.

Prabha Dixit :Communalism, a Struggle for Power, Orient Longmans,Delhi 1974. .

S.M. Edwards :Babur, Diarist and Despot, Heritage Publ., Delhi 1977.

Sita Ram Goel :Story of Islamic Imperialism in India, Voice of India,Delhi 1982.History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders, id.1984.

Mrs. Surinder Kaur :The Secular Emperor Bahar, Lokgeet Prakashan, Sirhind1977.

Stanley Lane-Poole :The Emperor Bahar, Sunita Publ., Delhi 1988 (1899).

R.c. Majumdar, editor :History and Culture of the Indian People, Bharatiya VidyaBhavan, Bombay (vol.V 1966(1957), vol.VI 1967(1960),vol.VII 1974).

Syed Shahabuddin et al. :Muslim India, monthly, Delhi 1983-1990.

Sri Ram Sharma :The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors,Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1988(1940).

·~... .

Arun Shourie :Religion in Politics, Roli Books, Delhi 1989 (1987).et el, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, Voiceof India, Delhi, 1990.

Bhanu Pratap Shukla :Shilanyas se Shikhar ki Or, Suruchi Prakashan, Delhi1989.

Radhey Shyam :Babar, Janaki Prakashan, Patna 1978.

Ram Swarup :Understanding Islam through Hadis, Voice of India, Delhi1984.

Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia, Bipan ChandraCommunalism and the Writing of Indian History,People's Publishing House, Delhi 1987(1969).

Peter van der Veer :Gods on Earth, Oxford University Press, Delhi 1989.

Introduction

The biggest problem for India's national unity andintegrity in the twentieth century has no doubt been whatIndians call 'communalism', the political conflict betweenthe religions, especially between Hindus and Muslims.The actual occasions of conflict can be sparked by a widerange of issues, from matters of life and death, like thePartition or the separatist movement in Kashmir, to purelysymbolic issues.

The most conspicuous communal bone of contention in India in the years 1986-1990 has certainly been theRam Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid issue. The material objectof the controversy is quite small: an unimpressivemosque-structure on a hilltop in Ayodhya (eastern UttarPradesh), the town traditionally considered as the .birthplace of the protohistorical hero Ram. This architecturallyrather uninteresting building is known as the Babri Masjid,Babar's mosque. As such, it has been named after Babar,the first Moghul emperor, implying it was built on hisorders, or in his honour, in 1528.

Many Hindus believe that Ram was born on thevery spot where Babar's mosque is standing. Thereforethey call it Ram ]anmabhoomi, Ram's birth-ground. Theyalso believe that Babar's men built the mosque after demolishing a temple which was standing on the same spot incommemoration of Ram, the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir.Some Hindu organizations want to 'rebuild' this temple,which implies removing the present structure. The Hindushave already taken control of the building in 1949,when the mosque was not in regular use any more. Theyinstalled idols and converted the mosq~e into a temple. Byorders of the government, however, the worshipperscould only offer puja from outside. In 1986, a judge ruled

that the temple be opened for unrestrained Hinduworship. Subsequently, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP;"World Hindu Council") started a nationwide campaignfor the replacement of the existing mosque-turned-templewith a proper temple structure.

There is now a twofold discussion about theRam Janmaboomil Babri Masjid: a) Did Babar, or anotherMuslim ruler, really demolish a Hindu temple to build themosque in its place? b) If so, is it justified to right thewrongs of history by demolishirig the existing structureand replacing it with a brand new Ram JanmabhoomiMandir?

The first question is a matter for historians, andthey indeed have carried on a very lively discussion aboutit. They have brought into the open most of the knowndata that should clinch the issue. The secon~ is a purelypolitical question, and the viewpoints of the differentparties are quite clear, and irreconcilable. Of course, anyconvincing and just answer to the political question ongrounds of principle may in practice find itself overruledby an unjustified but ~nforced judicial or party-political"solution"

Let us proceed, first, to map the historians'argument over the historical basis of the problem; then, toassess the justifying power of the relevant facts ofhistory for a course of action in a modern, secular polity;and finally, to chronicle the actual course of events thatmake up this controversy.

2 RAM JANMA1JHOOMI VS. BABiu MASJIO

1. The historians' debate

1.1. A British hoax?The big statement of anti-cornrnunalist history

writing on the Ram Janrnabhoomi / Babri Masjid iscontained in a 6-page booklet issued .by the Centre forHistorical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)...Delhi, in the autumn of 1989: The Political Abuse of History:Babri Masjid/Rama Janmabhumi Dispute. The text was alsopublished, slightly shortened, in the Times of India,November 6, 1989. All politicians and opinion-makerswho call themselves secularists !lave rallied around thismanifesto. They recommend it and quote from it.Accroding to Praful Bidwai, we "should be deeply gratefulto professors Sarvapalli Gopal, Romila Thapar, BipanChandra and other historians of JNU. These scholars,among the finest working in this discipline anywhere,have produced .a booklet on the Ram Janmabhoomicontroversy which deserves to be given wider publicity inthe media and to be read in every school and college ifonly because it introduces an element of sobriety whichhas been completely missing from the debate." 1

In the subsequent chapters we will look closelyinto the arguments of the JNU historians. For now, we cansummarize their statement as follows. Firstly, the citywhich is now called Ayodhya, was only given that nameby the Gupta emperor Skanda Gupta in the late fifthcentury A.D. in order to attract religious prestige andpilgrims; it is not the Ayodhya which the ancient poet

1. Times of India, 20.11.89.

Valmiki described as Ram's capital. It is impossible toknow where, if at all, Ram ever lived.

Secondly, the Ram cult became prominent inAyodhya only in the eighteenth century, when theRamanandi sadhus, a monk order of Ram devotees,settled there in large numbers. Before that, it was a holyplace mainly for Buddhist, Jain and Shaiva devotees. Theclaim that there was a Ram Jarimabhoomi temple on thecontroversial spot, is in conflict with what we know aboutAyodhya's medieval religious significance.

Thirdly, there is no reliable evidence whatsoeverthat the existing Babri Masjid was built after the demolition of an important Ram temple. It is even doubtfulwhether Babar had anything to do with the building of themosque.

. Fo~rthly, the history of Ayodhya in generalprovIdes Important examples of intra-religious strife andinter-religious amity. It disproves the view professed bycommunalists, that Indian history in those centuries wasessentially a struggle between a closed Muslim front and aclosed Hindu front.

One problem with the stand taken by the JNUhistorians is the question: what is then the source of thetradition, alive in Ayodhya since at least 1857, that aHindu temple had been demolished to make room for theBabri Masjid? The standard answer, given by some of theJNU historians in their other writings, is that the Britishspread that story as part of their policy to 'divide andrule'. Of course it is possible to find British gazetteers ofthe nineteenth century, as well as British historians, whohold up that tradition and take it for granted. In fact,all the British records and gazetteers are unanimousin confirming (or just adopting) this Hindu tradition.But according to the JNU historians, there are noso~rces independent of the British ones, that confirmthe tradition.

5THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

This view has been widely broadcast by theEnglish-language press. For instance: "All the historicalevidence amassed by the VHP comes from British sources.Indeed historians are unani~ous in maintaining that not asingle record has been found dating from pre-British timeswhich makes any mention of this dispute." 2 BabriMasjid Coordination Committee (BMCC) convenor SyedShahabuddin has confidently stated that he would demolish the Babri Masjid with his own hands if hisopponents could come up with one original non-Birtishsource confirming that a temple was demolished to makeway for the Babri Masjid. And this was not presentedas a generous gesture, but as a theological necessity:Shahabuddin claims that according to Islam, prayersoffered in a mosque for which a place of worship ofanother religion has been demolished, are not accepted byAllah.

The challenge was taken up by dr. Harsh Narain(formerly a philosophy faculty member of both BanarasHindu University and Aligarh Muslim University), inan article titled Ram Janmabhoomi: Muslim Testimony.3 Herejects Shahabuddin's pious declaration that it isun-Islamic and against the Shari'a to forcibly convert apagan temple into a mosque: "It is common knowledgethat most of the mosques built by the Muslim invadersstand on land grabbed or extorted from the Kafirs." Thereare a great many well-attested examples of mosquesforcibly replacing temples, in India as well as elsewhere,such as the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, or the Kaaba inMekka. "Is Shahabuddin prepared to keep his words inthe case of such mosques?"

Dr. Harsh Narain argues that the theologicojuristic rulings to the effect that no mosque can be built on

2. Week, 25.2.90.3. published in the Lucknow edition of The Pioneer (5.2.90) and,slightly modified, in Indian Express (26.2.90).

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI Mi\SJID4

4. as in Fatawa-i-Alilmgiri, Aurangzeb's law codex, upon which theBritish and the Indian Republic based their "Muslim law", vol. 16, p.214.S. Bukhari, Kitab ai-Jihad wa's-Siyar , hadis 406.

7

. Shourie, A. : Religion in Politics, ch.13.

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

1.2. Hideaway communalism. It is noteworthy that one of dr. Narain's sources

narrowly escaped oblivion. It is a chapter of the Muraqqahi-Khusrawi by Shaikh Azamat Ali Kakorawi Nami (181193) written in 1869, and till recently existing only inma~uscript fonn. The passage relevant to the Babri Masjidissue appears in a chapter on the struggle between theMuslims, led by Amir Ali Amethawi, and a Hindu orderof martial sadhus, over the possession of another hilltoptemple at Ayodhya, the Hanuman Garhi, in 1855-56. "Onlrone manuscript of it is extant... A press .co~y of. Itwas prepared by dr. Zaki Kakorawi for p~bhca~lOn WIththe financial assistance of the Fakhruddm All AhmedMemorial Committee, Lucknow. The committee vetoedthe publication of its chapter dealing with the jihad ~ed byAmit Aii Amethawi for recapture of Hanuman GarhI fromthe Bairagis ("renunciates"), from its funds, ~n t~e groundthat its publication would not be opportune In VIew of theprevailing political situation, with the result that dr.Kakorawi had to publish the book minus that chapter in19'86 .. .he published the chapter separately andindependently of any financial or other assistance from theCommittee in 1987.. . It is a pity that, thanks to ourthoughtless 'secularism' and waning sense of history, suchprimary sources of medieval Indian history are presentlyin danger of suppression..."

This is not the only instance of interest groupstrying to hide documents relevant to the ~a~ Ja~mabhoomi / Babri Masjid dispute. Arun Shoune, m hIS article "Hideaway Cammunalism",6 relates another case. Abook about India in Arabic, by Maulana Hakim SayyidAbdul Hai (died 1923), rector of the famed Islamiccademy Nadwatul-Ulama in Lucknow, has been translated

and published by that institute in Urdu in 1973, in English

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID6

land grabbed or illegitimately acquired,4 apply to landowned by Muslims, and not to that owned by the infidels.The prophet has made it clear that all land belongs to Godand, via His prophet, to the Muslims.s Ibn Tayrniyyah, the14th century theologian and jurist, stated that jihad simplyrestores lands to the Muslims, to .whom they rightlybelong. The poet Iqbal put the following words into themouth of Tariq, conqueror of Spain: "All land belongs tothe Muslims, because it belongs to their God." A Muslimruler wanting to replace temples with mosques, can easilyfind scriptural justification, and does not have to breakthe letter nor the spirit of Islamic law.

Coming to the specific Babri Masjid issue, dr.Narain presents four independent Muslim sources, outside the sphere of. British influence, that confirm the storyof the demolition of a Ram temple to make way for theBabri Masjid. All the four documents are from the 19thcentury, but at least two of them claim to be based onolder records. All four describe as a well-known fact thatthe Masjid is often called ]anmasthan (birthplace) Masjidor Sita ki Rasai (Ram's wife Sita's kitchen) Masjid, and thatthe Hindus have for centuries offered puja in the garden ofthe Masjid; which they would not reasonably have doneexcept in continuation of a pre-Masjid temple cult. We willtake a closer look at this testimony in ch. 1.9.

Both Syed Shahabuddin and the JNU history teamhave replied tha,t these documents don't count becausethey are from the 19th century, hurriedly replacing theirearlier demand for non-British testimony by a demand forpre-19th century testimony.

·- -:':"

in 1977. The foreword is contributed by the author's son,Maulana Abul-Hasan Ali Nadwi, better known as AliMian, rector of the same institute since 1961.

The Urdu version contains a 17-page chapter on"Hindustan ki Masjidein ", the mosques of Hindustan. Ofseven mosques, the author relates how they had replacedHindu temples, either by redesigning or by demolitionand reconstruction (largely using the same stones). One ofthese is the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. Translated intoEnglish, it reads like this: "This mosque was constructedby Babar at Ayodhya which Hindus call the birthplace ofRamchandarji. There is a famous story about his wife Sita.It is said that Sita had a temple here in which she livedand cooked for her husband. On that very site Babarconstructed his mosque in H. 963..."

This is really rather harmless to the Babri Masjidcause. The writer doesn't claim any other foundation forhis story than "It is said". He merely reports what wasbelieved in the beginning of this century. Yet, now that theBabri Masjid has become a hot item, Arun Shourie foundhe had some difficulty in getting a copy of the book. In thelibraries of some famous Islamic institutes (Shourie namessix of them) where it certainly should have been, ithad disappeared: "Many of the persons whom one wouldnormally have expected to be knowledgeable about suchpublications were suddenly reluctant to recall thisbook. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had beenremoved, for instance form the Aligarh Muslim UniversityLibrary. Some even suggested that a determined efforthad been made three or four years ago to get back eachand every copy of the book." However, the fundamentalistfront is neither solid nor omnipresent, and a few librariesdid have copies of the book available.

In the English version, the one most likely to beread by unbelievers, the tell-tale passages about mosquesreplacing temples have been censored out. Or substituted:

7. [ndum Express, 27.3.90.8. Indian Express, 9.4.90.

9

1.3. More arguments . .Even the joint challenge by fundamentahst

Muslims and secularist historians that their opponentsproduce some pre-19th-century evidence has not been ableto save them. For, such evidence exists.

Mr. A.K. Chatterjee presents in full detail thereport by a European traveller, Tieffenthaler, ~hovisited Ayodhya in 1767.7 He wrote abo~~ the HI~duworship regularly conducted on the MasJld ~remlses,and mentioned the tradition of a temple havmg beendestroyed to make way for the existing mosque. .,. .

Syed Shahabuddin has sent in a reply c~tIClzm.g

Chatterjee's conclusions, and has at once raISed hISdemands: now, even pre-19th century accounts will notsuffice, only pre-1528 accounts are accepted.

s

while the Urdu version says that the mosque of Kanauj"was built on the foundation of some Hindu temple", theEnglish version tells you that it was built ,~n "the placeearlier occupied by an old and decayed fort .

It may be of interest that the editor. of thesetranslations is not only rector of a famed ·IslamIC college,but also chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board andfounding member of the Raabta Alam-e-Islami (Arabic:Rabita al-Alam aI-Islam, "World Council of Islam"), a panIslamic body with headquarters in Mecca, involved infinancing Muslim organizations all over the world.

To my knowledge, these attemp~s to c?llcealinconvenient testimony have not been pubhcly demed bythe people concerned, nor by Syed .Sha~abud~in (in hisnumerous replies to the relevant articles m Indian Expressand other papers) or other Muslim campaigners.

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM lANMABI-lOOMI VS. BABRl MASlIO8

· .>-""'1 ~.

Dr.. S.P. Gupta, fonner director of Allahabad~useum, In two articles in Manthan,9 also mentionsTleffenthaler's report of his visit to Ayodhya in 1767.On top of that, he mentions "similar accounts" byMontgomery Martin in 1838, and by William Finch in1608-11.

Dr. Gup.ta, himself an archaeologist, also bringst~e a~chaeologIcal evidence into the debate. The JNUhIStO~la~S had claimed to have archaeology on their side.And It IS true that the traditional belief that Ram ruled atAyod.hya some five thousand years ago, is seriously undennI~ed by t~e abs~nce of any archaeological findingspredating the fIrst mIllennium B.c. 1O Well, the scientificchronology of the Ramayana hasn't been fully establishedso .far, perhaps Ram lived a lot later than commonlybelIeved; or perhaps the Janmabhoomi campaigners haveto face the possibility that Ram's habitat remains unknown.

But while many (not all) archaeologists believe .Ram to be outside the reach of even archaeologythey certainly can decIde on the issue of whethe;ther~ was ~. Hi~du temple on the spot where now theBabn MasJId 15 standing. Dr. Gupta writes that dUringexcavations in 1975-8.0, led by prof. B.B. Lal, a deeptrench was dug behind the Masjid, touching it andeven penetrating somewhat underneath it. In the 11 th12th century level, pillar-bases of burnt brick were foundobviously int~nded to ~upport the pillars of a building;a pre-1528 pIece of eVIdence. Moreover, the most important archaeological evidence is there for everyone to~ee: component~ of an unmistakably Hindu building used~n the constructIon of the Babri Masjid. We will look closerInto the archaeological chapter of the debate in ch. 2.9.

9. Manthan, 2 /90. p.9-18, and 3 /90, p.9-14.~.O . as was announced in India Today, 15.1.89, with the triumphant titleA Myth Exploded ". .

11. Indian Express, 25.2.90.12. Indian Express, 1.4.90.


The hardest-hitting reply to the JNU historians'pamphlet was an article by prof. A.R. Khan (historydepartment, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla) inIndian Express:" In the name of' history' It . 11 Prof. Khancontends that the JNU historians on the one hand make abig case out of proving the evident fact that Ram's birthplace cannot be located (except by accepting the tradition),but on the other hand their whole attempt "is elusive incharacter", and "sounds like an apologia for the deeds ormisdeeds of Muslim rulers of medieval India". He attacksnot just their conclusions, but their methodology. To thisarticle, the JNU team has condescended to write a fullbodied reply, which was published together with a finalreply from prof. KhanY In the next chapters, we willanalyze the arguments propounded by both sides.

1.4. Political misuse of historyThe JNU historians start their original pamphlet

by justifying their intervention in the ongoing debate:"Each individual has a right to his or her belief and faith.But when beliefs claim the legitimacy of history, then thehistorian has to attempt a demarcation between the limitsof belief and historical evidence."

This somewhat pleonastic 'demarcation betweenthe limits' should not be an academic exercise, but a publicstatement: "When communal forces make claims to'historical evidence' for the purposes of communal politjcs,then the historian has to intervene."

Some writers of letters to the editor have denouncedas hypocritical, the JNU historians' pose as beingneutral outsiders called on to arbiter the dispute fromabove. After all, their statement is very much instrumental 'in the campaign of one of the parties, and is very clearly

RAM ]ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MAS]ID10

- ,j) -,---

directed against the other one of the parties to the debate.The JNU argumentation has been gleefully quoted bypeople sympathetic to the Babri Masjid cause in theircampaign against the Ram Janmabhoomi activists. TheJNU hi'5torians cannot not have foreseen this.

To be sure, the pamphlet concludes evenhandedly: "The above review of historical evidencesuggests that the claims made by Hindu and Muslimcommunal groups can find no sanction from history." Butthat is only a fig-1eaf, because the whole of the pamphlet isnot even-handed at all. In fact, there is not a single point inthe whole paqtphlet, which is raised against the Muslim

, claim that the Babri Masjid was built without troublinganyone. On the contrary, that claim is systematicallydefended against the Hindu contention that a Hindutemple was destroyed to make way for the Masjid. Thewhole point of the pamphlet is to find "sanction fromhistory" for precisely that claim which is loudly made by:'Muslim communal groups", viz. that the Masjid was builtm peace.

And the pamphlet proposes as a political solution:"Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid area be demarcated anddeclared a national monument." It is true that this is not inconsonance with the Muslim communalist viewpoint.5yed 5hahabuddin has vehemently denounced thisproposal as an insult for all religions alike. So, this iswhere Marxists and Muslim communalists part company.But that doesn't make the proposal impartial.Implementing it would mean taking from the Muslimssomething they only claim, but from the Hindus a templethey actually use; and from the Muslims a third-rankmosque which they themselves had abandoned, from theHindus a place as sacred as, say, the Umar mosque inJerusalem. For the Muslims it would still be half a victory,and even more than that, since for the Hindus itwould be a terrible defeat. So, let not the JNU historians

deceive themselves that they are above the dispute: theirpamphlet has been firmly enlisted in the war effort of oneof the two parties.

The fact that historians take sides, need notautomatically raise suspicion regarding the objective andscientific character of their statement. Certainly, the truthsometimes lies fully with one of the parties in a dispute.Some soft-hearted people think they are going to solve thecommunalist problem by systematically .pretendingthat "the truth must lie somewhere in the middle"and that "all a~e equally guiity". Alright, let us admit thatmetaphysically the truth by definition lies in ~hemiddle: it then does not follow that two contendmgviewpoints are equidistant from the mi?dle. Sometimesthe truth lies fully in one camp and not m the o.ther, ~ndscientists may conclude their research by taking SIdeswithout anyhow renouncing their duty of objectivity andmethodic impartiality. '

At any rate, the JNU historians hav~ chose~

and made clear what side they are on. They contmue theI~

introduction by announcing: "Historical evidence ispresented here not as a polemic. .." Prof. ~.R. Khanhas a point when he retorts that the pamphlet smacks ofpolemic despite claims to the contrary".

This is what a reader wrote to the Times ofIndia, in reply to the JNU historians' pamphlet (aimingalso at the new editor, Dilip Padgoankar, who gave thepaper a sharply 'secularist' orientation after he s~cceededGirilal Jain, "that communalist" as he calls him, m 1989):"Perhaps you want to invest them with some kind ~facademic glory by using the legend of JNU, but theIrbest introduction, intellectually speaking, is that they areStalinist historians... Their ideological brothers in the pressmake sure, through selective reporting and. publishin~,that their views are properly advertised. The Tzmes of Indza,too, is in this rank: its editorials, leading articles, special

13THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM lANMABHOOMI VS, BABRI MASlIO12

13. Times of India, 11.11 .89

15

recently, elements of the Hsia chronology have alsobeen confirmed. The tacitly accepted axiom of orientalism, viz. that the indigenous historiography is unreliable if not mythical, has .been undermined by somepertinent facts (which doesn't keep it from still being cherished by many scholars, including some Indians).

The Ramayana certainly has a historical core. Theidea of a purely fictional work which is made to look likehistory, complete with astronomical indications of thetime and genealogies, is quite foreign to ancient cultures.But the Ramayana has also undergone centuries of literaryembellishment even before Valmiki, other legends havebeen incorporated and so on. And unlike the Chinese Hsiaand Shang chronology, the Ram story is not a matter ofconsensus even among the ancient indigenous writers. Soof course, it cannot be accepted as history at face value. Anespecially difficult point is the timing of the Ramayanaevents.

"According to Valmiki Ramayana, Rama, the kingof Ayodhya, was born in the Treta Yuga, that is thousandsof years before the Kali Yuga which is supposed to beginin 3102 B.C." This statement is for the ]NU historians thebasis of their argument that Ram cannot have lived in thecity which now is called Ayodhya: "There is noarchaeological evidence to show that at this early time theregion around present day Ayodhya was inhabited. Theearliest possible date for settlements at the site are ofabout the eighth century B.c."

Prof. A.R. Khan comments: "Despite their reservations about accepting Valmiki's characters, plac;es,...asauthentic, they have not paused awhile in uncriticallyccepting Valmiki's poetic exaggeration identifying Rama

with the Treta Yuga... The very premise on which theyhave built their argument to disprove Rama's associationwith the present day Ayodhya rests on their acceptance ofValmiki's allusion to the Treta age, which no historian

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO14

reports - all breathe venom, not just against Ram]anmabhoomi but against any Hindu viewpoint."13Western readers should keep in mind that the reportingabout Indian affairs (including the communal conflict) thatthey get in their press, is often just copied from IndianEnglish-language papers, starting with the prestigiousTimes of India.

1.5. Date of Ram's lifeThe ]NU historians reject the Ramayana as a source

of historiography: "The events of the stroy of Rama,originally told in the Rama-Kqtha which is no longeravailable to us, were rewritten in the form of a long epicpoem, the Ramayana, by Valmiki. Since this is a poem andmuch of it could have been fictional, including charactersand places, historians cannot accept the personalities, theevents or the locations as historically authentic unlessthere is other supporting evidence from sources regardedas more reliable by historians. Very often historicalevidence contradicts popular beliefs."

No one need have any quarrel with thisstatement. It does not exclude using the epic meterial inconjunction With other sources in order to put togetherancient Indian history. This is a sensitive point amongIndian historians, because many of them rightfully protestagainst the way Western orientalists have chosen to totallydisregard the epics and other ancient scriptures assources of history.

After all, those Western scholars used to displaythe same haughty rejection of the traditional Chinesechronology, with its history of the Shang (1765-1122 B.C.)and Hsia (2207-1766) dynasties; until qocuments werediscovered that proved the traditional list and chronologyof the Shang emperors correct to the detail. And more

even of a lesser order would accept." The hypothesis thatthe Ramayana events took place after the ninth centuryB.C., but were projected back by Valmiki, is not at allfar-fetched. .

To the JNU historians' observation that lithearchaeological remains (of Ayodhya, 8th century B.C.)indicate a fairly simple material life, more primitive thanwhat is described in the Valmiki Ramayana", prof. Khanreplies that Valmiki may have clothed the Ramayanaevents, for him already some centuries old, in descriptionsof the material culture of his own times (just like Europeanpaintings put Biblical scenes in a medieval or renaissanceEuropean setting).

As for the whole concept of Yuga (age), I wouldlike to point out that even among pandits there is noconsensus about its exact meaning. Some (including theMarxist historian D.O. Kosambi) have suggested that thefour Yugas are really nothing but the four seasons.This is in perfect agreement with the fundamentallycyclical character of Hindu chronology.

But if we stick to the classical interpretation offour centuries-long ages, there are still different opinionsabout their duration. The most common opinion is that thepresent Kali Yuga started in 3102 B.C., and will last for432,OOOyears, the three earlier ages having lasted evenlonger.

Swami Sri Yukteswar, however, quoting literallyfrom the ancient sage Manu, whom he consideres to be theoriginal source of the Yuga theory, says that the length ofthe ages is as follows: 4800 years Satya (or Krita) Yuga,3600 years Treta Yuga, 2400 years Dwapara Yuga, 1200years Kali Yuga. After that, the same ages return on anascending arc, from the dark Kali Yuga back up to theglorious Satya Yuga, with the same length but in reverseorder, all in, all making up a cycle of 24,000 years (anapproximation of the precession cycle). The extremely

14. Swami Sri Yukteswar : The Holy Science, SRF Pub!., L.A. 1977(1894), p .xiv.I . "In the name of history", in Indian Express, 1.4.90

17

long time spans commonly allotted to the Yugas are adeviation from the original Yuga theory throughmultiplication of the quoted figures by 360 (a stylizedapproximation of the number of days in the year), on theassumption that a year in the world is only a day in thelife of Brahma.14 .

The practical implication of sticking to the literaltext would be, that Treta Yuga ended around 3100B.C., Dwapara Yuga lasted till around 700 B.C., Kali Yugafollowed on the descending and again on the ascendingarc, lasting therefore till around 1700 A.D., so that todaywe are in Dwapara Yuga, scheduled to make way forTreta Yuga in about 3100 A.D. If Ram is to have lived inTreta Yuga this version of the Yuga theory still makes itimpossible for- him to have lived in or after the 'eighthcentury B:C. Nonetheless, the fact that even spe:ialists ofHindu religious chronology disagree on the exact timingof the successive Yugas, makes it quite unacceptable forhistorians to base their conjectures on an uncritical readingof dates expressed in Yuga terminology. .

The JNU historians replied: "Our statement thataccording to Valmiki, Rama belonged to the Treta Yuga, isread by him to mean that we accept that this was so. Howhe arrives at this conclusion remains a mystery. illS Well, ifthe JNU think tank doesn't understand, it still , is quitesimple. They have indeed, from Valiniki's placing Ram inthe Treta Yuga, flatly and without pause concluded thatValmiki's Ram lived before 3102 B.C., long before the 8thcentury B.C., when life at Ayodhya supposedly began.They have not at all considered the possibility thatValmiki may have exaggerated the time-lapse since hishero lived, or that the mysterious term 'Treta Yuga' may


r '-1fT, -

- --- ,...,

..

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO16

16. "In the name of history ", in Indian Express, 1.4.90

have had a different meaning from the one now acceptedby many pandits. In fact, any serious historian shouldhave rejected the traditional meaning of the term 'TretaYuga' in this context, for it would imply that Ram wasborn not just before the Kali Yuga's inception in 3102B.C., but also before the Dwapara Yuga, Le. hundreds ofthousands of years ago. Some few pandits actually believethat, but it is obvious nonsense.

In passing, it should be remarked how obnoxiouslycondescending the JNU team is towards its critics:"Mr. Khan's misrepresentation of our views on thesematters is, we presume, not a deliberate attempt to malignus, but due rather to an unfortunate lack of familiaritywith historical sources and an inability to comprehend thelanguage of our argument... His own familiarity with theevidence leaves much to be desired."16 Let us rememberthat "Mr. Khan" is professor of history, equal in rank to theJNU pamphleteers.

Their haughty attitude must be understood inthe context of the elitist character of Marxism in India.Marxism, like Western dress and English, is part of themake-up of an intra-colonial elite which is out to civilizeits backward countrymen. When JNU was founded, andintended to become India's Harvard, it was packed withMarxist staff. And though a number of the 25 signatoriesof the JNU pamphlet are ~mrd-carryingCPI members, theyare not troubled too mU~h by an equalitarian mentality.They uninhibitedly use the pedestal of JNU to belittle anddenigrate their opponents.

Except for the time indic~tions in the Ramayana (intheir classical interpretation), there is another source thatpostulates a history for Ayodhya reaching far beyond the9th century B.c., which none of the parties to the debatehas used so far. This is the Jain tradition concerning the

19

17. See Sharma, Chandradhar : A Critical Survey of Indilln Philosophy,1'.48. [MotHai, 1987 (1960)].

lineage of Tirthankaras ("makers of river-crossings"). Theremust have been 24 of them, the last one being MahaviraJina, a contemporary of Buddha (6th century B.C.). One ofhis predecessors, Parshvanath, is known to have been ahistorical person, living in the 8th or 9th century B.CY

So far, except for the colonial scholars' prejudiceagainst indigenous traditions, no positive reason fordismissing the list of Tirthankaras as unhistorical ha~ beengiven. But of course, like with the Ramayana, interpretingthe indications of their timing correctly may be a moredifficult matter.

In both the Ramayana and the Tirthankara list,absurdly long timespans are mentioned (such as TretaYuga). This doesn't prove that the characters concernedhave not existed (as some people, argui,ng the mythicalnature of the Tirthankaras, have ' assumed). Abraham isconsidered to have really existed, yet the only sourceabout him, the Book of Genesis, says he ,lived to the age of175, becoming a father at 99. His father died at 205, hisancestor Sem at 635, and other predecessors are describedas having lived even longer. In African legends, manyof them also spun out around histori<;al heroes, similarcosmic timespans are common. We simply have to acceptthat an essentially historical account has been blown out ofits time proportions, and that this was a common thing todo among ancient tradltionaries.

If we make a very modest estimate, and we assumearbitrarily that the Tirthankara lineage was in fact only anuninterrupted parampara (guru lineage), with oneTirthankara per generation, the first one must have livedmore than five centuries before Mahavira, Le. well into the

cond millennium B.C. Of course, the Jains themselvespostulate a far earlier beginning for their lineage, and claim


.- -. ""' ..

. ..


18. See T.K. Tukol : Compendium of Jainism, p.10-13 (Karnataka University, Dharwad 1980).

to be the oldest religion in India '(a claim deemed credibleby many historians). ,

It is possjble, if we assume the Western sch?larsdeep distrust of the indigenous tradition, that 24 w~s Just. asacred number (as in the 24-spoked wheel promment Inthe Indian flag, or the 24 years Mahavira spent in lonelyascetic practice, or the 24 tattvas in Sankhya cosmology),and that Mahavira 'completed' the list of his predecessors,inventing maybe·twenty of them, so as to make them intoa nice 24-patalled closed set with himself as the finalone. However, this methodical skepticism ends wherepositive independent testimony for the existence of at leastsome of the earlier Tirthankaras is found. Four names ofTirthankaras, including the first and second one of the list,occur in the Rig-Veda and the Atharva-Veda, which againpoints to a time well before the first mil~enni.um B.C.18 Aslong as ~h~re is no positive reason t? .d1sbehe~e ~t l~astthe essence of the Tirthankara trad1tion, the IndlCationsare that the first Tirthankaras clearly predate the firstmillennium.

There is also an internal criterion to find outwhether a story is just mythical or essentially historical. Itis used by Bible exegetes to decide on the historicity ofBible narratives, but also by forensic child psychiatrists tofind out whether a child's accusations against its father arein fact dictated by the mother (assuming she never heardof this criterion) who wants better divorce terms, or are agenuine complaint. The criterion is this: is the ~tory madeup of stereotypes, or does it contain some contmgent andunpredictable yet realistic details? . . .

Applying this criterion to the T1~thankara trad1tlO~,

we do find quite a few non-stereotyplCal elements. It 1Sbeyond the purview of this study to analyze all of them,


19. See op. cit. , p.10-22 for more arguments.20. id., p.31~33.

but one striking example certainly is this: the nineteenthTirthankara was a woman. Woman teachers were quitecommon and accepted in the Vedic age, but for the laterJain wirters, it was an embarrassing oddity. They certainlydid not concoct this woman predecessor to embellish theirlineage, on the contrary, they are very apologetic abouther. What they have indeed concocted, is the explanationthat this Tirthankara was born as a woman as a consequence of deceitful behaviour in her previou,s incarnation. They had absolutely no rea~on to put a woman inthe list, except for the fact that she has really existed.

SQ, we have enough grounds19 to confidentlyassume that the Tirthankara tradition is essentiallyhistorical. We may sift out the cosmic timespans and themiracle stroies, but the rest is probably historical.

Now .the interesting thing is that according to Jaintradition, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 14th Tirthankaras wereborn in Ayodhya.io Each of them belonged to the Ikshvakufamily, just li'~e Ram.

With the Ramayana information about Ayodhya,there is scope for doubt whether that was the sameAyodhya as today's: there is a story that the 5th-centuryA.D. king who called himself Vikramaditya (as many .ofthem did, but the theme of the story points towardsSkanda Gupta) 'rediscovered' Ayodhya, indicating that ithad been lost, and allowing for the suspicion that this kinghad arbitrarily declared the city of his choice to have beenthe ancient Ayoahya oJ Ramayana fame (more about thisin ch. 1.6.).

But in this Jain tradition, there is continuity from atleast the Vefic age through· the Maurya period down tothe Gupta and the Turko-Afghan period. A Jain presencein Ayodhya is archaeologiclly attested since the 4th

- , ~ < - •

• ' ~'I I_

. RAM )ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID20

century B.C., which is even before the presumed timeValmiki lived. There is no reason whatsoever to assumethat they just arbitrarily identified this city with an ancientcity where the first of their Tirthankaras had dwelt. And itis quite ludicrous to postulate that they, with theircontinuous presence in that city, would somehow havelost sight of the city of five of their Tirthankaras, and giventhat honour to Ayodhya by mistake.

Moreover, postulating that the Jains distorted orjust concocted their own tradition, and at the same timepostulating that Vikramaditya and the Ram worshippersdid the same thing, with both parties moreover agreeingin their concoctions on the crucial point of themillennia-old central importance of this city Ayodhya, istaking us rather far away from probability and commonsense. Of course, in science you may sometimes departfrom common sense and postulate the wildly improbable,but then you will be asked the positive grounds you havefor doing so. Here, such grounds have not been offered.

We have two witnesses, two separate traditionspostulating a hoary and glorious antiquity for thisAyodhya, extending beyond the 9th century B.C. Againstthem, we have only one, negative, testimony: the absenceof archaeological finds from before the 9th centuryB.C. The charges of untrustworthiness against the Jaintestimony, and the charge that Vikramaditya arbitrarilynamed a city of his choice Ayodhya, are not based on anypositive historical grounds; they are at best plausible.

We may conclude that it is quite alright to assume,as long as no positive proof of the contrary is provided~

that the Jain tradition is correct, and that some of the earlyJain teachers lived in Ayodhya, the same Ayodhya of today, well before the 9th century B.C. It is not necessary topostulate this for saving 'the historicity of Ram (includinghis living in Ayodhya), but it may as well be true, regardless of its usefulness in this debate.

I. Someone who does conclude that therefore there cannot have been.lOy habitation in those 7 or 8 centuries, without paying attention toII lian Tsang's evidence to the contrary, is Debashis Mukerji in Week,, .2.90.

23

It is true that the archaeologists haven't foundany<thing pre-dating the first millennium B.C. yet, butthere are good reasons, viz. the literary sources of the Jaintradition, as well as the classical reading of Valmiki'sRamayana, to insist on the possibility that signs of humanlife in Ayodhya at a much earlier time may yet be found inthe future.

Some will consider it a cheap and easy way out toassume that the excavations haven't ·found anything olderthan the first millennium B.C. simply because they haven'tfound it yet, and that something is yet to be found. Forthem, I would like to point out that B.B. Lars excavationsin Ayodhya haven't found anything from the timebetween the 3rd and the 11 th century A.D., and yet thosewho conclude therefrom that there was no habitation thenin Ayodhya, are contradicted by a number of literarysources, the best-konwn among them being HsiianTsang.21

Most of the anti-Janmabhoomi writers, including the JNUhistorians, have accepted and argumenJatively used thisli terary testimony. They have accepted that Ayodhya wasinhabited in the Gupta period, and have thereby correctlyrefused to consider the absence of archaeologicalfindings as evidence of non-:inhabttation. If HsiianTsang'spositive testimony can prevail upon the archaeological negative testimony, then Valmiki's or the Jain's testimonymight do the same.

The search for the historicity and timing of theRamayana events, as well as .of the Jain Tirthankaralradition, is still on. The matter has not been decided forIt od. It often happens that academics in public forums1r sent their own pet theory as the scientific viewpoint,when in fact the question is still open. Here also, scholars


~=

,~~ - -'-

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS, BABRI MASJID22

should guard themselves against excluding possibilitiesthat have not been conclusively ruled out, even while ·theindications in their favour are also insufficient. Sayingthat, scientifically speaking, there C4nnat have been acity on Ayodhya'~ site in the 2nd millennium B.C., is amisrepresentation of the status quaestionis of the relevantscientific research.

In subsequent chapters, we will neverthelesscomply with the prevalent opinion, and assume that anyexplanation of the historicity of Ram should not violatethe terminus postquem of the 9th century B.C.

1.6. Valmiki's Ayodhya and other religionsAyodhya was, according to the Ramayana, the

capital of Koshala. But the JNU historians point out intheir pamphlet: "Early Buddhist texts refer to Shravastiand Saketa, not Ayodhya, as the major cities of Koshala.Jama texts also refer to Saketa as the capital of Koshala.There are very few references to an Ayodhya, but this issaid to be located on the Ganges, not on the river Saryuwhich is the site of present day Ayodhya."

As prof. Khan points out, it is very strange todisregard pieces of evidence on the ground that they are"few". The first fact, before we start counting, is that thereare Buddhist and Jain texts that do mention Ayodhya. Itremains a problem that th~ Ayodhya is Sc;lid to be on JheGanges. But by how many sources? The JNUhistoiia.ns donot even c4tim that each of evert those few texts they knowof, locates Ayodhya on the·Ganges. And even if that werethe case, the jNU people should not count it as evidence,on the ground of fewness: it is after all the very same texts

.w~ich they choose to, disregard as proof of the veryeXIStence of an Ayodhya in those times.

The ancient writer may have made a mistake in thetown's geographical location. Or perhaps he meant'Ganges' in the broad sense of 'the Gangetic plain', if he

25

22. as B.S. Upadhyaya (India in Kalidasa, S. Chand & Co., Delhi 1968p.2) has found in the Samyutta NikJJya.23. Manthan, 2 / 90, p.1S.

mE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

himself was from a different part of India. At any rate, ifthe jNU historians want to explain away an Ayodhya onthe Saryu by disc9vering or inventing another Ayodhyaon the Ganges, they must face the consequences. Theynow will. have to find other evidence of this otherAyodhya, explain how it got its · name, and why it disa~peared without leaving a trace. If they cannot corne upWIth any of that, then we must decide that the postulationof a second Ayodhya is an excessive theory; one thatmultiplies entities beyond necessity.

Moreover, if we consult the relevant Buddhisttexts, we find that an isolated reference to Ayodhyao~ the Ganges does not even imply that this Ayodhya wasdIfferent from Saket, because Saket in at least one text isalso mistakenly situated on the Ganges.22

It is a fact that Buddhist texts routinely call the siteof Ayodhya, Saket. Jaina texts refer to the town by the .same name, or call it Vinita. Dr. Gupta comments thatthose texts call Saket the capital of Koshala, in and sincethe time of the Buddha (6th century B.C.); while Valmiki(perhaps 3rd century B.C.), ' who must have been acontemporary of at least some of those Jaina and Buddhistwriters, mentions Ayodhya as the capital of Koshala.23

Valmiki may have been lying, or he may have beenwriting about the situation during some far-off TretaYuga, but it is more probable that in the centuries beforeand up to Valmiki, the capital of Koshala was knownalternatively as Saket, Vinita and Ayodhya.

. Dr. Gupta says: "There is nothing Surprising inthIS. The town of Varanasi has also been calledKashi...Similarly, Pataliputra...was also known in ancientli terature as Kusumpur.. . Hence, in all likelihood,


24. Manthan, 2 / 90.

27THE H ISTORIANS' DEBATE

century do we find the Ramanandi sadhus settling on alarge scale. It was in the subsequent centuries that theybuilt most of their temples in Ayodhya."

However, as prof. Khan points out, they contradicttheir own theory by another contention made in the samepamphlet, where they explain why Skanda Gupta wouldhave named the city Ayodhya: "This does not necessarilysuggest that the Gupta king was a bhakta of Rama. Inbestowing the name of Ayodhya on Saket he was trying togain prestige for himself by drawing on the tradition ofthe Suryavamshi kings, a line to which Rama is said tohave belonged."

Prof. Khan aptly remarks· that this statement"concedes the fact that the tradition of Rama and hisassociation with Ayodhya had gained credibility in theminds of the people as early as 1500 years ago... to theextent that the Gupta king could hope to gain prestige bymerely renaming a town as Ayodhya (although there is noevidence to suggest that Skanda ~upta renamed it to gainprestige)."

We may add a supporting fact mentioned by dr.S.P. Gupta: "Emperor Skanda' Gupta...laid the foundationtone of a Vishnu temple at Ayodhya which, as mentioned

in the inscription, he dedicated to god Saringin, i.e. theod with bow and arrow, obviously Rama."

In their reply to prof. Khan's critique, the JNUhistorians retreat to the next line of defence. Whileorrectly stating that "the Suryavamsha lineage is distinct

(rom the Rama cult and was adopted by many rulingf, milies for purposes of political legitimation", and overI oking the fact that this legitimation was based precisely(n a broadly recognized deified status of Ram, theyoncede that some kind of Ram cult must have been

In xistence. But for them that fact doesn't count, because"Ih importance of Rama in Gupta times was as oneof the avataras in a Vaishnava tradition of worship,


Ayodhya... had different sectors, some religionspatronized some sectors and gave them one name, whileother religions patronized other sectors and called themby another name. But basically they all belonged to asingle human settlement area. "24

What is more, there are ancient sources thatexplicitly refer to both Ayodhya and Saket as one and thesame city. Kalidas, the famous Sanskrit poet of the early5th century AD., uses both names interchangeably in hisRaghuvamsha Hsii an Tsang, the Chinese traveller of the7th century, calls the city A-yu-t'o, clearly a transcription of Ayodhya, not of Saket. The JNU historians havenot considered these facts, but they might retort that atleast Hsu an Tsang wrote after the situation had changedin the 5th century AD., when, in the words of their booklet, "the town of Saket was renamed Ayodhya by a Guptaking. Skanda Gupta in the late 5th century A.D. moved hisresidence to Saketa and called it Ayodhya."

This brings up another point: while the JNUhistorians are perfectly right in asserting that in preMuslim times the town had been a religious centre of bothBuddhists and Jains, was the town then already a centre ofRam worship? They say it wasn't: "Its rise as a majorcentre of Rama worship is, in fact, relatively recent."

They cite "inscriptions from the 5th to the 8thcentury AD."~ Hsu an Tsang, and "texts of the 11 the century AD.", as not mentioning Ram or the Ram cult in connection with Ayodhya. "The cult of Ayodhya seems tohave become popular from the thirteenth century. It gainsground with the gradual rise of the Ramanandi sect andthe composition of the Rama story in Hindi. Even in the15th and 16th centuries Ramanandis had not settledin Ayodhy~ on a significant scale. Shaivism was moreimportant than the cult of Rama. Only from the 18th

.r, -- ',_~' ,,_,•• ~' ~ ::.,..,... 1 ....

" ,

his independent status as an object of worship was asubsequent development of a later period."

This statement makes an irrelevant distinction anddisplays a clumsy understanding of the concept of 'av~tara'(a god's incarnation) in Hinduism. The Hindu gods arerepresentations of aspects of reality. For instance, whenconceived as parts of a threesome (trimurti), Brahma,Vishnu and Shiva represent the aspects of a threefoldreality. Brahma (as well as his 'consort' Saraswati)represents inception, initiation, tuning the mind to thet~sk. .vishnu represents fullness, continuity, stability, andYIeldmg res~lts ~his 'consort' Lakshmi symbolizes .fertilityand wealth). Sh~va .represents breaking the ties, sayinggoodbye, retreatmg mto oneself (therefore, his consort isParvati, 'the one of the mountain', i.e. the lonely heights).

Now, these principles are embodied in thephenomenal world. Every student is an incarnation of~~a~~a or Saraswati, as well as everyone who impartsmitIation or does an inceptional ritual. A man and awoman who marry, who become pillars of social stability,and are about to transmit and continue the stream of life,thereby become incarnations of Vishnu and Lakshmi. Andthose who renounce the world thereby become Shi~a andParvati. The Hindu 'gods' really make sense.

It should now become clear in what sense Ram wasan avatar or incarnation of Vishnu. His main significance,a.ccording to tradition, is that he was an upholder ofr~ghteousness (dharma), an establisher of the kingdom ofng~teousness (dharma rajya, or indeed 'Ram rajya'): atypIcally Vishnu mission. There is no difference between'Ram as incarnation of Vishnu' and 'Ram as such'.

Still, there is a difference in flavour betweenValmiki's Ramayana and its Hindi vers~on, the Ram CharitManas by Goswami Tulsidas (16th century). In morerecent times, Ram is more superhuman, more deifiedin advance less human and historical than in ancient 2. Indian Express, 1.4.90.

'} . Manthan, 3 / 90.


accounts. Some say that this is due to Muslim influence, inimitation of the untheologically superhuman status of theprophet in popular Islam. At any rate, even while the Ramcult may have become more personalized-devotional,there is no change in Ram's status as 'an incarnation ofVishnu'. As prof. Khan writes:"As long as Rama's worshiphad started, it is immaterial whether he was worshippedas an avatara of Vishnu or by virtue of an 'independentstatus' of his own... To this day, Rama is worshipped evenby those who are not Ramanandis and most of whom areunable to distinguish between Rama as an avatara ofVishnu or as an independent god..."25

We may conclude that, whatever be the true storybehind Valmiki's Ramayana, Ayodhya has been a centreof Ram worship since at least the 5th century A.D, whenSkanda Gupta founded a Ram/Vishnu temple there, andnamed the city Ayodhya, either in continuation of anexisting tradition or as the start of a new one. So, whenBabar's men arrived in Ayodhya, they may well havefound a centuries-old and flourishing Ram cult there.

While the s~ar~h for material traces of Valmiki'sRam story may have less bearing on the Babri Masjid issueonce the fact of a pre-Babar Ram cult in Ayodhya has beenestablished, it need not be given up. Prof. Gupta reportson the arch~eological campaign 'Archaeology of theRamayana Sites', in 1975-80, led by prof. B.B. Lal: "Theearliest habitational layer in these trenches, laid directlyab,ove the llatural soil, yielded the most beautiful potteryof Indian material culture... This pott,ery is dated to theperiod not later than 8th-9th centiry B.C."26 Perhaps it didkind of live ,up to the luxuriant standards of Valmiki'sdescriptions. The findings certainly don'l explode the


30

31

legendary king Vikramaditya...who was able to rediscoverthe original locations of Ram's life by means ofmeditation".29 Van der Veer also mentions an interestingdetail from the stroy: Vikramaditya saw a black man enterthe river Saryu, and come out white again. The man wasPrayag, black with the sins that many pilgrims hadwashed off, and "he explained that even he could washaway all 'his' sins in this place, because it was Ayodhya.So, Vikramaditya perchance was already in Ayodhyawhen he met Prayag. The latter then showed him all theplaces where Ram had lived.30

The king went to "Prayag, the king of tirthas",who showed him the way to Ayodhya. Who is thisPrayag? I mean, if you want to use this story as evidence,it is important to understand it fully, and to know who itsprotagonists are. Only an analphabet to Indian culturecould fail to notice that Prayag does not designate somewise old king, but the foremost place of pilgrimage, the'king' among the tirthas, where the gigantic Kumbha Melafestival is held (nowadavs also called Allahabad). Here,

J

Prayag is personified, which is very common in Indianreligious discourse (efr. anthropomorphic sayings like:"Assi Ghat [= most upstream bathing-place of Varanasi] iswhere Ganga-ji meets Kashi [=Varanasi].").

Now, what to make of this story? Apparently, it isnot attested to have been in existence for more than amillennium after this 'rediscovery' supposedly took place.T surmise it was invented by the personnel of Ayodhya'sRam cult (who, according to the JNU historians, onlytarted flocking to Ayodhya in the 13th century) . In their

world, basing the ancient credentials of their city on amiracle story meant something very different from what itmeans to us. For them, it meant adding a divine element,therefore sacredness, to the history of their city; while for

Gods on Earth, p .34.n. id ., p.19.


I

J

RAM JANMABHOOMI vs. BABRI~ASJID

hypothesis of Ram living in Ayodhya sometim! early inthe first millennium B.C.27

h' Moreover, prof. Maheshwari Prasad (ancient. ~tory, BH1!), who has archaeologically traced Ram'sItln~rary dunng ~he exile episode, and found Valmiki's list~f J?urney stations to be consistent with the actualfindmgs, .sta!es categorically that the place where Ramst~rt~ hIS Journey (Le. Valmiki's Ayodhya) must bewithm a few miles from the city now known asAyodhya.28 Don't underestimate the accuracy of tr~dition

. Th.e JNU historians try to counter the tradition'WhICh ~mformly up~olds Ayodhya as the ancient city ofRam, WIth another pIece of tradition. It is potentially important ~s an a.r~ment, .therefore it is a bit strange thatthey. ~m~~ mentIomng theIr source, just calling it "the localtradItlo~ . Anyway, let's hear the story.

. In a way, the local tradition of Ayodhyarecog~Izes the ambiguous history of its origin. Thestory IS ~hat Ayodhya was lost after the Treta Yuga andwas redIScovered b~ Vikram;:lditya. While searching fort~le lost Ay~~hya, Vikramaditya met Prayaga, the king oftlrthas [= nver-crossings", places of pilgrimage], who~ew about Ayodhya and showed him where it wasVikramaditya marlced the place but could not find it later:Then ·he met a yogi who told him that he should leta cow and a calf roam. When the calf came acrosst~e Janmabhoomi, milk would flow from its udder. Theking followed the yogi's advice. When at a certain pointthe calf's ~dders began to flow the king decided that thiswas the SIte of the ancient Ayodhya."

P~ter Van der Veer also reports being "told byAyodhya s pandas [= temple priests]" that Ayodhya hadbeen lost and was "miraculously rediscovered by the

27.. The same d~ta are also listed in dr. Murlidhar H . Paho'a in hisarhcl~ Arc~ologlcal data on Temple, in Indian Express, 14.5.90. )28. IntervIew, 1.3.90.

us, it mean~ supplying a gap in the 'historical' history ofAyodhya wIth a convenient fairytale.

. Certainly this story wasn't around when SkandaGupta (t~ought to have been the Vikramaditya of thisstory~ bUIlt a Ram temple in the late 5th century AD, inthe ~Ity ~e called Ayodhya. And at any rate it could not~ossibly Influence Kalidas, who lived two generations earlIer and called the town alternatively Saket and Ayodhya.If. the to~n was called Ayodhya some fifty years beforeVikra~adltya discovered it to be Ayodhya, well, then he~a~ nght, no matter what practices he used to arrive at hisInsIght.

. At any rate, this story's contents are used as a pieceof. ~~Idence by. the JNU historians (without any sourceCntIclsm), but mterpreted to mean just the opposite ofwhat it says, viz. that Ayodhya was not rediscoveredt~at this ~as not the ancient Ayodhya. They take th~ stor;IIt~ral~y~ I.~. they assume that that king went throughthIS dIVInation procedure of follOWing an animal untilso~ething specifi~ w~uld happen. But while Ayodhyapnest.s would belIeve In the efficacity of this procedure,and m the correctness of the divinatory designationof Ayodhya, the modem historians would say that thispro~edure was not more than a matter of chance, unable todecIde factual questions like the location of an ancient city.!herefore, the re-Iocating of Ayodhya, faithfully describedm the story, was unscientific, superstitious, and unable' toproduce the truth. It was myth filling a gap in history.

. T~e JNU historians assert: "This myth of 're-~Iscoverr of Ayodhya, this claim to an ancient sacredhnea?"e, IS ~~ effort to import to a city a specific religioussanctity WhICh it lacked." Remark the typically Marxist~endency to . decide on the truth of a story not from anIndependent investigation thereof (which they forego 'they.don't consider, let alone check out, the possible non~deceItful grounds that the king may have had for calling

the city Ayodhya), but from the postulated use towhich the story has been put. Anyway, there is a flaw intheir explanation.

On the JNU historians' own admission, Ayodhyawas..an important religious centre of at least Buddhismand ]ainism in the centuries preceding this Gupta king.Well-known Buddhist philosophers of the Yogacharaschool lived there in the 4th century AD. It didn't lacksanctity at all: at the least it was considered to be the birthplace of five Tirthankaras and one of the places where theBuddha had meditated. The king may have moved hisseat of government to this city to impart religious sanctityto his own dynasty, but the city's own religious credentialswere already well-established. And again, using the nameAyodhya to confer religious prestige, be it on the dynastyor on the city, implies that the Ram cult was alive andfunctioning in that area and era.

Moreover, the story is ' not related byVikramaditya, it is not used by the king to "impartsanctity" to his city. It is related by preachers, and it is theywho use it to exalt _the holiness, i.e. the cleansingpower, of their city. Taken at face value, the story is usefulas advertisement for Ayodhya among devout people.Perhaps it contains an element of competition, so typicalin hagiography (when ~'me saint is credited with a miracle,devotees of another saint attribute the same kind ofmiracle, slightly magnified; to their own saInt): Prayagcleans well, but Ayodhya cleans even better!

To a more depth-oriented listener, the story mayound like a religious parable, not a more or less historifal

tradition..Parables, explanatory stories, and metaphorical,piritual interpretations 'of commonly known stories both

fictional and historical, often humorously presented, arethe basic tool-kit of Hindu preachers. .'

For example, I have once heard a Swami use thehistorical character of the British king Edward, who abdi-



cated his throne in order to marry an American divorcee,~s a metaphor of the people who abdicate their 'kingdomof heaven. for ~orldly pleasures. Very well-known.are theme~aphoncal m~erpretations of the great · epics, e.g. thebasIc. characters m the Mahabharata: : Arjun's chariot is thephySIcal human b~ing; the horses are the senses; Arjun isth~ pass~nger, the mdweller in the human person, the Self;K.ns~na. IS ~he charioteer, the controller of the senses, thedIScnmmatmg power of the intellect. .

1!'is ~tory o.f ~he discovery of Ayodhya, even if ithas ~ ~Istoncal ongm, may be interpreted like such a~~mIlet,Ic parable. In my conjecture, it only becamehIStOry When. a .s~ho~ar asked a .half-educated panda (thepoverty and diminIshmg level of schooling of the priests iso~e of the great problems Hinduism faces today) for thehIstory of Ayodhya, and the good man related the onlyrelevant story he could think of, never mind pulling it outof context.

. . Going on pilgrimage to Prayag, the king, like allpllgnms, found back the way ~o Ayodhya, Le. the way tothe lost paradise of dharnia. As Van der Veer's version ofthe storr in~icates, it w~s through meditation that the king~~uld fmd It. ,?harma, m the ramayanic, heroic sense ofnghteo~n~s~ , ?e~omes a metaphor for dharma in the

sense of religIOn, the Way". Prayag represents the guruthe on~, who .k~ows and shows Ayodhya, explained a;a-yud~, no stnfe , the state without disunity, the state (ofconSCIousness) beyond the pairs of opposites.

Where is this lost paradise, this Rain Rajya ? Wellsays Pray~g, the place where evert Prayag, who is blackWIth the sms of all those pilgrims who wash themselves atPrayag, comes to bathe and rises clean and white from the~ater. The g~ru, according to popular belief, takes uponhImself the sms of his pupils. Where does he get rid ofthem? Whenever he enters the hig!:~st state of consciousness, automatically all sins are washed away Th'

I • IS


purifying effect of this highest state is depicted as the riverSaryu. This highest state is Ayodhya, the state fromwhich Ram is born. What is born in this state is "Ram",considered to be derived from the Sanskrit root 'ram',meaning "to rejoice".

Now, when your guru isn't there anymore,how to find Ayodhya then? Well, says the yogi in the story(stripping his advice of its miraculous element), where acow gives milk, there is Ayodhya. Perfectly ordinaryyet wholesome, even holy, that sacred cow. Onemight connect this with the Vedic cosmological myths andsymbols, but it is simpler to draw attention to the fact thatthe yogi does not name any specific place. This means thatthe real Ayodhya is not a place, and the Ram that mattersis not the historical Ram; just like Augustine's 'Civitas Dei'comes instead of the earthly Rome, and the 'New Jerusalem'is not the geographical Jerusalem.

That doesn't ru,le out the historicity of Ramand his rule in Ayodhya (efr. Jerusalem, both historicaland symbolical), but that was not what this yogi wasinterested in. The Ayodhya that the yogi pointed out, wasthe spiritual Ayodhya, not the geographical one. And,more importantly for our topic, the Ayodhya that had bemlost, was the spiritual Ayodhya, not the geographical Ayodhya.The physical Ayodhya had been known all along: peopledo 'not just lose track of their sacred cities.

Why would that sadhu have made Vikramadityathe hero of his story? Because Skanda Gupta, one of manykings who were also called Vikramaditya, was known tohave looked for Ayodhya (which would imply a far-offhistorical basis for the story, after a11)? Perhaps we aret aling here with another Vikramaditya, the original one,who defeated the Shakas and reconquered Ujjain in 58 Be,.md after whom the Vikram Samvat calendar system isn, med. Many legends have bec()me attached to hisp rson, and it would be normal, even a bit stereotypical, to


, r .... -

"'." . -' ' '+

name the chief character of a story just Vikramaditya (as inKing Vikram and the Ghost). Then again, it may be SkandaGupta, if the listeners were thought to know of the factthat Skanda Gupta had indeed made the physical move(of his throne) towards Ayodhya, thus exemplifying whatwe all have to do in a non-physical sense. Either way,Vikramaditya only performs in this story because a fairlyrecent story-teller put him in. '

I want to stress once more that the allegoricalinterpretation of the story cited by Vander Veer and theJNU historians, is not at all far-fetched at least in the senseof misplaced and mechanically forced upon the story. Youreally do find many Hindu teachers who work out thiskind of allegory to speak about this kind of topic. That thisstory is about yoga and not about history, should be clearfrom these facts: it contains no histarical details, nocalendar data of even the vaguest kind, no precise namefor the protagonist (there has be,en many a 'kingVikramaditya', in stories a stereotypical name), becausethose things are not needed in a parable: one out of threecharacters in the story is a yogi, and meditation (i.e. yoga)is explicitiy mentioned as the way by w~ich the places ofRam's life were discovered.

It is a different matter that some less-educatedpandas of Ayodhya have started to ta~ this story literally(at least according to their academic interviewer),interpreting a metaphor as a mira<;:le, etc. That is an all toofamiliar phenomenon in the history of religious discourse.

At any rate, I don't think it is good history-writingto build conclusions on this story. As an extra argument, Imight point to the strange line that the king in the story"marked the palce but could not find it later". This clearlygets us in trouble if we take it as historical. In the timebefore Skanda Gupta made Ayodhya his capital, it wasalready a flourishing and radiant city. How could onepossibly forget it, once it had been found to be the place

1.7. ''The secular emperor Babar"In 1987, a five-member 'research team' led by mrs.

urinder Kaur pulished a book, The Secular Emperor Babar.Was Babar an Iconoclast ? The book is quite interesting, foril gives many quotations from source material which ish4 rd to get. The authors have checked a numb,er of

37THE I-flSTORlANS' DEBATE

one was looking for? And why would that yogi notsimply have given the name of the city, a clear enoughdesignation, rather than to go through a miraculousprocedure? Was that because, even within the sotry, thecow-divination was not used to find the city Ayodhya,which wasn't lost at all, but only the Janmabhoomi (theterm is used in the JNU historians' version), the precisebirth-spot? We need not go into that question, becausethere is enough reason to believe that the story does notrelate any historical events at all, and that there isn't anydistinction here between the specific birth-spot andAyodhya, since both are just metaphors for 'the source(= birthplace) and realm (=city) of joy (= Ram)'.

The story is not connected even in a distorted waywith the political process of Skanda Gupta's moving hiscapital to Ayodhya. So, I think there is sufficient reasonnot to consider this (otherwise instructive) story as anargument against. the continuity of Ayodhya as one andthe same city, from the core events of the Ramayana downto the present.

Of course, that doesn't clinch the issue of the exactbirth spot, the 'Janmabhoomi'. But then who knows forsure if Jesus was born in the stable in Bethlehem? Still,Christians go on pilgrimage' there, and would be rightfullyindignated if Jews or Muslims interfered w,ith it. So thereal issue in Ayodhya is not where exactly Ram was born,but whether or not a Janmabhoomi (or even another)Mandir has been destroyed to make way for the BabriMasjid.


·...r:... I

historical references used by other partici'pants in theMandirIMasjid-argument. It is a meritorio~ contributionto this debate. And yet, in all the pubhc statementsby historians, politicians and columnists, this book isnever referred to.

The reason is not that the book's editor is biased.Of course, she sometimes writes in Dalit Voice, the mostvirulently anti-Hindu paper in the world. But · otherprominent participants ' in the intellectuals' debate. over

.Ayodhya are also declaredly anti-religion, anti-Mushm oranti-Hindu. And of course, even biased people can makecorrect points. .

I think the first reason for ignoring the book IS thefact that none of the authors wield any academic titles.The Indian academic world has a strong caste mentality,with a tremendous disdain for qutsiders (not due to. itsbeing Indian, but due to its bein~ academi~). The pUbl~h

ing quality of the book is also a bIt amateurIS~, contrastI~g

poorly with the Penguin editions of RomIla Thapar s,Bipan Chandra's or M.J.IAkbar's books.

The second reason why the book isn't taken veryseriously, is probably that while givin~ p~oof of hard anduseful search - work, it is badly dISfigured by verypoor reasoning, contradictory statements, and flatly untrue contentions.

For example, the authors quote with approval astatement about the Ramayana, that "there is evidentlyno historical core below the surface, no scholar of Indianhistory now thinks that Rama, the hero of the Ramayan~,

was a historical person..."31 As we have just seen, tha~ ISplainly unture: a number of historian~ and archaeologIstsdo think that the Ramayana is centred around someessentially historical characters and even~s. An? evenmany of those who think otherwise, w~uI?n t ~~nsider theentire fictionality of the Ramayana as eVIdent.

31. Secular Emperor Babar, p.20.

TIm HISTORIANS' DEBATE39

But the statement is not only untrue it is alsoco~tradicted by the authors themselves. At one'pOint, thebnng.Rav~~a, Ram's enemy, into their argument.32 The~they ImplICItly accept the fairly common theory that thes~rug~le between ~am and Ravana is essentially thehIStoncal struggle between North- and South-Indianswhich is nothing less than a historical basis for the epic. '

Moreover they postulate (again by quotes withapproval) that Ravana was a convert to Buddhism andthat there is even a Buddhist Source describing a m:etingbetween Buddha and Ravana, as a basis for their contention that "Rama legend represents the victory of Hinduismover Buddhism" (a conclusion borrowed from a book of1893, The History of India by Talboys Wheeler, and nowcommonly considered far-fetched). So, while refusingh~toricity t? one of the central characters of Ramayana,VIZ. Ram hImself, they allot it to another one, Ravana.Well, that amounts to recognizing a basis in history for theRamayana epic.

The aut~ors quote Hsii an Tsang as counting onehundred BUd~hIstSangharamas in Ayodhya, and only ten

eva (accordmg to the JNU historian, this is to beI~S~ed a~ . n~n-~uddhist) temples.33 That is to say, "91 %

r lIglOUS Institutions at Ayodhya were Buddhist and only9% were Hindu temple".34 They have not paused to do

me historical criticism, and to consider the well-known(. t that Hsiian TSC!ng was a somewhat biased proBUddhist writer, who wanted to tone down for his

hinese readers his own impression that Buddhism wasI ply declining in its land of origin. Moreover, did heh .k whether all those institutions were really Buddihist,

Id he conclude this from, say, the display of Swastikasthe outside walls, a ' symbol which would seem

Id., p.35-36.id., p.27./d" p.21.


35. id., p.30-33.36. id., p.53-57. The authors refer to ASI RepeTt, vol. XII.

Buddhist' to a Chinese, but which Buddhism shares withthe other Indian traditions?

Nevertheless, I will not quarrel over Hsiian Tsang'sfigures. The point is that the authors themselves contradictthese figures (on which they base a few conclusions) in thenext chapter, where they o$um up a whole list of Jaintemples, such as "five Jain temples dedicated tofilT~ Trithankaras born there, king Nabhiroy'stemple, Sitakund, Sahastardhara, Swargadwara etc. Jaintemples ".35 They even assert: "There is no doubt that thefirst acquaintan~e of the Muslims in the 11th-12th centuryWith Ayodhya was as a Jain city because upto that timeJain religion seems to have been the dominating religionof Ayodhya." And Jainism in Ayodhya was not apost- Hsii an Tsang 'novelty: "Maurya emperors (3rd century B.C.) and king Vikramaditya (5th century A.D.) alsorenovated the ancient Jain temples and built new Jaintemples." So, if Hsiian Tsang overlooked them, or countedthem among his "ten" Deva temples, he clearlymiscounted, and mrs. Surinder Kaur was wrong inaccepting his figures.

Another self-defeating passage in the book is thefollowing. The authors critkize a British officer of theArchaeological Survey of ·India (ASI), a mr. Carlleyle, whohas written that a mosque in Sambhal, near Delhi, wasoriginally a Hindu temple. Mr. Carlleyle argued that .somestones showed signs of having been turned over, so as tohide pieces of Hindu imagery from the believers visitingthe temple-tumed-mosque.36

Now our authors disbelieve his hypothesis,arguing rhetorically: "~d he tum any pavement stoneupward and [find] the Hindu sculpture on it?" If mr.Carlleyle doesn't break out those stones, it is because he's


7. id., p.75.

just a biased pseudo-scientist who avoids the test offac~al observation, so they imply. But then they blowtheIr own case by continuing: "Will Muslims allow him todo so, even if he [is] a research scholar? No." In fact, notonly the local Muslims, but also the ASI rules forbadebreaking out stones from a mosque still in use. So the factthat mr. Carlleyle couldn't show the remains of Hindusculptures, does not prove that they aren't there.

A final example of mrs. Kaur's uncareful reasoning, is her contention that the Masjid cannot have beenbuilt in the three months between Babar's troops' arrival inthe A~odhya. ar~a and the beginning of the rainy seasonYThe first thmg that strikes the visitor to the presentcontroversial bui1c~ing, is that it is so small, like a bighous.e, and so siJnple and unrefined. It was perfectlypOSSIble to build it in three months (and moreoverbuilding activity even during the rainy season is not un~common).

Anyway, let us now focus on the central thesis ofthe book: there is no indication that Babar was a fanaticalMusl~m, on the contrary, he was quite incapable offanatIcal acts such as destrOying Hindu temples, ~cludinga supposed Ram temple at Ayodhya. "

Before we try to find out whether this assertion istru,e, let us first ask ourselves whether it is relevant to theissue u.nder consideration. Indeed, it is possible that theassertion is correct, while the claim that a temple wasdemolished to make way for the Babri Masjid is equallycorrect. The Ram Janmabhoomi campaigners in general 'don't care who precisely demolished the Mandir and built~he Masjid, bu~ on ~he basis of an ins~riptionon the MasjidI~se1f, they beheve It was done by Mir Baqi, one of Babar'sheutenants. Babar himself may never even have been inAyodhya city (though he has certainly camped in Awadh,

, ~.,..-- ",--. .


--.....' . ~ .~. ":

,~ .

38. id., p.32.

i.e. Ayodhya province). Tradition has it that Mir Baqi, orwhoever was in control, did this under pressure from alocal Muslim divine, Fazle Abbas, alias Musa Ashikan. So,all that is assumed, is that this one cleric was fanatical andhad some influence. Babar, and perhaps even Mir Baqi,can safely be absolved from the charge of being fanatical,without dropping the claim that Muslims built the BabriMasjid on top of an existing place of worship.

Coming to the question of the correctness of theauthors' thesis, let us look at other events in Babar's life toSee whether he was indeed an example of tolerance. Mrs.Kaur's team states, in a different context: "In 1528, theMughal emperor Babar, it seems, got many Jaintemples...mutilated. Babar did order the mutilation ofnude Jaina idols in Urwah valley near Gwalior. He has[admitted] it in his autobiography."38

However, they claim that this iconoclasm 'hadnothing to do with fanaticism and intolerance: "The nudityand obscenity of the Jain idols at Ayodhya might havepromoted him to order their mutilation too." While Jainstatues are often nude, they are hieratic and can by nostretch of the unfanatical imagination be consideredobscene. The authors admit even more: "The black pillarsused in Babari Masjid seem to have been taken fromthe ruins of the Jain temples." Put in this context, thisstatement implies that Babar destroyed more than justparts of idols. Their next sentence, an approved quotefrom an Ayodhya guidebook, confirms this impression:"During the liberal rule of [Babar's successors] Akbar andJahangir, some Hindu and Jain temples were constructedagain." So, dUril}g his conquest of India (after a lifetime inMuslim countries), Babar did not tolerate at least one kindof Kafir temples and art.

43

39. id., p.47.40. id., p.52.

TIlE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

To build up their case for absence of intolerance inBabar, the authors cite an interesting argu~entl{-m e silentio.Guru Nanak, who has fiercely and eloquently criticized"Babar's cruelty and treatment of innocent citizens,particularly women",39 describes cruelties against bothHindus and Muslim Pathans, abductions of both Hinduand Muslim women. "The point to be noted is that GuruNanak does not accuse Babar of any iconoclast zeal, norparticularly of anti-Hindu crusade."40 In that case, GuruNanak is saying that Babar was not cruel because he was aMuslim fanatic, but just because he was greedy, orbecause he had a lust for power and women, or because ofsome visceral tendency to cruelty. If God is a seailarist,that distinction will spare Babar's soul some years inpurgatory.

Meanwhile, absolving Babar is a differnt matterfrom absolving Islam. While Babar's cruelty after hisconquest of Lahore may have been meted out equally toHindus and Muslims, Babar does make a distinctionbetween them. Only when he goes to war against Hindus,does he call the war a jihad. And for those who still believethe fairy-tale that jihad re~lly means 'earnest striving in thefaith', or some such harmless thing, the facts of Babar's lifeshould clarify convincingly that jihad does mean war. Mrs.Kaur faithfully translates it as 'holy war'.

When he fought fellow Muslims, he had to counton strategy and strength of arms, as in any war. But whenhe fought Hindus, he could and did apppeal to aninfluential ideology that gave him some substantialadvantages: Islam and its doctrine Qf jihad.

Firstly, among believing soldiers, the declaration ofjihad added a lot to their motivation and fighting spirit.The Quran promises a prominent place in paradise to the

RAM ]ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MAS]IO42

Muslim who djes in a jihad. And the survivors who havekilled Kafirs, get the honorific title ghazi" fighter againstinfidels. Moreover, they get a free hand in looting,abducting women and having or selling captives as slaves.Such practices exist in most wars, but Islam gives themscriptural sanction in the case the enemies are unbelievers.Both Quran and Hadis are very eloquent and unambig-uous on thiS topic. . '

Secondly, alliances being a crucial factor in manywars· the declaration of jihad gives a Muslim general theadvantage that, in 'principle, every nearby Muslim armywill support him, and that, in practice, no rivallingMuslim general will use the occasion to make an alliancewith the Kafirs against him. Surely there have beenexceptions, bad Muslims who preferred their personalambitions to their Islamic duty. But in general this (at theleast passive) Muslim solidarity was a strong factor infavour of the Musim side in a jihad.

An ecample of this Muslim solidarity in case ofjihad we see in the following well-known episode. Whensultan Bahadur of Gurjarat attacked the Rajput strongholdof Chitor in 1533, the rani (queen) of Chitor sent toHumayun (Babar' son) for help. Humayun, known as aromantic, was inclined to go to her rescue. However,Chitor fell b~fore Humayaun got there. That at least is' theversion given out by modem secularists, to spread themessage: look what good friends Hindus and Muslimswere, a Hindu asking a Muslim -for help!

What they omit, is that Humaytm never actuallyset out for the defense of Chitor. Sultan Bahadur,suspecting attempts to forge an alliance between theRajput and the Moghul (both were in trouble and coulduse an ally), worte a letter to remind Humayun of hisIslamic duty, not to interfere (except on the good side) inthe current jihad: the two of them could fight each other

41. id., p.65-66.

45

afterwards., if that was what he wanted, but first the Kafirshad to be defeated. And Humayun obliged. ~

In this case, as in Babar's, it is immaterial whetherthe sultan was a truly believing Muslim, whether he was afanatic at heart or.only in his actions. What matters is thathe disposed ,of an ideology, Islam, which obliSed all thosewho adhered to it (again, not necessanly i,n their privatethoughts, but at least through their public commitmentsand actions), to stand together in holy war against the restof humanity.

The debate over Ay:odhya really is a footnote in thefundamental ideological debate about the nature of Islam.No matter what Babar's innermost motivations were, theimpression exists and must be investigated, that Islam asan ideology played a crucial role in bringing about wars,plunder, oppression, slavery, and the destruction of placesof worship, possibly including a Ram temple at Ayodhya.We will look into this fundamental question in ch. 1.10.

The strongest argument brought up by mrs. Kaur'steam in favour of Babar's personal tolerance and nonfanaticism, even secularism, is a document considered tobe his testament. It is a letter to his son Humayun, and amanifesto of Moghul tolerance, as practised by his grandson Akbar. Babar writes that "the Empire of Hindustan iswell known for its diverse religions... Cleanse the heart ofreligious bigotry and administer justice in accordance withthe prescribed manner of every sect... Especially avoid thecow sacrifice for that is the way to win the hearts of thepeople of Hindustan... Also do not desecrate the templeand other places of worship of the different communities...It is better to spread Islam with the sword of kindnessthan with the sword of persecution... Harmonize thepeople of different faiths..."41

THE' HISTORIANS' DEBATE

~J ~-., ----' ,-

:-,"....... . -


These lines fit the case of the Babar fans soperfectly that one might suspect the testament to be aforgery. In fact, many historians have done so. Mrs.Beveridge, who prepared a translation of Babar's diary(known as the Babar Nama), lists no less than fifteenindicatio~s that the document is a forgery, includinganachromsms and unroyal quality of the seals, the calligraphy and even the spelling.42 Dr. Radhey Shyam hasbrought up some counter-arguments, but refrains fromcategorically asserting that the document is authentic.43 Inmrs. Kaur's otherwise well-researched book, thiscontroversy of source criticism is totally ignored, thedocument's value as a strong piece of evidence is notquestioned at all.44

If the testament is genuine, it still doesn't prove. that Babar never was a fanatic. In fact, it sounds more like

the tolerant afterthoughts of an ageing man who had cometo understand that his earlier intolerance had only madethings much more difficult for himself. Nevertheless, mrs.Kaur's conclusion from the testament, as well as fromother documents such as grants of land to Hindus byBabar, is: "Now after drawing this picture of Babar'spersonality we leave it to readers to decide: could a manlike Babar order destruction of a Hindu temple?"45 Thereasoning is as follows. Major: Babar didn't do anythingfanatical. Minor: demolishing the supposed RamJanmabhoomi temple (if it ever existed) would have beenfanatical. Conclusion: Babar didn't demolish a RamJanmabhoomi temple.

One problem with this reasoning is that it is circular. That Babar never destroyed temples, as postulated inthe major, is a contention dependent on the correctness of

42. quoted in full in Radhey Shyam : Babar, appendix 4.43. - id.44. Secular Emperor Babar, p.65.45. id., p.68.

46. id., p.66; the quote is from S.K. Banerjee : Babar and the Hindus,Journal of the United Provinces Historical Society, July 1936.47. id., p.69.48. id., p.79.49. Radhey Shyam : Babar, p.457-58.

47

the conclusion, viz. that he didn't destroy the Ayodhyatemple. Moreover, even if the major is interpreted in amore loose sense, and counted as a correct general statement about Babar's personality, human beings are suchthat they sometimes do uncharacteristic things, so thateven generally tolerant people are sometimes intolerant.

Another problem with the conclusion suggested bythis rhetorical question, is that historians who workedfrom the same premise, viz. Babar's tolerance, still contendthat the Babri Masjid replaced an existing Hindu place ofworship. The authors quote S.K. J3anerjee as saying: "It isnow clear that a person like Babar could hardly be unkindto Hindus."46 And yet, the same mr. Banerjee is alsoquoted as saying: liThe temples of the [Hindus] were in nocircumstances to be demolished or desecrated... [One] ofhis overzealous officials...Mir Baqi took advantage of thereligious fervour and demolished the main temple ofAyodhya (Janmasthan) during his march to the east. Lateron he obtained sanction from the emperor and built themosque."47

Another historian, Radhey Shyam, is quoted inthick print as saying: "It would be quite injudicious to holdin any way Babar responsible for the destruction of thefamous Janmasthan temple. Destruction of temples wasneither in consonance with his policy nor attitude,especially at a time when he needed the support of nonMuslim population."48 But he says this in the middle of hisversion of the commonly believed story that there was aRam temple there and that it was demolished in 1528 tomake way for the Babari Masjid.49


·~.,, ,

~


50. Secular Emperor Babar, p.79, from Radhey Shyam : Babar, pAS1.51. id., from Babar, p.452.

49

52. Mrs. Beveridge's transl~tion of Babur Nama , p.~7~-5 . Accordin~ toIslamic theology a momin (believer) becomes a mUJah~ (holy warnor)when he wages war against the infidels" and a ghaZl when he slays

infidels with his own hands. .53. Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Mughala Kalina Bharata: Bahar, Ahgarh,

1960, p. 233. 954. Religious Policy of the MughJll Emperors, Bombay, 1962, p. .

also gives a specific minor indication to the contrary. It is"both in Babar's favour and against him".

Some more unambiguous testimony/not onBabar's idol-breaking record but on his mental attitu~etowards unbelievers, is furnished by Babar himself. In.hISmemoirs, he comments on the outcome of a battle aga~nstthe Rajput confederacy in 1527/ and aft~,r quotm,gcopiously from the Quran, he concludes: . After thISsuccess, Ghazi was written amongst the royal tItles. Bel?wthe titles entered on the Fath-Nama, I wrote the followmg

quatrain:For Islam's sake, I wandered in the wilds,prepared for war with pagans and Hindus,resolved myself to meet the martyr's death.

h . I b "52Thanks be to Allah! A g aZl ecame.That should clinch ,the issue of Babar's 'secularism'.

Direct evidence of his iconoclastic zeal is, however,available in the statement he made on the eve of hi~ ji~adagainst Rana Sanga, when he vow.ed .to give up dnnkmgwine and got the vessels and dnrkin& .cups ~estroyed."Those vessels/" he says/ "were broken mto pIeces m amanner in which, if Allah wills, the idols ~f the idolaterswill be smashed (murtipujakon ki murtiyon 1w tukre-tukre kardiya jayega)." 53 Sri Ram Shanna, ~ well-k~ownsJ?eci~list o~Mughal policies vis:.a-vis the Hmdus, Cites. Tankh-l -~abanto state that "His (Babar's) Sadr, Shaikh Zam, de~ol~~~~many Hindu temples at Chanderi when he OC~PIed It. .Babar himself says at more than one place in hIS memOirs

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO

On the other hand, he doesn't give that version theweight 'of researched and confinned history, but relates itprefixed with "It is said" and "It is related". Mrs. Kaurcomments: "On what basis it has been said or 'related'/

dr. Radhey Shyam doesn't tell us. Hist.ory is a science, notan art. But Radhey Shyam and Sri Ram [Shanna] havemade it an art in India." A very good line, that. And onethat applies to a few other vocal historians as well,

Mrs. Kaur also has no patience with another ofRadhey Shyam's statements: "As regards the destructionof the Hindu temples, there is historical evidence bothin Babar's support and against him. "SOShe retorts:"Impossible. Historical evidence can either support Babaror condemn him. It cannot do both Simultaneously."

Well, historians don 't always dispose of hardevidence. Often they have to infer what happened from ·indirect indications. For instance, mrs. Kaur herselfdoesn't produce any first-hand document to prove that theBabri Masjid was built on an empty plot of land. She toohas to deduce this from secondary evidence, such as signsof Babar's incapability of disturbing Kafirs in theirworship. Now, all that this secondary evidence produces,is probability, not certainty. The facts sometimes differfrom what is rendered probable by the indications. And soit can happen that two alternative possibilities both have 'indications in their favour, while only one of them can becorrect.

She herself gives a perfect example, her very nextquote from Radhey Shyam: "Except in the case of the Jainidols in the Urwah valley Babar never gave orders for thedestruction of the temples of other places."SJ Mrs. Kaurcalls this "historical evidence in favour of Babar", but infacti while it gives a g~neral indication in Babar's favour, it

48

that his attack on Chanderi was a jihad for converting adar-ul-harb into dar-ul-Islam.

Besides the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya, there are atleast eight other controversial mosques which are knownto have been built during Babar's reign. The Jami Masjidat Sambhal (Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh) iscredited to Babar by the local Muslims, though somearchaeologists are inclined to ascribe it to an earlierperiod. The fact remains that the mosque has templematerials built into it and, according to local Hindus, is aconverted Vishnu temple. Another Jami Masjid built atPilakhana (Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh) in 1528-29 AD.also carries temple materials in its structure. The BabriMasjids at Palam near Delhi and Sonipat, Rohtak (thereare two of them) Panipat and Sjrsa in Haryana do notseem to have been subjected to close archaeological investigation. But local traditions affinn that they have replaced Brahmanical or Jain temples.

So, in conclusion, we may say firstly that theanswer to the question whether at all a temple has beendemolished to make way for· the Babri Masjid, is notdependent on whether Babar was personally a fanatic.And secondly, that the case made to prove that Babar wasunfanatical and secular-minded, is not a very strong one.

Before we go on, we want ot follow mrs. Kaur indrawing attention to two facts generally overlooked bymany participants in this debate. One is that Ayodhya wasa Muslim provincial capital for two centuries beforethe construction of the Babri Masjid. The question ofhow Hindus and Muslims co-existed in those centuriesdeserves more investigation.

The second and related fact is that Sabar or MirBaqi were not the first Muslim conquerors of the town.Mohammed Ghori devastated much of North India in hisstorm campaign of 1192-94, including thousands oftemples in Kanauj and Varanasf. About his savagery in 5. Secular Emperor Babar, p.33.

id., p.33.


A odhya we have not many details, but at least thea~hors relate this much: "Around 1200 AD MohammadChori's brother Makhdum Shah Zuran atta~ked Ayodh~a

and after destroying the famous [Jain] Admath .MandIr,built a mosque there."55 This episode of devastatIon mayhave some importance in this debate, as when mrs. Kaurargues that a pre-Babri-Masjid temple cann~t have beenbuilt during Gupta times, for: "How could It escape the

h Z Gh ' 7"56devastation caused by Sha uran on....

-l.8. Any evidence for the demol~tion? hI fid tlyThe JNU historians in theIr pamp et con en

state' "So far no historical evidence has been unearthedto s~pport the claim that the Babri mo~ue has. beenconstructed on the land that had been earher O~CUPIed bya temple." Well, the archaeological evidence CIted by ?r.S P Gupta (see ch.1.3.), viz. the pillar-bases of burnt bnckf~u'nd underneath the back wall of t~e Masjid, does,.provethat the spot "had been earlier occu~Ied ~y a temple or byanother building with pillars. What IS stIll unsupported byproof, is the contention thft the earl~er b~.ilding .had bee~

standing there until the day Mir Baqi deCIded to replace Itwith a mosque. . . .

To corroborate their point, the histonans hst somereferences to sources that should have m~ntion.~ theforcible replacement of a temple by the Babn MasJId, ~ut

don't. The first one is the Masjid itself. Three, PerSIaninscri tions have been engraved in the mo~ue swaIls,nd ~ne' of them praises Allah for the glonous de.struc

lion of a Kafir temple as a prelude to the constructIon ofthe present mosque. t

Not satisfied with this important argumen um e's ilentio, the JNU historians at this point choose to deny not

- .'- '

- - -

RAM lANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASlIO50

57. full Persian text and English translation in Radhey Shyam : Babar,p.505-Q7.

only that a temple was demolished, but also that themosque was built on Babar's behalf: "Except for the versesin Persian inscribed on the two sides of the mosque door,there is no other primary evidence to suggest that amosque had been erected there on Babar's behalf." Allthree. of the poetic inscriptions mention Mir Baqi as the

. builder and give praise to Babar. Two of them give 935AH (i.e. 1528-29) as the year of building. One of them evensays that "this descending place of the angels" was built"on the orders of king Babar".57

It should be clear by now that the point is not who .exactly ordered the demolition of the temple, assumingthere was one. But if at all one wants to prove something

. about the individual role of Babar, it is a strange line ofargument, in the context of the JNU historians' position, toplead that Babar had clean hands regarding the construction of the mosque. If, as. the JNU historians contend, therenever was a demolition of a Ra~ temple,to make way forthis mosque, then where is the 'need fo distand~ the personof Babar from the construction of this mosque?

At any r<it~, they make a methodological mistake.They cho'ose to dismiss as evidence one of the very fewprimary sources available in this whole discussion. Andthe reason cited is that "there is no other primaryevidence". There is also no primary evidence to the contrary. So the contemporary sources claiming that someoneelse than Babar ordered the building, number zero, andthose that claim Babar did it, number one. One may keepin mind that there is a whole tradition of secondarysources (including the very name of the mosque) alsoclaiming the mosque is Babar's, while the JNU historiansdon't come up with any secondary evidence showing thatsomeone else ordered the mosque's construction. But

53

8. reply in Indian Express, 1.4.90.

choosing between one piece of primary and more pieces ofsecondary evidence naming Babar, and no evidence at allnaming someone else, our historians still prefer the latteroption. (They could have mentioned in desperation thatTieffenthaler was told in Ayodhya in 1767 that the mosquehad been built by Aurangzeb)

When challenged on this point by dr. Khan, theJNU historians plead that the quoted line should not beinterpreted as a rejection of the inscriptions as evidence:"Mr. Khan maintains that we have rejected the evidence ofthe inscription that the mosque was built at the orders ofthe emperor Babar. This is amazing. We have nowhererejected such evidence. What we do question is the claimthat the mosque has been constructed at the site of atemple..."58 Not so. In their pamphlet, the JNU historianshave unmistakably denied that the Masjid was bupt onBabar's behalf which does mean that they reject the inscription's testimony to the contrary. (dr. infra)

It is another matter that they are inconsistent intheir rejection or acceptance of the inscriptions as validevidence. After dismissing the Persian verses as proof ofBabar's involvement because unconfirmed by "otherprimary evidence", they still use them to prove a differentpoint: "Nowhere does either of the inscriptions mentionthat the mosque had been erected on the site of a temple."A valid argument, but less so if you have just declared thissource to be wrong. If the verses are wrong in namingBabar as the man who ordered the building, they may alsobe wrong in omitting that the mosque had been erected onthe site of a temple.

Apparently, the JNU historians have decided thatthe verses are valid source material after all. But strangely,fter saying that "except forlhc verses inscribed on the twoides of the mosque door" (emphasis added), no other


~

'.,


primary evidence suggests that the mosque was erectedon Babar's behalf, only eight lines down they say theopposite, viz. that even the verses don't suggest this: "Theinscription only suggests that one Mir Baqi, a noble ofBabar, had erected the mosque." (emphasis added) Thisinterpretation is simply wrong. The opening line of one ofthe inscriptions, in mrs. Beveridge's translation, quoted bythe JNU historians themselves, reads: "By the command ofthe Emperor Babar..." With their attempt to disconnectBabar from the Babri Masjid, they undeniably disregardevidence furnished by the inscriptions.

Of course, the author of the inscription may havebeen lying. Mir Baqi may have built the mosque on hisown initiative, only afterwards getting or claiming Babar'sapproval. But that is not what the text says, and it cannotbe honestly interpreted as saying that. And again, thosewho don't accept the testimony of the verses in onerespect, should think twice before building conclusions onthem in other respects

The next piece of meaningful silence listed in thepamphlet, is this: "'Nor is there any reference in Babar'smemoirs to the destruction of any temple in Ayodhya."With that statement, unmistakably brought up as anargumentum e silentio, the JNU historians have gone too far.They have :rossed the line between fierce debate anddeceitfui propaganda.

The absence of any reference only makes a logicaldifference (and can then have value as an argumentume silentio) if the presence of a reference is reasonably to beexpected. That is not the case in Babar's memoirs.

Babar was not someone who did a lot of lookingback or looking into the future. If you want his version of .the facts that have taken place in a certain month, youhave to look up that very month in his memoirs. Now,thanks to the wind that blew some pages away (as Babarhimself reported), the relevant months for the Ram


Janmabhoomi / Babri Masjid affair are missing in allextant copies of Babar's memoirs. In all modem editions ofthese memoirs, known as Babar Nama, including mrs.Beveridge's translation which the' JNU historians haveused, it is stated quite explicitly that there is a lacuna inBabar's narrative between 2/4/1528 and 18/9/1528. Thatincludes the time when Babar stayed in the Ayodhyaregion. Therefore the Babar Nama's 'silence' is not anargumentum e silentio. The JNU historians' attempt to passit off as one, is incontrovertibly an attempt at deception.

In reply to prof. Khan's drawing attention to thisunjustified reference to the Babar Nama, The JNUhistorians admit that "the gap in Babar's memoirs...is wellknown. There is no way of finding out whether in themissing pages, Babar had referred to either the temple orthe mosque in question." That's better.

The next document which speaks out by its silence,is the Ain-i-Akbari. It doesn't mention the erection of amosque in Ayodhya by Babar, Akbar's grandfather. But,says prof. Khan, "the Ain is...primarily a sort of gazetteerof Akbar's empire, giving the rules and regulations ofAkbar and the statistical information about variouspheres of his administration... One can cite a long list of

pre-Akbari monuments, still extant, which do not findmention in the Ain-i-Akbari."59

In their reply, the JNU historians quote the entirepassage relating to Ayodhya. Indeed, it contains nor ference to the Babri Masjid, let alone to a demolishedR m Janmabhoomi Mandir. Does the passage prove theJNU historians' point? On the contrary, it gives strongupport to prof. Khan's point: it does not contain anyferences to any building, thus confirming that the Ain-ikbari is indeed not the kind of writing in which to look>r this kind of information.

. Indian Express, 25.2.90.


t.J),; •

" ' ... ...:

The final instance of meaningful silence is in th~Ram Charit Manas, the Hindi Ramayana, by Goswa~lTulsidas, a contemporary of Akbar. He lived in Varanasl,which is not far from Ayodhya, and was an exemplarydevotee of Ram. Shouldn't he have bewailed the destruction of a prominent Ram temple in Ayodhya? Prof. Khanstates that "it may be pointed out that even emper.orAkbar.·..does not find any mention in Tulsi's works despI~ethe fact that Tulsi gave thought to the subject of rulershlpand has expressed his notions on sovereignty." If t~e JNUhistorians had first shown Tulsidas to be a chromcler ofthe numerous temple demolitions and mo~que ~?ns~ructions then Tulsidas' silence on the Babn MasJld ISsuewould have been significant. But now, lo?king f?r suchtopics in the works of this famous bhaktl poe~, ~ prof.Khan's words, "amounts to looking for pengUins In theSahara and camels in the Antarctic.

1.9. Evidence for the Janmabhoomi tradition, The present structure called Babri Masjid may also

prove a few things. Some people ~y that it ~ not evena proper mosque, becasue it doesn t have mmarets andbecause it doesn't have a water-tank for washing ~eforeoffering namaz. However, a minaret is not essential tomake a building a mosque. The Muslim .imm~grants inEurope, ,for instance, simply transform reSIdential housesinto mosques, without adding minarets. The wa~er-tank,on the other hand, is essential, because cleanhness atprayer is ordained by Scripture. ..

Among the indications on the spot o.f a pre-Ma~JldHindu presence are the following. On the n~ht~~and SIdeout-side the mosque, there is a kind of pnmltIve ~tone

platform, with a fire-place and baking-tools, su~gestmg ,akitchen called Kaushalya lei Rasoi, Kaushalya s (Ram smother) . kitchen. On the left-hand side outside themosque's fence, there is a platform with Hindu idols

57TIiE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

lin. in Man/han, 3 / 90.

(chabootra), reported to have been there and in use evenbefore the British time by travellers like Tieffenthaler. It isextremely unlikely that the Hindus would have started anew tradition of worship in the compound of an existingmosque. The more logical explanation is, that Hindusinsisted on continuing the existing tradition after themosque got built on their place of worship, and that atolerant, ruler (according to the common story, Akbar;others say Sher Shah) granted them a piece bf the garden.

It is, moreover, very unlikely that an elevated placewould have been left unused in what was then already atemple city. The hypethesis that the Babri Masjid was builton an empty spot, or even on one containing an insignificant building which no-one would have mindedreplacing, is wildly improbable.

In the construction of the Masjid, 14 blacksculptured pillars with Hindu-type images have beenused. The only other nearby place where such pillars (2 ofthem) have been used. is the tomb (said to be) of MusaAshikan, the very divine on whose insistence the BabriMasjid is said to have been built over the so-called RamJanmabhoomi. Dr. Gupta reports: "We have now rephotographed these pillars, examined the details of theirarvings, compared them with similar carvings on pillars

used in other contemporary temples in Northern India.r finding show that these belong to a Hindu temple of

the 11th century, the period dUring which the Gahadvalings of Kanauj were ruling at Ayodhya."60

The display of pieces of Hindu sculpture and other1 ftovers of temples on the outside of mosques was a very

mmon practice., For instance, the back wall of the(.yanvapi mosque in Varanasi is an undisguised part ofIh earlier Vishvanath temple. This was a continual showof Muslim victory over idolatry.


61. id.

Dr. Gupta also reports: "There is also one doorjamb of similar stone, presently kept loose in the courtyardof a comparatively recent building called 'Janmasthan',located about a hundred yards away from Janmabhoomi/Babari Mosque."61 The Babri Masjid activists, like SyedShahabuddin and mrs. Surinder Kaur, make much of theexistence of a rival Ram Janmasthan (Birthplace of Ram).They claim that indeed a Birthplace Temple existed inBabar's time, but that it was never demolished: it is stillthere, some 30 meters to the North of the Masjid.

In fact, several temples in Ayodhya (nowhere else),are reportedly claimed by the temple-priests to be the realbirthplace of Ram. Of course, they are interested parties,and their testimony, if unsupported, shouldn't be countedfor much. But this one Janmasthan temple is a differentmatter. My conjecture is that after the Masjid was built onthe place then already believed to be Ram's birthplace, andworship there was temporarily interrupted, the nearesttemple took over the function of the discardedJanmabhoomi. For that very reason, a leftover of the oldJanmabhoomi Mandir (the black-stone door-jamb) wasbrought to the compound of the temple, .to give somematerial continuity to the transplanted tradition.

In their reply to prof. Khan's ' reply, the JNUhistorians give some new information about the traditionregarding the precise birth-spot: "It would seem that itwas in the Ayodhya-mahatmya (l4th to 16th centuries AD)that the Janmasthan was demarcated for the first time andbecame an important place of pilgrimage. Yet even in thistext, it is curious that in the detailed instructions to thepilgrim regarding worship and offerings at theJanmasthan, the benefits of such worship are listed, butthere is ro mention of a temple at the Janmasthan."


They do not say whether the Janmasthan wasunambiguously demarcated as being on the spot nowcovered by the Babri Masjid (but if it was described asbeing somewhere else, they would certainly have told us).In fact, Syed Shahabuddin claims prof. Sushil Srivastava'sauthority for his contention that the directions in theSkanda Purana Ayodhyamahatmya can be read to indicatesever?l pla~es, but not t~e site of the Babri Masjid.62 At anyrate, In theIr second artIcle the JNU historians admit thatthere was a Birthplace tradition in Ayodhya before Babar'sinvasion. But no temple, at least no proof of one after 1300A.D.

Well, that could be explained. First of all, theAyodhyamahatmya may have left unmentioned what itconsidered self-evident. Otherwise, it is possible that atemple on that very spot, archaeologically attested by thepillar-bases mentioned by Dr. Gupta, and dated toroughly 1100 A.D., was demolished during the Ghori campaign in 1192-4, and not replaced by any new building.Perhaps the Muslim rulers didn't allow rebuilding it, butas soon as posibble, the Hindu worshippers came backand made do with worship in the open air (as had beencustomary in pre-BUddhist times). In that case, Babar'smen would not have demolished a Janmabhoomi temple(and the black pillars would have been taken from anotherdemolished or decayed temple), since the Birthplace worshippers didn't use any temple.

However, that wouldn't make a difference to theessence of this episode, viz. that the Babri Masjid was builtso as to replace an eXisting place of worship. What mattersis not whether the roof over the Janmabhoomi was madeof stone <;>r of sky, but whether the Muslims imposed an

62. letter to Indian Express, 9.4.90; the same is said in an article in Radiance, 21.5.89, which mr. Shahabuddin has re-published in his monthlyMuslim India, 7 /89.


__ - r .....- ~

- , .- - ---r

63. published in the Lucknow edition of the Pioneer, 5.2.90, and,slightly modified, in Indian Express, 26.2.90.64. Indian Express, 13.3,90. '

Islamic presence on an existing Hiridu place of worship, ornot.

That a place of worship pre-existed there, isrendered very likely if it is established that tnere wasindeed a continued tradition of Hindu worship iJ:l the'Masjid compound whenever a ruler allowed: it, until theBritish decisively gave the place to the Muslims' after theeventful rebellion of 1857. In this connection, we, shouldgive some closer attention to the debate between dr. I-:I~rshNarain (starting with his article Muslim testimony , )63

and a few Muslim leaders about four pieces of Muslimtestimony, already mentioned in chapter 1.1. ",

His first document is "an applicatiol1 datedNovember 30, 1858, filed by one Muhamma,d Asghar,Khatib and Mu'azzin, Babari Masjid, to initiate leg'al proceedings against 'Bairagiyan-i Janmasthan' [m6nks _of theBirthplace]". In this application "the Babari Masjid ,hasbeen called 'masjid-i Janmasthan' and the c04rtyah;l nearthe arch and the pulpit within the boundary of themosque, 'maqam Janmasthan ka' [the site. of the Birth':place]. The Bairagis had raised a platform in the courtyardwhich the applicant wanted to be dismantled. He hasmentioned that the place of Janmasthan had been ' lying 'unkempt/ in disorder (parishan) for hundreds of years andthat the Hindus performed worship there."

In a reply,64 Mohammed Abdul Rahim Quraishi,secretary of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board,has argued that this testimony proves that the platform,called Ram Chabutra, marks the spot of the real Janmasthanaccording to, tradition. The Masjid, he says, was onlycalled Janmasthan Masjid because it was near theJanmasthan (i.e. the Chabootra), just as it is also called Sita

61

, Gods on Earth, p.20-21.

ki Rasoi Masjid, without anyone denying that the Masjidis only near to (not on top of) Sita ki Rasoi.

This reply could perhaps find support in a localtradition, related by Peter van der Veer.6S When Mir Baqi'smen were building the Babri Masjid, so the story goes, thework wasn't going anywhere because every night theday's work was mysteriously undone. Then the faqirMusa Ashikan dr~amt that the mosque should not be builtright on top of the demolished temple's garbha-griha(sanctum), but a little bit behind it, leaving the most sacredplace to the Hindus. There they resumed worship using asimple platform. Perhaps this is just a cheap story whichthe Hindus told their children to explain away the shameof having to worship in the shadow of a mosque. Or perhaps it is true but then it only confirms that the BabriMasjid was built on a Hindu temple, though not on itsmost sacred spot.

The important fact is that dr. Quraishi's replydoesn't even attempt to disprove that Ram worship wasindeed conducted in the Masjid's courtyard. Some hairsplitting to move the traditional exact birthplace a fewmetres, from the Masjid to the Chabootra, cannot obscurethe fact that Hindus considered as Ram's Birthplace a spotunder Muslim control - which they would not reasonablyhave done except in continuation of a pre-Masjid traditionand this implies that that spot had been taken from themto build a mosque, or a mosque's courtyard, over it.Archaeologists have noted Hindus performing puja inthe vicinity of many Muslim monuments which wereaccording to local tradition, Hindu places of worship at

ne time.But mr. Md. Abdul Rahim Quraishi has another

xplanation for the Hindus' attachment to a spot occupiedby the Muslims: "After 1819, the Britishers embarked upon

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI vs. BABRI MASJID60

66. Indian Express, 13.3.90.

their .run:'0ur planting campaign to annex Awadh...Themachinations of the Britishers provoked Hindu-Muslimattacks in 1853 and 185,5...These were the days when theBriti~hers with , th~ir aim to annex Awadh, after theirsuc~essful occupation of Bengal and Bihar, planted falsestones a~d su~~eeded in misleading the masses to believetha! Babn MasJId stood in the premises of the Ram templewhIch was demolished by Babar." Once this belief hadbeco~e popular, it played a role in gestures of HinduMusl~m good~ill, especially when in 1857 Hindus andMushms rose m rebellion against the British, and probableven before that: 'To ,avoid Hindu-Muslim conflict an~c~ash, the Hin.dus were allowed to sing bhajans andkirtans on a raIsed platform in the open yard within the.9l1ter enclosure of the masjid, to the left of the entrancegate." 66 ,

Well, this is a bit of a strange story. British agentsare sent from Bengal into Awadh to spread false stories.They te~l}hepeople, pointing to a perfectly honourablemosque. Look, that mosque was built after demolishingthe t~mple that marked Ram's birth spot. Go fight theM~~hms to get that site back." Firstly, why would theBntIsh have concocted a story about the Babri Masjidwhen there are .so many mosques which nobody doubts t~have been bUIlt over demolished temples? Secondly,w0';lld the common people believe the British agents on atopIC about which they themselves knew a lot more thanthese outsiders? Thirdly, even if the hypothesis of Britishrumo~r-mongering explains the known facts, it needssome.lJldep:ndent corroboration before it can be accepted.That IS a POInt of elementary scientific methodology.

63

67. I am not using the term "fundamentalist" lightly : in the 1985 ShahBano Case, these men have successfully campaigned for imposition ofthe strict Shari'a rulings against alimony on talaq-ed Muslim ex-wives.And this is Syed Shahabuddin's opinion on secularism : "Hindusprofess secularism because they are cowards and are afraid of Muslim

countries." (Sunday, 20.3.83).68. See Ram Swarup : Hindu-Sikh Relationship, Voice of India, Delhi1985; Arun Shourie: The Accord' - in the Light of Secular Principles, published as ch. VI of Religion in Politics; Rajendrasingh Nirala: Hum Hindu

Hein, Bharat-Bharati, Delhi; 1989.

After all, not only Muslim fundamentalists likeQuraishi and Shahabuddin,67 but also the JNU historiansand many other academics have 'explained' the existingRam Janmabhoomi tradition as 'a British hoax'. Have tneyfinally dug up some evidence for their hypothesis? Havethey, at the very least, fourld analogous instances? Havethey discovered documents proving that the Britishencouraged Hindus to take back some of the mosques thathave undisputedly (often still visibly) replaced Hindu

temples?What makes the demand for hard evidence for the

hypothesis of British rumour-mongering even morepressing, is the fact that other types of ll'achinations to'divide and rule' are quite well-attested. The status of theSikhs as a separate, non-Hindu religion, is purely a Britishcreation. For instance, the distinctive Sikh dress, whichoriginally was worn only by a limited class among theSikhs, was encouraged: by the British and imposed on theSikh soldiers, who were organized in separate regiments.But what is more important in this context, scholars wereput to work to ground the newly-created status of theSikhs as a separate religion with a separate history andseparate doctrines. This process has been duly describedand analyzed.68 It is not just a convenient allegation thatthe British have purposely created a rift between Sikhs andother Hindus: it is unambiguously proven by available

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64 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE 65

Bri.tis~ policy state~ents and correspondence, and byumnhIbIted declaratIOns of intention in British-madehistory books.

The hypothesis of the British concoction of the RamJ~nmabhoomi tradition is situated in a period of IndianhIstory of which an enormous wealth of originaldocuments is still extant. Scholars who think they canwage a meani~gful debate about such scantilydocumented penods as Valmiki's or Babar's shouldcertainly not be satisfied with the British c;ncoctionhypothesis, e~~n if it. fits the facts, until they can digup some posItIve eVIdence. So far, the entire host ofvocal secularists and Muslim fundamentalists have notproduc~d a single piece of evidence for the hypothesis soconvement to them.

Dr. Har~h Narain's point is that this hypothesisdoes not even fIt the facts. One of those disturbing facts isthat some of. ~he documents he quotes, expreSSly claimolder, pre-BntIsh documents as their source. Thus drNarain's second witness claims to write on the basis ofolder records (Kutub-i-sabiqah).

. Mirza Jan was a participant in the jihad led byAmIr Ali Amethawi in 1855 for recapture of the HanumanGarhi, a temple hill only a few hundred metres away fromthe Babri Masjid. Would such a staunch 'crescentader' betaken in by British rumours detrimental to his own camp?In his. E!adiqah-i-Shuhada he worte: "Wherever they foundmagmfIc~nt t,emples of ,the Hindus ever since the conquestby SaYYId Salar Mas ud Ghazi (Mahmud Ghaznavi'scomman~er), the. Muslim rulers in India built mosques,monastenes and Inns, appointed mu'azzins, teachers andstore-stewards, spread Islam vigorously, and vanquishedthe Kafirs . Likewise, they cleared up Faizabada.nd. A~adh, too, from the filth of reprobation/Kufr(InfIdelIty), because it was great centre of worship andcapital of Rama's father. Where there stood the great

temple (of Ramajanmasthan), there they built a bigmosque, and where there was a small mandap (pavilion),there they erected a camp mosque (masjid-i mukhtasar-iqanati). The Janmasthan temple is the principal place ofRama's Incarnation, adjacent to which is the Sita ki Rasoi.Hence, what a lofty mosque was built there by king Babarin 923 AH (1528 A.D.), under the patronage of MusaAshiqan! The mosque is still known far and wide as theSita ki Rasoi mosque. And that temple is extant by its side(aur peMu mein wah dair baqi hai)."

Syed Shahabuddin has replied69 that the lastsentence refers to the Janmasthan temple, still standing inthe near vicinity of the Masjid. This temple would havebeen the real Birthplace temple, and the Babri Masjidwould have been peacefully constructed next to it. Hethereby glosses over the fact that the cited document,while indeed stating that a temple is extant close to theMasjid, explicitly declares that mosques were built wheretemples stood. He also overlooks the explicit distinctionmade in the text between Janmasthan (the present Masjid/Janmabhoomi) and the adjacent Sita ki Rasoi (the presentJanmasthan Sita Rasoi).

Dr. Quraishi adds: "Not far away from the Masjid,a grand old temple known as Ram Janamasthan temple isextant in Ayodhya. The centenarian priest of this templeMahant Janaki Jiwan Das vehemently asserts that histemple had been the real Janmasthan temple... No one haschallenged the claim by the priest and the description inthe records as the Janamasthan temple."

And dr. Harsh Narain replies: 70 "Like SyedShahabuddin, dr. Quraishi makes too much of the existingstructure called 'Janmasthan Sita Rasoi'. It has so far beennobody's case that it is the real Janmabhoomi temple.Dr. Quraishi cites 'the centenarian priest of this temple,


Mahant Janaki Jiwan Das', who according to him, 'assertsvehemently that this temple had been the real Janmasthantemple', He appears to be misinformed. There is no suchMahant there. The marble plate at the gate of the'Janmasthan Sita Rasoi' (mark the name of the building inquestion appearing at its gate) bears the name of Maha~tHarihar Das. On personal enquiry, I was told that thISMahant Harihar Das has been in charge Of the building forover half a 'century. (He is at present ailing under partialparalysis) And I found not a single person connected withit who claims it to be the real Janmabhoomi temple."

It is hard to judge those personal testimonies froma distance. Everybody who has stayed some time in India,knows that many people there will tell an enquirerthose things that they think he wants to hear. So it is notimpossible that dr. Quraishi, unlike dr. Narain, has indeedfound someone who was, upon enquiry, willing to testifythat some eXisting temple is the one and only RamJanmabhoomi. Be that as it may, dr. Narain proposes aneXBlanation that would accomoQ.ate bot~ views, viz. thatthe existing Janmasthan temple IS the BIrthplace temple,and that the Birthplace temple was demolished andreplaced by the Babri Masjid: "The fact of the matter issomething like this. The vast mound called Ra~akot

(Rama's stronghold), divided by a road on one SIde ofwhich stands the so-called Babari mosque and on theother the 'Janmasthan · Sita Rasoi', appears to haveoriginally been a big complex of bUilding~ called !~e RamaJanmabhoomi temple. The 'Jamasthan SIta Rasol formedpart of it and escaped destruction. Its very name, .inscrib~dat the gate, indicates it. It is called Pakasthan (kItchen) In

the Ayodhyamahatmya of the Skanda Purana." .This means that the Ramkot hill originally con

tained a temple complex, perhaps comparable in sizeto the present-day Birla temple in Delhi. Such templecomplexes were quite common until the Muslims made


them their favourite target for destruction. In South India,where Muslim impact was less thorough, you still findmany of them. The central part of this complex wouldhave been replaced ' by the Babri Masjid, but peripheralparts would have surv~ved. This ' hypo.thesis is ~o.t inconflict with any of the known facts, general or specIfic. Itwould also solve a · disputed point regarding the nextdocument.

Dr. Narain's third document, the one that somepeople tried to hide (seech.1.2..), is a chapter of the Mu-raqqah-i Khusrawi, also known as Tarikh-i Awadh, com- ,pleted in 1869, by Shaikh Azamat Ali Kak~r~wi Na~i..T~e

manuscript is slightly damaged~ so dr. Naram has fIlled ma few unclear words, indicated by brackets. The openingparagraph reads thus: "According to old records, it ~as

been a rule with the Muslim rulers from the first to buddmosques, ~10il.asteries, and inns, spread Islam, and put(a stop to) non-Islamic practices, wherever they found ·prominence (of Kufr). Accordingly, even as they clearedup Mathura, Brindaban, etc. from the rubbish of non-Islamic practices, the Babari Masjid was b\,lilt up in 923 (?) .A.H. under the patronage of ~yyid Musa Ashiqan in theJanmasthan temple (butkhane JanmQ$than . mein) in Faizabad-Awadh, which was a great place of (worship) andcapital of Rama's father... Among the ·Hindus it wasknown as Sita ki Rasoi."

. Syed Shahabuddin replies: "The word 'mein' (in) issuggestive and dr. Narain's translation itself lets out thetruth. A mosque cannot 'be built 'in the Janmasthantemple', It can be built 'on' but not 'in' a temple. Hence, thetranslation of Butkhana itself is wrong. The word refers tothe town of Ayodhya arid not just to the site where BabriMasjid stands."71 .


RAM JANMABHOOMI VS, BABRI MASJIO66 '

68 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE 69

In that case, the expression 'Faizabad-Awadh'refers to th~ province Awadh (or Oudh), not to thedouble-city Faizabad-Ayodhya, so that we can say that the'house of idols' (but~ana), Le. Ayodhya (Awadh in thenarrow sense), is 'in' Faizabad-Awadh, Le. the provinceAwadh (Awadh in the broad sense). As a matter of fact,Shahabuddin in his next reply72 writes: "Ayodhya is notAwadh. Ayodhya is a place; Awadh is a region or aterritory."

Dr. Narain in his re-reply73 counters: "This issimply untrue. 'Awadh' is a corrupt form of the Sanskritword 'Ayodhya'. During medieval times, 'Awadh' wasused as the name of a town as well as of a subah (province)or territory." Moreover, whereas Syed Shahabuddin isright in stating that 'Awadh' refers (also) to the entireprovince, he overlooks the fact that the text says that the'Butkhana' (house of idols, in his opinion the cityAyodhya) lies in 'Faizabad-Awadh' (the twin cities ofFaizabad and Ayodhya, but in his opinion, the entireprovince). Now, 'Faizabad-Awadh' is never used as aname of the province. On the contrary, 'Faizabad' isannexed to 'Awadh' precisely to distinguish the cityAyodhyalAwadh from the province. It unambiguouslyindicates the city, not the province. Therefore, theButkhana situated "in" the city of Faizabad-Awadh cannotitself be the city.

And anyway, Syed Shahabuddin knows enoughUrdu to know that butkhana means 'idol temple' and nothing else. Khana, like Hindi ghar, means 'house, building'.Thus, dak-ghar/dak-khana means 'post office', gharib-khanameans '(my) humble house'. Butkhana in the sense of 'cityfull of idols' (Le. Ayodhya), as suggested by Shahabuddin,is simply unheard of. It is one more of those ad hac


hypotheses that the Babri Masjid campaigners build theircase on.

So, the disputed passage says that the Babri Masjidwas built "in the Janmasthan idol-house". Dr. Narainexplains this:"The entire mound called Ramakot...appearsto have originally been covered with.a big block calledRam Janmabhoomi temple. The Janmasthan Sita Rasoiformed part of it and yet escaped destruction, withoutever usurping the right of the destroyed part to be thebirth-place of Rarna ... The position stated above servesalso to explain the phrase 'butkhana-i Janmasthan mein'(in the Janmasthana temple). The Babri mosque covers notthe whole but only a part of the erstwhile Janmabhoomitemple, hence the use of the preposition 'mein' is quitejustified."74

We should not forget that the people who built theoriginal Janmabhoomi temple complex, assuming therewas one, took the Ram tradition seriously, and designedthe temple complex as a memorial to Ram's father'spalace, in which Ram was born, and in which he laterlived as grown-up prince together with his wife Sita, andhis brothers, and some servants, altogether a largecommunity of people. It is normal that the princes, as wellas the king and his wives, had their own quarters in theoriginal Ramkat. In the logic of the temple-builders, Ramand Sita therefore must have lived in a different place thanKaushalya, Ram's mother, in whose quarter Ram musthave been born. Consequently, the precise birth-spot wasnot identical with the place where Sita served Ram, commemorated as Sita ki Rasai (ar Pakasthan), Sita's kitchen.Kaushalya's place would have been where the Babr,iMasjid was built: hardly a few metres on its right, there isa small kind of cooking-stone, called Kaushalya ki Rasai.

74 . Indian Express, 25.4.90.

:~~.:

---------------

75. Indian Express, 105.90.

71

7. Indian Express, 8.3.90 .

in 923 (?) A.H.under the patronage of Sayyid MirAshiqan.. . Aurangzeb built a mosque on the HanumanGarhi... The bairagis effaced the mosque and erected atemple in its place. Then idols began to be worshippedopenly in the Babari mosque where the Sita ki Rasoi issituated."

The author bewails the decline of Muslim antiHindus fervour. He quotes with approval a poem thatdescribed the good old ways: "Formerly, it is Shaikh AliHazin's observation which held good: '0 shaikh! justwitness the miracle of my house of idols, which, whendesecrated or demolished, becomes the house of God'(Bi-bin karamat-i butkhanah-i mara aiy shaikh! ki chunkharab shawad khanah-i Khuda garded)." But now, theMuslims could not prevent the Hindu sadhus from usingthe temple hill that Aurangzeb had taken from them: "Thetimes have so changed that now the mosque was demolished for construction of a temple (on the HanumanGarhO."

What this writer seems to say, is that b<?th the RamJanmabhoomi and the Hanuman Garhi, taken from theHindus by Babar (or Mir Baqi) and Aurangzeb respectively, were more or less restored to the Hindus by thepost-Aurangzeb and pre-British rulers of Awadh, theShi'ite Nawabs. He even says that idols were worshippedin the Babri Masjid, but perhaps that merely refers to theplatform in the courtyard.

Syed Shahabuddin has rejected the evidentialvalue of this document: "The fourth evidence is adescription in a novel. A novelist is not a historian and

ne does not expect historical exactitude from him or use adescription in a novel as historic evidence."76 And again inhis next letter: "Fasana-e Ibrat cannot by any stretch of

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI vs. BABRI MASJIO70

Summing up, we can explicitate dr. Narain's thesisas follows. The original temple complex (working withinthe hypothesis that it existed) was built in imitation of the'palace' in which Ram was born. The holy of holies wasRam's birth spot, situated in what was taken to beKaushalya's quarters. This was demolished and [immediatly or eventually) replaced with the Babri Masjid.Another part of the temple complex was taken to be Sita'squarters. It was either never demolished or allowed to berebuilt, and it is now the Janmasthan Sita Rasoi temple, tothe North of Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid. (dr. Naraincould have quoted Hans Bakker's scholarly work Ayodhyawhich proposes the same hypothesis, as A.K. Chatterjeehas done, efr_infra)

It is a diferent matter that outsiders, especially theMuslim historians who were not so well versed in thedetails of the Ram story, used the terms lanmabhoomi,Janmasthan, Sita lei Rasoi , indiscriminatlely, for the precisespot where the Babri Masjid was built, as well as for theentire Ramkot mound and the Janmasthan Sita Rasoitemple (as in the next document). Dr. Narain haschallenged Syed Shahabuddin to come up with texts thatspeci.fically name the present Janmasthan temple as thetradi.tional Birthplace SpOt,7S Failing that, it is non-seriousto keep on denying the information given by both Britishand"Indian Muslim sources, viz. that what Hindus forcenturies consirlered to be the birthspot, is where the BabriMasjid was built,

The fourth document presented by dr. Narain is anexcerpt from the Fasanah-i [brat by the Urdu novelist MirzaRajab Ali Beg Surur, who died in 1867. He wrote: "A greatmosque was built on the spot where Sita ki Rasoi issituated. During the regime of Babar, the Hindus had noguts to be a match for the Muslims.The Mosque was built

- - ....~ .... - .


imagination be called a work of history."n Apparently,Syed Shahabuddin has been bluffing. Basing himself onthe information furnished by dr. Narain that the author ofthis document is a novelist, he has assumed that thedocument itself is a novel. But, replies dr. Narain to SyedShahabuddin: "He need not stretch his imagination: heneeds only to turn to the book to find that it is not a novel(as he maintained in his earlier letter) but a historicalaccount of four rule~ of Awadh."78

From these four documents, dr. Harsh Narainderives the following conclusions: 1) In their zeal to hitHinduism and spread-Islam, the Muslim rulers had theknack of desecrating or demolishing Hindu temples anderecting mosques etc. in their place. 2) There did exist atemple called Ram Janmasthan in Ayodhya, where Ramwas believed .to have incarnated, and of 'which theJanmasthan Sita Rasoi may have been a part. 3) In thefootsteps of the Muslim rulers who desecrated Mathura,Vrindavan, Varanasi~Nalanda etc., Babar chose Ayodhyafor the spread of Islam and the replpcement of temples bymosques, because of its importance as a holy place forHindus, and had the Babri Masjid erected in 1528 inreplacement of the Janmabhoomi temple. 4) The Babrimosque was also called 'masjid-i Janmasthan' or 'masjid-iSita ki Rasoi' from long before 1855. 5) The Hindus hadbeen canying on worship at the Ram Janmabhoomi evenafter the replacement of the temple by the mosque.6) These facts are yielded by authentic Muslim recordsand have not been fabricated by the much-malignedBritish to 'divide and rule'.

He adds that these conclusions "are irresistable andshould clinch the issue of demolition versus non-existenceof the Ram Janmasthan temple."

73

79 . Indian Express, 21.4.90.BO. Indian Express, 8.3.90.

Dr. Quraishi is not impressed, and concludes hisletter by restating his view: "The story of allegeddestruction of the temple by Babar was concocted by theBritishers and this mischievously false story is now beingpropagated for some ulterior motives." He demandspre-1819 evidence: "We cannot believe that the Hinducommunity was too barren to produce a single soulduring the long period between 1528 and 1819 who couldrecord or narrate or who was too benumbed to lament ondestruction of the temple." .

Dr. Narain admits: "It is true that no old enoughHindu record of .the Rama temple demolition has come tolight so .far."79 But that would only be an important fact ~f

the Hindus normally did record such events. The fact IS

that they didn't. More than 90% of the Muslim atrocitiesand acts of destruction are known to us through Muslimsources. So dr. Narain continues: "But this is no ground forrejection of the temple deinolition story. There is no oldHindu record of the invasion of Alexander the Great. Doesit mean that his invasion did not take place? To tell thetruth, the Hindus of old were bad at history..."

One of the JNU historIans, K.S. Chaudhry, has alsocondescended to send in a short reply.80 He contends thatd r. Narain's evidence actually reinforces the JNUhistorians' claim that there are no texts from before the19th century stating that the Babri Masjid was built on aHindu place of worship. Well, if he chooses to ignore whatdr. Narain has stressed, viz. that these 19th century textsexplicitly claim older texts as their source, it will be no usefor me to repeat that observation. Let us rather take a lookat fin undisputedly older textual testimony.

Abhas Kumar Chatterjee has presented someparagraphs from a travelogue by Joseph Tieffenthaler, an

THE HISTORIANS' DEBATEI

RAM lANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI , MASllO72

74 RAM JANMABHOOMI vs. BABRI MASJID THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE 75

Austrian Jesuit who toured the Awadh region extensjvely?etween 1766 and 1771.81 His Latin account was pUQlishedIn French translation in 1786, as Description Historique etGeographique de ['[nde. This account is totally independentof British sources and much older than the first Britishaccount of the Janmabhoomi by Montgomery Martin in1838.

Some excerpts: "The emperor Aurangzebdestroyed the fortress called Ramkot, and built at the sameplace a Mohammedan temple with three domes. Otherssay that it has been built by Babar... On the left one can seea square box elevated five inches abovE:: the ground levelcovered with limestone... The Hindus call it Bedi whichmeans a crib. This is because here existed a house in which[Vishnu] was born in the form of Rama... SubsequentlyAurangzeb, or according to some other people Babar,destroyed the place in order to prevent the heathens frompractising their superstition. But they have continued topractise their religious ceremonies in both places, knowingthis to have been the birthplace of Rama, by going aroundit three times and prostrating on the ground... On the 24thof the month of Chait [Le. the Ram Navami festival], agreat gathering of people takes place here to celebrate thebirthday of Rama and this fair is famous all over India."

This is incontrovertibly a pre-Britjsh recordclaiming the Babri Masjid to have been built on the RamJanmabhoomi, and testifying that the Hindus conductedworship there in the 18th century. What i'S more, just likethe novelist Surur quoted by dr. Narain, Tieffenthaler haswritten that the Hindus practised puja "in both places", inthe courtyard and in the Masjid itself. .

Mr. AK. Chatterjee concludes: "The position wecome to is this. The holy Ramjanmabhoomi temple, whichonce stood in Ramkot, disappears. Pillars of a destroyed


Hindu temple are used to construct a mosque underBabar's orders in Ramkot at a spot surrounded by scoresof other shrines associated with Ram. Hindus claim allalong that this was the site of the temple. In spite of theefforts of Moghul rulers to keep them out, they reoccupythe site and continue to offer worship there. Greatgatherings of people continue to be held here to celebrateRam Navami. They defend the shrine against Muslimattacks in violent clashes as in 1853, when 70 Muslimsmaking a bid to recapture the temple, are killed and areburied in the nearby 'ganj-i- shahidan'."

This position takes the discussion an importantstep further. Now, the claim is not just that the BabriMasjid has replaced a Hindu place of worship in 1528.After an interruption starting in 1528, it was again aHindu place of worship until the 1850's. The religiouspolicy of the Nawabs, who ruled Awadh from 1722 till1856 (when Awadh was annexed by the British East IndiaCompany), was rather tolerant and apparently does notexclude such a course of events (se~ also ch.1.10). It wasthe British who,. imposing their government after annexing Awadh in 1856 and defeating the uprising of 1857,gave the Babri Masjid to the Muslims.

1.10. The larger pictureThe JNU historians, in their famous pamphlet,

write: "The assumption that Muslim rulers wereinvariably and naturally opposed to the sacred pl~ces ofHindus is not always borne out by historical evidence. Thepatronage of the Muslim Nawabs was crucial for theexpansion of Ayodhya as a Hindu pilgrimage centre...Gifts to temples and patronage of Hindu sacred centreswas an integral part of the Nawabi mode of exercise ofpower. The diwan [= chief minister] of Nawab Safdarjangbuilt and repaired several temples in Ayodhya. Safdarjanggave land to the Nirwana Akhara [= a martial sadhu

76 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO THE HISTORIANS' DEBATE 71

order] to build a temple on Hanuman hill in Ayodhya.Asaf-ud-Daulah's diwan contributed to the building of thetemple fortress in Hanuman hill. Panda [= temple priest]records show that Muslim officials of the Nawabi courtgave several gifts for rituals performed by Hindu priests."

Here, the JNU historians exaggerate the Nawabs'kindness towards the Hindus a bit. Tolerant though theywere, they did not go so far as to pay for Hindu temples.The two mentioned diwans of the Nawabs were bothHindus, so their patronage to Hindu temples was not atrans-religion affair. As prof. Khan has remarked: "It maybe noted that in the first two evidences the authors havedeliberately concealed the fact that both the diwans wereHindus. [By contrast], while mentioning about the gifts bythe officials of the Nawabi court to Hindu priests (in theirthird evidence), they have not forgotten to state that theofficials were Muslims. This not only amounts toconcealment of evidence but also distortion of evidence."82

Of course, the very fact that the Muslim Nawabsemployed Hindu officials, is also something. The JNUhistorians have written in their original pamphlet that"Nawabi rule depended on the collaboration of theKayasthas", an important Hindu caste of scribes. But thefact remains that they have at least suggested that thosediwans who spent their money on Hindu temples andorganizations, were Muslims.

The fact that some Muslim officials, perhaps recentconverts for purely careerist reasons, paid Hindu priestsfor some superstitious rituals, carries little weight. But thecentral fact is that many Muslim rulers did employHindus, even in positions of trust, and quite a few of themalso gave land or gifts to Hindu institutions. The JNUhistorians could have quoted many instances withouthaving to go into distorting evidence.


The JNU pamphlet draws attention to anotherthought-provoking fact relating to the Nawabs' religiouspolicy: "In moments of conflict between Hindus andMuslims, the Muslims did not invariably supportMuslims. When a dispute between the Sunni Muslims andthe Naga Sadhus over a Hanumangarhi temple inAyodhya broke out in 1855, Wajid Ali Shah took firm anddecisive action. He appointed a tripartite investigativecommittee consisting of the district official, Agha AliKhan, the leading Hindu landholder, Raja Mansingh, andthe British officers in charge of the [East India] Company'sforces. When the negotiated settlement failed to controlthe upbuild of communal forces, Wajid Ali Shahmobilized the support of 'Muslim leaders to bring thesituation under control, confiscated the prop~rty ofMaulavi Amir Ali, the leader of the Muslim communalforces, 'and finally called upon the [British] army to crushthe Sunni Muslim group led by Amir Ali. An estimatedthree to four hundred Muslims were killed. This is not tosuggest that there were no conflicts between Hindus andMuslims, but in neither case were they homogeneouscommunities. There was hostility between factions andgroups within a community, as there was amity acrosscommunities."

A lot of the debate between prof. Khan and theJNU historians is about the question how big a role theShi'a/Sunni antagonism exactly played in determining theNawabs' rather even-handed religious policy. We will notgo into that, and settle for the general impression that itwas an important factor. Aurangzeb, the last greatMoghul, had been intolerant not only towards Hindus,but also towards non-Sunni coreligionists. Consequently,since his rule, Shi'ite rulers were careful in dealing 'withthese fellow Muslims. This strengthened their alreadyexisting need to co-operate with the Hindus.

Ever since the Muslim hordes had conqueredNorth-India, the conquerors tried to establish stablekingdoms. At that stage, political wisdom came more andmore in conflict with the calls of religious fervour. Thoserulers who could make a satisfying compromise with theirHindu subjects, had better prospects for a lasting kingdomthan those who antagonized them by acts of intolerance.Muslim rulers were in the first place rulers. Often theywere reminded of their Islamic duties by those who hadnothing else to do but be Muslims, the maulvis and imamsand sufis who lived safely under a sultan's protection. Butmany times, they had good political reasons to withstandthose calls to jihad and all that. For instance, their ownbrothers, sons, friends and generals, all Muslims, could beconspiring against them, and then they had to accept helpand support from wherever they could get it, regardless ofreligious affiliation.

Power realities and human realities often 'brokethrough the barriers that the Quran had put between theMuslims and the rest, and created rifts within the fold ofthe faithful. So, the JNU historians are right to assert thatthere was intra-religious conflict and cross-religiousamity. But the question, the larger question that forms thebackground to the Ayodhya issue, is: which was the ruleand which the exception, Hindu-Muslim amity or }-linduMuslim conflict?

The question could be asked of other pairs ofreligions. For instance, the relation between Hindus andParsis, or between Hindus and Jews, have hardly knownany moments of conflict. By contrast, the relation betweenChristians ang Muslim has practically always been one ofconflict: from Charles Martel, the Crusades and the battleof Manzikert, the Reconquista and Lepanto, down to theArmenian genocide, the civil war in Nagorny-Karabach,Sudan, Lebanon, the hounding out of the Syriac Christiansfrom Eastern Turkey, the day-to~day pestering of

79mE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

Christians in Egypt and other Arabic countries, etc. Now,which of these two patterns applies to the relationbetween Hindus and Muslims?

One school, which controls most of the media andthe universities (starting with JNU) in India today,contends that essentially the conflicts that were inevidence in the medieval period, were seldom of a purelyreligious character. The class character of those conflictsshould be stressed. Between the religious communities,the conflict factor was unimportant compared to themutual influence and assimilation. Their main argument isth~t even in conflicts, the line was never sharply betweenHmdus on the one and Muslims on the other side.

The other school claims that conflict was anintrinsic characteristic of Hindu-Muslim relations. Thisschool is poorer in power positions, but richer inarguments. They point out that, first of all, Islam isinimical to all other religions. For instance, the abovementioned Parsis, or Zoroastrians, were almost completelydestroyed in Iran, and what was left over was treated asthird-class citizens, and subjected to all kinds of harassment as well as downright persecution as recently as inthe 1980s.

Or take the Jews: Muslim apologists often declarethat the treatment of the J.ews in Islamic Spain comparedfavourably with reconquered Christian ' Spain. Well,we know that they were subject to a number of disabilities, li~its on their choice of profession, and humiliatingregulatIOns (e.g. North-African Jews were forced totake names of food as surname). We know fromthe famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides thatthousands of Jews in his time had been forcibly convertedto Islam. We know that Mohammed himself expelled twoJew!sh clans from Medina and 12d an all-out pogromagamst the third clan, killing hundreds. We know of theurrent Arab-Israeli conflict, of the terror in ' which the


Jews lived under Khomeini, and of the Islamic terroriststhrowing bombs at jewish sehool-ehildren in Europeancities. It is true that some Muslim rulers accomodated (notrespected or treated as equals) Jews in the interest of thenational economy, but that was out of purely mundaneconsiderations. The only countries where .the Jews werealways both respected and left in peace, were India andChina.

Or take the relations between Islam and Buddhism.The latter has been totally destroyed by the former inAfghanistan, Turkestan, North-India, parts of South-EastAsia. "But ", meaning idol, comes from Buddha, and theBuddhists with their wealth of Buddha-statues were theidol-worshippers par excellence, so they could not applyfor any kind of mercy..Today, Buddhists are hounded outof the Chittagong Hill Tracts in BangIa Desh, and harassedby Kashmiri Muslims in Ladakh. In Muslim Malaysia,Buddhists (like other non-Musl~ms) try to cope withoppression, while in Buddhist Thailand and Myanmar,local Muslim majorities wage a struggle for secession.

So, pleading that the co-existence of Hindus andMuslims in India was essentially a peaceful one, alreadyimplies postulating that the Muslims gave the Hindus anuncharacteristic, even exceptional treatment. Even beforestudying one event of Indian history, we can safely .saythat the burden of proof should rest on those who take themost improbable position, viz. that Hindus, of allreligions, were treated friendly by the Muslims

Nevertheless, we can take it upon ourselves tofurnish proof for the more probable hypothesis thatMuslims treated the Hindus the way they had treated theidolaters of Arabia, the 'fire-worshippers' of Iran, and theBuddhists. Indeed, this proof is abundantly available. Fornow, we will look only at the one category of proof mostrelated to our topic: the treatment allotted to heathentemples by the believers. We forego presenting a long,

long list of quotes from ·scores of Muslim historians whochronicled in jubiliant and unambiguous terminology thethousandfold acts of idol-breaking, Kafir-slaughter,swordpoint conversion, abduction of women, taking ofslaves, by which the Muslim conquerors earned their placein paradise.

In every city in India, you will find some Muslimshrines, graves, or mosques, that have visibly been builtwith components of what used to be a Hindu temple. Insome cases only an expert willnotice it, but quite often thebuilding's prehistory is proudly displayed. In many cases,the sculptured side of bricks has been generally turnedtowards the wall's inside, not to disturb the monotheisticpeace of the worshippers, but the mosque's threshold hasbeen adorned with visible pieces of idols, so as to give thefaithful the pleasure of treading them underfoot.

A few years back. the Times of India published aphotograph taken after workers had accidentally movedsome bricks of the well-known Qutub Minar in Delhi, andclearly showing remnants of Hindu sculptures. It sparkeda debate, involving the inevitable JNU historians, whofulminated that this kind of news would fan communalstrife. But whatever ' the implications, there was nodenying the facts revealed by the photograph: the QutubMinar is one of the many Muslim buildings that have replaced Hindu buildings demolished for that purpose.

The effort to go around collecting lists of mosquesbuilt on destroyed temples from all the cities and districtsof India (leaving out the islamized parts of theSubcontinent) has been spared us by the historian SitaRam Goel. He has just recent~y published a book calledHindu Temples: What Happened to Them (A PreliminarySurvey). In it, he presents a list of about two thousandmosques and shrines of which the violent and idolbreaking origin is unambiguously documented. With itspublication, the writer has announced a more complete

81THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO80

'-4f--.

-- -

83. Story of Islamic Imperialism in India, Voice of India, Delhi 1982; History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders, id., 1984; Muslim Separatism, Causes and Consequences, id., 1987.84. Sunday Observer, 4.3.90, reports the efforts by historians to preventProf. Pande from becoming the new head of the Indian Council ofHistorical Research, because of his "RSS connections". These undertaking historians have never opposed his predecessor Irfan Habib, eventhough his "Studied bias and fantastic theories" and his "communalapproach in deliberately glossing over the misdeeds of one section ofmedieval Indian society" have been duly exposed by K.5. Lal (ch. 24 ofBias in Indian Historiography> and others.

survey which he is now preparing. The two thousandcases mentioned are only the obvious ones, those whichonly needed listing. Many more mosques will, upon closerinvestigation, also tum out to have been built on demolished temples.

I believe this book is a milestone in the ongoingcommunalism debate. It boldly presents informationwhich the dominant intelligentsia had so far managed tokind of suppress, or at least to keep out of the arena ofrespectable public debate. In his earlier books about theMuslim conquest and the Hindu resistance,83 Mr. Goel hadpresented, without too much comment, a great manyinstances of authentic testimony by Muslim chroniclers,that have smashed the modern idol of 'India's long historyof Hindu-Muslim amity'. Here again, he lets the factsspeak for themselves. And as is well known, you can'targue with the facts.

Therefore, mr. Goel's opponents, including manycolumnists and academics, don't bother about arguingover the truth of the information presented, and resort tomudslinging and swearword-hurling ad hominem, as theyhad done in the past against the great historians R.c.Majumdar and K.M. Munshi, and more recently againstprof. G.c. Pande.84 But they aim at the wrong target.Suppose mr. Goel is indeed a "communalist", a "Hinduchauvinist", a "petty-bourgeoiS obscurantist", and what


not. The~ that will not anyhow alter the historiographicaland archItectural facts presented by him. No matter howhard the JNU historians deny it, the old Muslim recordsand th~ temples-turned-mosques keep on testifying withone VOIce that the 'Muslim period' of Indian history was abl~o?-soaked ~atastrophe, a maratho~ of persecution andrelIgIOUS war, .mcluding thousandfold temple destruction.

Followmg the same pattern, in their debate on theopinion page of Indian Express, dr. Narain presents oldrecords that speak for themselves, and Syed Shahabuddinresorts to tirades ad hominem. Writes he: "The conclusionsd:awn by dr. Narain are not only untenable but reflect hisbIas and prejudice against Islam and against Muslimrulers."8s And again: "The question whether Muslim rulersas a rule desecrated or demolished temples and erectedmosques thereon... only reveals the sick mentality of thosewho. make such sweeping allegations."86 To which dr.Naram has replied: "He forgets that in the instant case thissweeping .allegation has been made by Mirza Jan, ShaikhAzmat All Kakorwi Nami and Mirza Rajab Ali Beg Surur,and not by me. He has failed to look them in the facesquarely and make out a single point in rebuttaL" 87

.The view of Indian Muslim history as generallybarbanc and destructive is of course not new. In the pastwe Europeans used to be fed stories from the Crusadesab~ut the sly and murderous Saracens. But now in thisenlIghtened age, we still have the same image of Muslimsbecause in the news we more often than not hear the word"Islamic" bracketed with some word meaning "terrorist".In the streets of not only Karachi and Tehran, but aIsoLondon, Bradford and Rotterdam, we have seen hordes ofpeople clamOUring truly barbaric demands to kill Salman

85. Indian Express, 8.3.90.86. Indian Express, 6.4.90.87. Indian Express, 25.4.90.


88. History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. V, p.xv.

Rushdie. So we are not surprised to learn that the "Muslimperiod" of Indian history was one of savage plunder andpersecution. And when we g<;> beyond first impressionsand sit down to study the hist.ory of Mahmud Ghaznavi,Mohammed Chori and Aurangzeb, we find no reason fordoubting the apparently v.ery distinct feature of intolerance in the foremost Muslim rulers. In the West, it ismostly just an interested fringe that opposes this view ofIslam as intolerant, calling it "prejudiced"..

In India too, many historianS are quite confidentthat the authentic sources bear out this view of Muslimhistory. Thus, K.M. Munshi writes in a prestigious historybook: "In the days of Mahmud of Ghazni, in the words of[the contemporary historian] 'Utbi, 'the blood of theinfidels flowed copiously and [conversionJ. was often theonly way of survival'. On the testimony of so liberal aMuslim of this age as Amir Khusrau, 'the land had beensaturated with the water of the sword and the vapours ofinfidelity (i.e. Hindus) had been dispersed'. Will Durant,in his Story of Civilization, aptly says: 'The Mohammedanconquest of India is probably the bloodiest story inhistory. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral isthat civilization is a precious thing, whose delicatecomplex of order and liberty, culture and peace may atany time be overthrown by barbarians invading fromwithout or multiplying within.' " 88

But today in India, quoting authentic evidencefrom unsuspect Muslim sources (including mosques) testifying to the consistent Muslim policy of oppression ofKafirs and destruction of their temples, has increasinglybecome a taboo. Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru imposed onthe Indian mind the notion of 'secularism', it is nottolerated if you mention religiously motivated plunderand oppression by Muslims. And Nehru, the godfather of

85

89. J. Nehru: The Discovery of India, p.235.90. M. Habib: Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin, first published in 1924.

TI-lE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

Indian secularism, set the trend by his example. Let's havea look at one instance, a bold one from am~ng the many,of Nehru's attempts to write secularist history.

We know from the Muslim historian Utbi thatMahmud Ghaznavi expressed his admiration for the vasttemple complex he found in Mathura--and then orderedhis men to destroy the whole thing. This is what Jawaharlal Nehru has to say on the subject: "Building interested[MahmudJ and he was much 'impressed by the city ofMathura near Delhi. About this he wrote: 'There are here athousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; nor isit likely that this city has attained its present condition butat the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could suchanother be constructed under a period of 200 years."89That's all. Nehru describes the destroyer of Mathura as anadmirer of Mathura: how much more dishonest can youget? And it is perhaps even more disappointing forNehru's admirers that he doesn't even seem to notice thegory sarcasm in Mahmud's pre-slaughter eulogy.

On the whole, this covering-up of specific facts isnot the favourite method of the secularist (mostly Marxist)historians to rewirte and 'de-eommunalize' Indian history.Of course, attention is drawn away from distrurbing factsas much as possible, especially in books for the generalpublic, including schoolbooks. But among historians, youcannot escape having to face the facts of Muslimintolerance. So, the more sophisticated approach isto recognize the facts, and to impose a wholly new interpretation on them.

The great pioneer of re-interpretation of IndianMuslim history was no doubt Mohammed Habib, theluminary of the so-called Aligarh school of historians. Hisexplanation of Mahmud's behaviour,9° extrapolated by


91 . op. cit ., p.82.92. id.o p.83-84.

87TIlE HISTORIANS' DEBATE

Now it becomes clear wnat is meant by the"tolerance which Islam inculcates": the policy of Umar, theSecond Rightly-Guided Caliph. He is the one who laiddown under what conditions certain monotheisticunbelievers may be allowed to survive as third-elasscitizens (such as paying the jizya tax).93

More important, and blatantly wrong, is the statement that "every creed" condemns the wanton destructionof places C?f worship. Islam certainly doesn't. For someintelligently presented lists of quotes from the Quran andthe Hadis regarding the treatment of Kafirs and theirplaces of worship, I refer to the relevant literature.94 Fornow, we can do with just one of the important sources ofIslamic law: the Prophet's example regarding pagantemples.

When Mohammed conquered Mecca, he went tothe Ka'aba and destroyed idols there. He therebydesecrated and destroyed the polytheists' place ofworship. This is one of the great founding moments ofIslam. There is no honest exegesis that can declareMahmud's behaviour unIslamic: he merely re-enactedwhat the Prophet had done in one of his greatestmoments.

Some will argue that Mohammed broke idols,while Mahmud stole gold. But the truth is that both mendid both things~ Mohammed's community to quite anextent lived by plunder, and he (or Allah) had arrangedthat one fifth of the booty would be his own share: helived amid stolen riches. Conversely, Mahmud did more 'than just plunder: he broke idols, or desecrated them in

3. for a fuller treatment, see A.S. Tritton : The Caliphs and their nonMuslim Subjects, a Critical Study of the Covenant of 'Umar, Frank Cass and

0., London, 1970.94. such as Arun Shourie : Religion in Politics, Ch. 11-15; Ram Swarup :Understanding Islam through Hadis; Sita Ram Cool : The Calcutta QuranPetition of Chandmal Chopra.

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASllD86

his followers to all Muslim tyrants and plunderers, wasthat Islam had nothing to do with it. Mahmud was simplyhungry for wealth, and so he plundered temples (prof.Habib first postulates ad hoc, without a trace of proof, thatHindus stored all their wealth in temples). If he was cru,:l,it was because that was the Turkish temperament, becauseyou see, the Turks were savage horsemen who had onlyjust recently been brought into Islamic civilization.

In prof. Habib's own words: "It was impossible thatthe Indian temples should not sooner or later tempt someone strong and unscrupulous enough for 0 the impiousdeed. Nor was it expected that a man of Mahmud'scharacter would allow the tolerance which Islam inculcates to restrain him from taking possession of thegold .. .when the Indians themselves had simplified hiswork by concentrating the wealth of the country in a fewplaces." 91 So, it was not because of but rather in spite ofIslam, that Mahmud Ghaznavi destroyed idol-temples!

For those who frown when they hear about "thetolerance which Islam inculcates", prof. Habib explains:"Islam sanctioned neither the vandalism nor the plundering motives of the invader. No principle of the Shariatjustifies the uncalled for attack on Hindu princes who haddone Mahmud and his subjects no harm. The wantondestruction of places of worship is condemned by the lawof every creed. And yet Islam, though it was not aninspiring motive could be used as an a posteriori justification for what was done. So the precepts of the Quran weremisinterpreted or ignored and the tolerant policy of theSecond Caliph was cast aside in order that.Mahmud andhis myrmidons may be able to plunder Hindu templeswith a clear and untroubled conscience."92

perverse ways, such as by hanging a sacred cow's tongueby a thread from an idol's neck. He definitely busied himself with disturbing the idolatrous practices, as theProphet had done. There is really no difference betweenMohammed in Mecca and Mahmud in the Somnathtemple or in Mathura, except that Mohammed wasn'tchased back out. .

One fails to see prof. Habib's logic where he saysthat the Quranic precepts could not be motive before thecrime, but could be a justification afterwards. Quranicverses can be used as a justification precisely because theycan be shown to contain a divine injunction, i.e. a motive.To mention one example out of many, Allah commands:"Assemble those who did wrong together with theirwives, and what they used to worship instead of Allah,and lead them to the path of hell." (Quran, 37.22-23).Islamic conquerors have spontaneously taken that as aninjunction to fight Kafirs and destroy their temples,whether humble or gold-laden. If they didn't, clericswould put such verses under their noses and exhort themto do their Islamic duty. Whether this application of theQuranic teachings was a "misinterpretation", as prof.Habib contends, can perhaps best be decided from theexample of the Prophet himself, who hardly ever restedfrom warfare., Moreover, prof. Habib's attempt to save Islam by

sacrificing Mahmud's fame as .a great Muslim (rather thana vile plunderer), does not deny that the Quran can beused as a justification (though "not a motive") foroppression and plunder. He essentially contends thatIslam is good but Mahmud used it in a bad way. But thatis precisely the point: regardless of whether Mahmud wasa Muslim at heart or just a plunderer who justified himself~si~~ Is~am, at any rate Islam lends itself to being used as aJustificatIOn for plunder and oppression.

That is not the case for every religion: prof. Habiband his followers will not find a single injunction toidol-breaking, slave-taking or kafir-slaughter in the entirecorpus of Buddhist scripture. If a Buddhist ruler wanted togo plundering, he had to find his justification elsewhere.So even if such a Buddhist tyrant would match Mahmudin barbarism, the former would do so in spite of hisreligion, while the latter did so in accordance with his.Our judgments of the two men would be the same, butour judgments of their respective religions would bediametrically opposite.

Of course, not all Muslims were Ghaznavis, Ghorisor Aurangzebs. Many ruelrs thought it more profitable tomake compromise with the non-Muslims. Some fewmodern intellectuals like Maulana Abul Kalam Azadinterpreted the cruetiy out of Scripture, giving newmeanings to terms like .Kufr and Jihad (just like theTalmudic interpretation had transcended Jahweh's cruelinjunctions against the peoples that stood in the way of thechosen Hebrew people). And at the village level,' manyborn Muslims would join in Hindu festivals and keep tomany Hindu customs, while their Hindu neighbours alsoadopted Musim elements. At that level, the difference inreligious practice was little more than a change of idolnames, similar to the difference between Hindu sects.

But that healthy and natural assimilation processtook place because they were human beings, and only inspite of their being Muslims: the professional Muslims, theimams and maulvis, were horrified at this impure Islam,and did everything in their power to separate the Muslimvillagers from the Hindus and to strengthen their commitment to pure Islam (this effort to islamize the Muslims iscalled the tabligh movement).

On the whole, in a rough generalization from thefacts of Indian history, we can say that commitment to

89THE HISTORIANS' DEBATERAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID88

Islam is inversely proportional to tolerance for otherreligions. ,

This fundamental question regarding the nature ofthe different religions and their political histories urgentlycalls for deeper study. For now, we will limit ourselves tothe information immediately relevant to the Babri Masjidissue: the Babri Masjid is just one out of thousands of stillexisting Muslim buildings that have replaced Hindutemples as part of a violent campaign of Islamizationwhich the more faithful of India's Muslim rulers havesystematically pursueP.

90

· "" ~~ .- ...

.-

RAM lANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASlID

2. Political implications

I propose the following conclusions to thehistorians' debate. From many indications we mayconfidently infer that Mir Baqi built the Babri Masjid on anexisting Hindu place of worship. Whether that worshiptook place in a temple or in the open air, we do not knowfor sure. That it was already considered as being Ram'sbirthplace, is most probable. Whether it really was thebirthplace of a hist~rical Ram, we do not know. Thetradition that this was Ram's birthplace, may have beencreated in about the 14th century, or it may have beenolder but somehow remained unattested so far.

At least this much must be admitted: the spot onwhich the Babri Masjid now stands, has been a prominentsacred place to a large number of Hindus for centuries. Asolution that disregards this fact, cannot be considered asolution.

2.1. The proposed solutionsFrom 1986 onwards, the Vishva Hindu Parishad

(VHP) and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal [= 'theHanuman team', Hanuman the mOhkey-god being a manof action and Ram's devout helper], have stepped up theircampaign for official recognition of the site as a Hindusacred place, and more concretely for the construction of aRam Janmabhoomi Mandir on the spot of the presentBabri Masjid. The Masjid would have to be moved toanother site, the way the Abu Simbel temple in Egypt wasmoved out of the way of the Aswan Dam. That India hasthe technology for this operation, was recently provenwhen the 800-years-old Kudavelli Sangameshwara templein Mehboobnagar (Andhra Pradesh) was taken apart and

rebuilt at 600 metres from the original site to save it fromsubmergence.95 This demand for restoring the Hinducharacter of the place is supported at the political level bythe Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena and theHindu Mahasabha.

Interestingly, several Shia Muslim leaders have- agreed to this plan. Asghar Ali Abbas, General Secretary

of the All-Indian Shia Political Conference has said: "Weare in favour of restoring It to the Hindus because itbelongs to them. We woqld be satistied with a mosquebuilt from the debris of the eXisting structure, to which theHindus have already given their consent."96 Iqbal Ahmed,a Muslim member of UP state executive of the 'Hinducommunalist' BJP, declared: "Ram was our ancestor andconstruction of Ram Mandir is the moral responsibility asmuch of Muslims as of Hindus." And the president of theIndian Muslim Youth Congress (IMYC) has, in May 90,urged the government to hand the Babri Masjid to theHindus by means of legislation, arguing that this wouldgo a long way in bringing Hindus and Muslims closertogether. He also protested against the fact that the UPgovernment counted among its members an office-bearerof the "communalist" Babri Masjid Action Committee,Labour minister Mohammed Azam Khan. 97

Such cases of Muslims supporting the Hindudemands do probably not represent Muslim majorityopinion, but at least· they show that here, as often, themilitant communal leaders are not the undisputedrepresentatives of their community.

Alternatively, people have proposed that the newtemple incorporate Jhe present structure. Architects haveput their imagination to work in order to produce a planthat meaningfully integrates the existing structure with a

95. Times of India, 28.1.90.96. Surya India, 8 /90, p.23.97. Indian Express, 10.5.90.

93POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

big new Ram temple built over it. 98 Nowadays there aremore Hindu temples that incorporate smaller separateplaces of worship, e.g. the new Ravidas temple atVaranasi's Rajghat has small Mvslim, Christian, Buddhistand Sikh shrines on the four corners of its roof.

Some peace-loving Hindus (including Sikhs, Jainsand Buddhists) have agreed that a temple should be built,but without moving the Babri Masjid, or at any ratewithout excluding the Muslims from the temple. Amosque should be integrated into the temple. The DalaiLama, shortly after getting the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize,proposed that Hindus and Muslims alternately use whichever building will be standing on the spot. It would be aunique situation: taking turns to offer puja or namazin the same building.

However, to the Babri Masjid campaigners, allsuch compromise proposals are futile. How could aMuslim see his mosque defiled by the presence of idolsand idol-worshippers? So they demand that the buildingsimply be given back to the Muslims and re-employed as amosque. The biggest concession they are willing to make,is that a Ram temple be constructed next to it. Thisposition has been supported by the Muslim communalparties, including The All-India Muslim League, theJama'at-i Islami, and Syed Shahabuddin's Insaf Party, aswell as the radical low-caste Bahujan Samaj Party.

Many vocal 'secularists', however, feel that thisproblem can only be solved if it is taken out of the handsof the 'communal forces', meaning the religions. Mostcolumnists and academics who have spoken out,including the JNU historians, have demanded that theentire place be handed over to the ArchaeologicalDepartment, and declared a national monument, at which

98. e.g. Raja Aederi : An Architectural Solution, in Indian Express,15.4.90.

RAM lANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASlIO .92

any denomination of worship should be forbidden. Thisdemand is supported by the Communist Parties.

T~e JNU histo~ians conclude their reply to~r: Khan s reply to theIr pamphlet with this statement:Fmally, we would repeat what we have said often

enough b.efo~e,.that the destruction or conversion of placesof ":o.rshIp, If and. :Vhen they occurred in the past, werespecIfIc to the polItIcal .culture of those times. We reject~ny atte.mpt at recreatmg that political culture today,IrrespectIve of the historical evidence."99

The C.ong:ess and the Janata DM have never reallymade up theIr mmds, and take an opportunistic attitude.The Congress-I's defeat in the 1989 elections is partlyattributed to its clumsy attempts to woo both Hindus andMuslims on this issue. In the same period, the Janata Dalhas ~omewhat tilted towards the Babri Masjid side, whileforgmg a close alliance with the influential Imam Bukhariof Delhi's Jama Masjid. On the other hand, V.P. Singh haddeclared in 1987 that he was for the conversion into anational monu~e~t.. Many of these parties' leadingmembe.rs have I~dIvIdually taken sides, mostly on theneutralIst, otherwISe on the Babri Masjid side, but hardly~ver openly in favour of the VHP plans for the constructIon of a Ram ~emp.le. Several Babri Masjid compaignersel~t~ on the vIctonous Janata Dal ticket in 1989 got portfolIos m the national as well as in the Uttar Pradesh stategovernments. Dau Dayal Khanna is one Congress leaderwho fully supports the Hindu cause, he co-founded theRam fanmabhoomi Mukti Yajna Samiti (Ram's BirthplaceLiberation Sacrifice-ritual Committee).

Many people, including those who don't feel like~aking sides, as well as those who want to de-politicize the~ss~e~ say that status-quo should be preserved until theJudICIal apparatus speaks its final verdict in the long-

99. Indian Express / 1.4.90.100, quoted by Pankaj Pachauri in India Today / 15.12.89.


pending court case concerning the ownership of theMasjid terrain.

However, Hindu activists contend that this issuecannot be decided by a law courf. The 'crime' that is being'corrected' by the construction of a Ram temple, took placebefore the present laws and the present republic were inexistence. Moreover, the present laws have no provisionson the restoring of important Hindu places of pilgrimage.They deal with this case as if it is just over a piece of realestate, disregarding that which is really at stake in themind of the contenders. Their case was strengthenedwhen on November 7/ 1989/ the three-judge bench ofAllahabad High Court, called to clarify which plotsprecisely were under dispute, observed that "it is doubtfulthat some of the questions involved ,in the suit are solubleby judicial process".100

Another sensible argument is that the juridicalstatus of the Babri Masjid compound has been decided byMuslim and British rulers, who did not care about Hindurights and interests. Every conqueror creates a juridicaledifice (starting with treaties with collaborating pettyrulers) that retro-actively ' justifies his conquests. Every'liberation movement' in the world has to confront notonly a power-structure, but also a juridical structure thatlegitimizes the power-structure. So the chances are that ajudicial solution can only amount to a confirmation of thesituation created by force in 1528. As so often, justicewould be brute force's hostage.

On the other hand, within the framework of Hindu ,law, the Hindus have a legal case. In Hindu law, a god canbe the owner of a temple dedicated to him. So, Ram wasrobbed of his lawful property in 1528/ and is now claimingit back. That is to say/ those who claim it for Ram, if theywin, can only use it as Ram's property, i.e. as a place of


96RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 97

Ram worship. In the words of dr Gupta· "In H· d Lah d · . .. In U w,t e elt~ IS a person; it can own land with full legal rights.The vedl or the place called 'Ramjanmasthana' had thth~ ~ll title over the land around it. Since it preceded t~bUIldIng of the mosque.,.it had the full ownership of theland."lol

Some people ~~ b~th ~ides of the religio-politicalcontroversy say that lItIgatIon IS not the way that this .pro?l.em that .is not covered by any law instit~ted with ~h:realItIes of thIS type of dispute in mind. They call fIe . I t' I or newgIS a IOn to sett e this problem once and for all. .

The Babri Masjid campaigners have alwaysdemanded the enactment. of a law guaranteeing the statusq~o of p.laces of worshIp as on August 15; 1947. TheVIShva HI~du Parishad has demanded the enactment of alaw declanng Ram ]anmabhoomi in Ayodhya Krishna]anmab~oomi in Mathura, and Kashi Vish;anath inVara~asl to be Hindu monuments, and ordering theMuslIms to vacate the latter two (presently occupied bymosques) and to renounce their claims on Ram]anmabhoomi.

. Compromise-minded Hindus propose somethingill betwe~n, th~ status quo as since February 1, 1986, whenthe Babz: MasJl~ was .opened for Hindu worship, therebyreno~nc~ng theIr claIm on Krishna ]anmabhoomi andK~shl VIshvanath, though these places are equal in rankWIt~.Ram .Ja~mabhoomi. Some of them use the demand~or lIberatIOn of.all three places only as a bargaining chipIn order to obtaIn at least the recognition of the Hindustatus of Ram ]anmabhoomi.

Such an arrangement would have to come aboutnot through legislation, but through an agreemen~between representative religious leaders. The Hinduleaders would then solemnly pledge to leave it at that, and

101. MantJum, 2 / 90, p.18.

not to demand any further temple liberations. But howstable would such an arrangement be? When the Sikhsobtained the carving out of a Sikh-majOrity state in Panjab,as a kind of reward for their valiant defence of Indiaagainst Pakistan in 1965, they also solemnly pledged notto come up with any further demands, ,and we know whathappened after that.

In this case, such an arrangement would seem to beviable only if all three places (still a minority of less than0.02% of all the palces of worship listed by mr. Goel astaken by the Muslims) are given to the Hindus, becauseotherwise the activist basis may well disown the commitment made by the leaders. Then again, the good-will thatwould be created by an unhampered construction of theRam ]anmabhoomi, might well t~ke the steam out of thedemands concerning Mathura and Kashi. At any rate, theHindu population would not ever support a demand forfull restoration of all the thousands of places which theMuslims took from the Hindus.

Rather than asking which course of action isjustified on the basis of history and the law, one might askwhich course of action is conducive to more communalharmony in the future. The activists in both communitiespredict the worst for their own community if they don'thave their way on the Ayodhya controversy. Says UttarPradesh Babri Masjid Action Committee convenorZafaryab ]ilani: "The Babri Masjid surely is not our Mecca,but if we lose this mosque to Hindus, the alreadyoppressed minority community will lose whatever littlereason they have to be the citizens of this country." Thatstatement is construed by some Hindus as a threat withdisloyalty to the Indian state. On the Hindu side, theUttar Predesh VHP president S.c. Dixit says: "If we losesomething as important to the Hinqu faith as the RamJanmabhoomi to the Muslims, it would mean that the days

98 RAM ]ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MAS]ID POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 99

are numbered for the majority community in thiscountry. "102

We leave the last word on this question, includinga sensible prediction, to noted journalist Girilal Jain: "SyedShahabuddin is on record as having said that the Muslimsare afraid that if they compromise on the RamJanmabhoomi/Babri mosque issue, the Hi.ndus willdemand similar 'compromises in Mathura and Banaras,and possibly many other places. This is an imaginary fearbecause the general mass of the Hindus will not go alongwith such compaigns if the present dispute is settledamicably. But it is virtually certain that such demands willarise and such campaigns will develop if the dispute inAyodhya continues to simmer." In other words: If theMusli~s are adamant on the Babri Masjid, they are trulythe herrs of Babar, and will evoke enmity and demands forundoing the past by restoring more temples; but if theyare accomodating on this one occasion, they break withtheir barbaric past, and Hindus will gladly ~top remindingthem of that past.

2.2. Similar casesThe already mentioned cases of the Krishna

Janmasthan in Mathura and the Rashi Vishvanath (Shiva)temple are different from the Ram Janmabhoomi case. Inthese two .cases, the disputed place is not already beingused by Hmdus, but still contains a flourishing mosque.

A~ three are very important places of pilgrimage,the central temples dedicated to the three main Hindusymbols, the Vishnu incarnations Ram and Krishna andShiva. All three have never really been abandoned .. byHindus, who always sought to take them back or, whenthat wasn't possible, agreed to some humiliatingcompromise that would at lea$t allow them somehow not

102. both quoted fn India Todily-, 30.11 .88.

to interrupt their worship. In Mathura and Varanasi, sucha compromise is still in effect.

The first known temple on the now-disputed spotin Mathura was built by the Shaka king Shodas in the firstcentury Be. Some five centuries later, a new temple wasbuilt by Chandragupta Vikramaditya. It was destroyed byMahmud Ghaznavi in 1017 AD. In 1150, Maharaja VijayPal built a new temple, which was destroyed by SikanderLodi. Again a temple was built by Raja Bir Singh Dev ofOrchha in 1613. It was destroyed by Aurangzeb in 1669,who had an Idgah (festival-prayer assembly ground)constructed on part of the site. Soon after Aurangzeb'sdeath, the Hindrl Marathas conquered this region, andthey sold this piece of land to the Hindu Rai Patni Mal,whose descendants have owned the land for more thantwo centuries. In 1940, this family won a decade-longlitigation against local Muslims who claimed the land.103

Soon after, they donated it to the. aged political Hinduleader Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, who had a templebuilt adjacent to the Idgah. Since his death in 1946, theplace has been managed by the Krishna JanmabhoomiTrust . All this time, however, the Idgah continued to beused as a Muslim place of worship. Neither the ownersnor the people of Mathura have demanded its conversioninto a temple.

Only recently tension has mounted, with theHindus accusing the Muslims of offering namaz thereevery day to assert their hold over the .place, while anIdgah is normally only used on the festivals of Id (end ofRamzan) and Bakr Id (sacrifice feast), but the Muslimsclaim they have alway prayed there every day. Neverthe-

103. source: interview on 8.1.1990 with prof. Anand Krishna (retiredDean of Arts Faculty, BHU), whose father Rai Krishna Das (founder ofthe Bharat Kala Bhavan art museum) won the ~id court case.

I I _"

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104. the story of the three places under consideration is summatizedquite well in Surya India, 8 / 1989.


Hindu Brigade an~ kept them in custody till after thefestival was over.

To sum up, the situation in Mathura and Kashi isquite different from that in Ayodhya. That is why manypeople who do support the Ram Janmabhoomi liberationmovement think it would be wrong to make any uncalledfor fuss about Krishna Janmasthan and Kashi Vishvanath.

A temple case which has been referred to veryoften in the Ram Janmabhoomi debate, is the Somnathtemple in Prabhas Patan (Saurashtra, Gujarat).10S It was anancient and famous Shiva temple, when MahmudGhaznavi came to destroy it in 1026. It was rebuilt andrff!.estroyed several times, until Aurangzeb's governorMohammed Azam carried out the emperor's orders "todestroy the temple of Somnath beyond possibility ofrepairs"l in 1706. A small mosque was built in its place.

In 1947, Prabas Patan was.part of the princedom ofJunagarh. .The Nawab of Junagarh intended to accede toPakistan. .The populatbn rose in revolt and set up acounter-government headed by Shri Samaldas Gandhi.When the Samaldas government got control of most of thestate, the Nawab fled to IJakistan.

On November 9, 1947, Union Home MinisterSardar Vallabhbhai Patel visited Prabhas Patan. Hedeclared that, now that Junagarh had acceded to India, thefirst government of free India would reconstruct theSomnath temple, and re-install the jyotirling idol (whichwould make the difference between a neo-an"tiquebuilding and a living temple). Then also, proposals weremade to impose the status quo and to declare the ruins aprotected monument. Sardar Patel replied: "The Hindusentiment in regard to this temple is both strong andwidespread. In· the present conditions, it is unlikely that

105. as in BJP president L.K. Advani's article, A Tale of Two Temples,published in the booklet containing the BJP stand on the RamJa nmabhoomi.


less, so far both Hindus and Muslims have taken pride inthe peaceful co-existence they have established inMathura.104

The first mention of the Kashi Vishvanath templein Varanasi refers to its reconstruction by Hari Chandra inthe 11th century A.D. In 1194 all the temples of Varanasiwere detroyed by Shahab-ud-din Mohammed Ghori.Shortly after that, his lieutenant Qutub-ud-din Aibak wasdriven out and temple reconstruction started. But he cameback and leve1l8d the Kashi Vishvanath once more. Afterhis death, the temple was rebuilt once again. In 1351 it wasdestroyed again by Ferozshah Tughlaq, who erected amosque on its debris. In the 16th century, Akbar allowedbuilding a small temple at the back of the mosque, but it~as d~stroyed a century later by Aurangzeb. So today, thel~posmg Gyanvapi mosque is standing on the originalVlshnanath spot, and a few dozen metres to its left is thesmall but intensely visited 'golden temple', the make-doKashi Vishvanath. .

On the BHU campus, there is a new Vishvanathtemple built by the industrial Birla family, after what ispresumed to be the gound plan of the original KashiVishvanath. It seems that the successive Vishvanathtemples were not all built on exactly the same place, forthere is another temple in the centre of Varanasi called theAdi (original) Vishvanath: it is of course not 'original', i.e.from before the destructions by the Muslims, but it mightpoint to the original site.

In February 1990, shortly before the festival ofShivaratri, a so far unknown group called the 'HinduBrigade' announced it would install a Shivalingam in theGyanvapi mosque. The VHP immediately disowned andrej~ted this plan. The police arrested 8 people of this

'c. ,*"'__

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control of the mahant and the government of India. Themahant painted and dressed the Buddha statue in thenewly-built shrine like a Hindu deity.

In 1890 the famous Asia-lover Edwin Arnoldappealed to the government to hand the site to theBuddhists. A wealthy young man from Sri Lanka, whobecame known as Dharmapala, initiated a 'movement tothat end, culminating in the foundation of the Mahabodhi 'Society in 1891. That year, the mahant promised him apiece of land. In the autumn, an international Buddhistconference was held, and the British administration nowrealized the international importance of the disputed spot.They pressured the mahant not to give or sell any land tothe Buddhists. But someone else came forward to lease aplot of land nearby for building a Buddhist rest-house.

In 1892, Arnold went to Japan and pleaded therefor support to 'liberate' the temple. The mahant died, andhis successor, Krishna Dayal Giri, was hostile to theBuddhists. The next year already, he had hired thugs beatup the monks that were staying in the rest-house.

Dharmapala failed to raise the money to buy theleased plqt. There was a quarrel when ·the Buddhistswanted td install a Japanese Buddha image. When thiswas finally done, in 1895, the mahant's men forciblyremoved it. A court case was started, which becameknown as the Bodh Gaya Temple case. The mahant's menwere convicted, but they appealed and were acquitted bythe Calcutta High Court. The Buddha statue was installedin the Burmese monastery. The government rejected themahant's plea to remove it.

In 1901 and 1902, the Japanese rev. Tensin Okakuracame to negotiate with the mahant, together wi~h SwamiVivekananda and Surendranath Tagore. The talks failed,mainly because the mahant was under pressure from theBritish, who were very displeased at this Japanese interference.


sentiment will be satisfi€d by mere restoration of thetemple or by prolonging its life. The restoration of tne idolwould be a point of honour and sentiment with the Hindupublic."

When Sardar Patel reported the reconstructionplan to Mahatma Gandhi, the Mahatma blessed theinitiative. Upon his suggestion, Sadar Patel refrained fromusing state funds and raised the money from the public.No "Aurangzebi Masjid Action Committee" was set up toprevent the replacement of the mosque with thereconstructed Hindu temple. The reconstruction wassupervised by dr. K.M. Munshi, a pnion minister. In spiteof Nehru's misgivings, the Prana Pratishtha Puja (inauguralinvocation of the deity) was performed by the firstPresident of India, Rajendra Prasad.

There is another famous case of a dispute over atemple, and this one was solved amicably by the contending religious traditions: the Bodh Gaya temple,commemorating the Buddha's enlightenment.106

The temple was abandoned 'but still standing,though damaged and half covered, when in 1590 theShaiva sannyasin Gossain Gamandi Giri set up amonastery on a terrain just next to the temple, to which hepaid no attention. The present mahant (temple-managingpriest) is his successor. '.

In 1874 Mindon Min~ king of Burma, sent anembassy with gifts for the Bodhi Tree, a sapling of the treeunder which the Buddha reached enlightenment. Themahant agreed to the king's wish to re-establish BodhGaya as a Buddhist centre of worship. In 1877, repair wasstarted and a monastery built 80 yards from the temple.But then the Anglo-Burmese war broke out, the king'smen left India, and the place came' under the shared

106. the full story is told in Dipak K. Barua : Buddha Gaya Temple and itsHistory, published by this temple's management committee in 1981.

. ,_.

-7- -.., --

In 1906, the mahant filed a case to expel the monksand the idol from the Burmese rest-house. The courtordered ejection. Among those who supportedDharmapala against the mahant's demand,. wasRabindranath Tagore.

In 1922, Dharmapala found sympathy in the BiharHindu Sabha and in the Indian National Congress. Theylaunched a reconciliation committee led by RajendraPrasad (who was later to become the first Indianpresident). In 1924 it reached an agreement, stipulatingthat both Hindus and Buddhists would have freedom ofworship at the site, and that the manage~ent w~uld beentrusted to a mixed committee. But the fIrst pomt wasreject~ by some of the Buddhist spokesmen. .

In 1935, the year in which Dharmapala dIed, th~

Hindu Mahasabha set up a committee under BhalParmananda, that did come up with a satisfactorysolution, along the same lines as the 1924 compromise. Butthe implementation of the agreement was thwarted by theShankaracharya of PurL .

In 1949, the Bihar Legislative Assembly passed theBodh Gaya Temple Act, essentially the Rajen~ra Prasad .plan. The management committee would consIst of fourHindus (one of them the mahant) and four Buddhists,with the District Magistrate as chairman. The mahant ~iled .a suit to declare the Act invalid, but he only obtamedsome delay. On May 28, 1953, at 5:30 a.m., the Bodh Gayatemple management was ceremonially handed over to theManagement committee.

. In this history, we see British machinations and themahant's personal interest forestall an agreement that wasin the making ever since the mahant's predece~sor welcomed the Burmese king's proposal to re-establIsh BodhGaya as a Buddhist centre. A few religious leaders exerteda negative influence, but on the whole, t.here was a .strongdrive for an amicable solution on both SIdes. What IS very

2.3. Hin4uism ~Q better than Islam?NehtuNi~~.historians have tried to paint a picture

of ancient In4i8n history as one of 'Buddhist revolution'against 'Brahminical tyranny', later annihilated by the'Brahminical reaction'. They have tried to show that therelation between 'Hinduism' and other traditions in thepre-Muslim periOd was as inimical and destructive as theconfrontation with Islam.

A typical statement is made by dr. Zaheer Hasan(K.R. College, Mathura): "It is the movement of history.When the Brahmanas had power, they suppressed allother people. Then the Buddhists came, and they crushedthe Brahmanas. When the Brahmanas returned to power,they uprooted the Buddhist and the Jain faiths from the


remarkable, ~ the positive role of the Hindu Mahasabha, aHindu 'communalist' political party, which is currentlyvery adamant in its stand on the Ram Janmabhoomi. Whythis big difference between the Bodh Gaya case and theRam Janmabhoomi affair?

The first reason is that Buddhists and Hindus arereally two branches of the same tree. Politically awareHindus reject the very expression 'Hindus and Buddhists',and 'define Hinduism in such a way as to encompass notonly Veerashaivism and Sikhism, but also Jainisrn andBuddhism. In '"fact, such is also the legal definition in theConstitution of India, where it decides to whom 'HinduLaw' is applicable (as opposed to Muslim, Christian andParsi Law). In modern Hindu temples like the Birlatemples, you will find signboards saying that "this templeis open to all Hindus, including Arya Samajists,Buddhists, Jains, Kabirpa~this, Lingayats, Sikhs".

The ~ond reason is that Hindus and Buddhistsdo not have any profound grievances against each other(as both have against Islam), At least, that is what theythemselves used to think.

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MA$JID104

106 RAM lANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASlIDPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 107

land of their birth. And then the Muslims came, anddestroyed Hindu idols and temples."IO?

Strictly speaking, it is beyOIld the purview of thisstudy to demonstrate that this / s rank nonsense, politicallymotivated propaganda based on less than a handful ofhighly interpreted and selectively read pieces of noncontemporary testimony of doubtful veracity. But thenagain, the argument that Hindus only got from the Muslims what they had given to others, has become so widespread, and is used so persistently in the Ram Janmabhoomi debate, that we have to deal with it.

If only mr. Hasan and all the other Nehruvianswould come up with some specific pieces of evidence,then at least we could investigate them and seriouslydecide what conclusions we can draw from them. Unfortunately, while the slogan is repeated often enough, itsevidential basis reveals itself only to those who do a gooddeal of searching through the secularist literature., There,we find that the entire edifice of the secularist version ofpre-Muslim history, as having been equally intolerant asthe Muslim period, is based on hardly 4 or 5 cases, as compared with thousands of proofs of Muslim intolerance anddestruction. Let's have a look at this evidence.

The most important one is a story related in theKashmiri Buddhist book Vibhasha, of the 2nd century AD,and re-told ever more colourfully in later works, startingwith the Ashokavadan, a Sri Lankan book of the 3rd or 4thcentury A.D. The latter says that Pushyamitra Shunga,who overthrew the Buddhist Mauryas in around 187 B.C.,offered 100 golden dinars for every Buddhist monk's head.The former is less gory, but does say that he burnt Sutrasand Stupas and kilh~d monks. This '~estimony' which is 3centuries younger than the facts it purports to describe, isnot confirmed by any independent source. Strictly

107. Surya Inditl , 8 /90,- p.l8.

contemporary sources including Patanjali's grammar, theMahabhashya (which does give information aboutPushyamitra, who appears as an older contemporary ofthe grammarian), don't mention anything of the sort.

In assessing the value of this tradition, it may berelevant to know that .both of the cited versions containsome miracle episodes. What is more important, it is veryhard to reconcile them with the fact that the famousBuddhist stupas and monasteries of Bharhut and Sancniwere built not far from Pushyamitra's capital Vidisha, soBuddhism flourished under his very nose. The greathistorian of Buddism, Etienne Lamotte, describing thesetraditions, says about Pushyamitra: "It is certain that heshowed no favour to the Buddhists" but it is not cert'atnthat he persecuted them."I08 And even! "To judge ·from thedocuments, Pushyamitra must be acquitted through lackof proof. Nevertheless, as was remarked by;H. Kern,.. .it ispossible that, in some localiti,es, there may have beenpillages of monasteries, perhaps with the tacit permissionof the governors."I09

Kalidas', (5th century AD), the literary jewel in theGupta crown, has written about . Pushyamitra in hisMalavikagnimitra, but doesn't mention any persecution.Suppose that the persecution had really taken place. ThenKalidas' silence about it would still reveal a fundamentaldifference with the persecution by the Muslims: while thelatter glorified acts of persecution as an actualization ofthe faith, the Hindus didn't. Even if the persecution hadtaken place, Hindus did not consider it a meritorious actof piety, to be sung and emulated. Even if it happened, itwas an isolated case, ideologically uncalled-for.

I am willing to concede that where there is smoke,there must be fire. Some bad luck must have befallen the

108. History of Inditln Buddhism [Institut Orientalisle, Louvain-laNeuve, 1988 (1958)1, p.388.109. id., p.392.

Buddhists after the fall of the pro-Buddhist Mauryas. But~ven if this misfortune was due to Pushyamitra's actions,It would still not be a systematic 'Brahminical reaction'against Buddhism: this story of persecution only refers toP~shyamit~a, there is no similar account referring to any ofhIS dynastIc successors or later dynasties that may havebeen contemporary with the cited reports.

:So, th~se people who have built the theory(spannIng a hIstory of '14 centuries, from the fall of theMauryas in 187 Be till the extermination of IndianBuddhism in 1194 AD) of the fanatical and violent'Br~hminical reaction' against the 'Buddhist revolution' ont~is doubt~l and very lonely tradition, are really bad ordIshonest hIstorians.

Of course, there may have been a 'reaction' in thesense of ideological and propagandistic competition. Butth~t is an entirely d!fferent matter from persecution byHIndu rulers. The Gupta kings, under whose rule the'Brahminical reaction' is said to have culminated madebig endowments to Buddhist universities, which,' again,flourished under their very noses.

The next piece of evidence is the story of Shashank,~ Bengali king of Shaiva persuasion who conquered BiharIn the 7th century AD. Hsii an Tsang, and nobody else,relates that Shashank persecuted the Buddhists and cutdown the Bodhi Tree (a thousand years earlier, Ashok'swife had already tried to kill the tree because her husbandspent too much time there). Hsii an Tsang was in the citythat had been Shashank's capital, a few years afterShashan~'s. deat~. He relates he stayed in a monastery,RaktamnttIka VIhara (archaeologists have found a sealbearing that name). Apparently, monks had survived thealleged persecution in big numbers. In fact, Hsii an Tsangonly makes a general allegation of persecution: he doesn't~y, for instance, that the monastery in which ile ',vasstaying, had been destroyed and then re-established. It

110. History and Culture of the Indian People, vo1.3 : The Classical Age,p.80-81.111 . The comparison between Harsha and Mahmud is actually madeby Romila Thapar (Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, p .1516), and sh~ argues that both seemingly plundered only for wealth .

109POLITICAL . IMPLICATIONS

should also be remarked that Harsha, Hsiian Tsang'spatron at the time, was himself also a Shaiva.

On the whole, this is a weak testimony, again atbest referring to an isolated case, hardly an indictmentagainst Shaivism or Hinduism as such. As R.c. Majumdarwrites: "These...stories of persecution of ,Buddhism cannotbe accepted as true without independent testimony.Besides, the flourishing condition of Buddhism in thecapital city of Shashank, as described by Hsii an Tsang, ishardly compatible with the view that he was a religiousbigot and a cruel persecutor of Buddhism."l1O Even if theallegation of Shashank's intolerance is true, it is still completely incomparable with the Muslim extermination ofBuddhism. Mohammed Ghori didn't stop at symbolicalacts like cutting an old tree,

A third piece of evidence is the Rajatarangini("Waves of dynasties") by Kalhan, one of the very fewHindu history-books, containing a passage about kingHarsha of Kashmir (12th century). He plundered temples,both Hindu and Buddhist, because he could use the metals.He spared only 4 temples in his kingdom. It is alreadyclear that this is not a case of 'Hindu persecutes Buddhist'.Here at least the only explanation that fits the facts, is theone that secularist historians try to give to MahmudGhaznavi's behaviour" :he didn't care for the idols , butwent for the gold. 111 There is no known case of a Muslimruler who plundered both mosques and temples. IfMahmud had acted like Harsha, he would have stayedhome in Ghazni and plundered the mosques there.

Since Nehruvians hold Kalhan's chronicle up asimportant evidence, let us take a close look. After the

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASjlD108

~esCription of this plundering, Kalhan remarks:Prompted by the Turks in his employ, he acted like a

Turk." So, at least it is testimony of something: of the thenalready well-established reputation of the Muslims astemple-plunderers.

No stories are mentioned of Buddhist ' violence(perhaps by the powerful Mauryas) against Hinduism. Sofo~ the entire period of 17 centuries of Hindu-Buddhist coe~IStence, we have 3 stories (actually, only 2 that count) ofvIOleIlt clash between Hindus and Buddhists.

The next piece of evidence concerns not theBuddhists but the Jains, and their experience with an 11 thcentury Pandya king of Madurai (Tamil Nadu). A Shaivabook says that he persecuted the Jains. It says that withoutapplause, and it also relates something that issystematically omitted by those who want to build a caseo~ 'persecution by thk Hindus': earlier, he had been a JainhImself, and had p~rsecuted the Shaivas until he fell in~ove with ~ Shaiva princess. She brought her Shaiva gurumto the palace, and the king soon converted to Shaivism.After that, he continued his idiosyncratic behaviour andpersecuted his ex-brethren. '

. There is no reason to doubt that the story ises~ent~ally true. B.u.t it o~ly pr~ves that even an extremelynon-VIOlent tradItIon lIke Jamism (and a fortiori the~ore moderate ones like Hinduism) can count violentlymtolera~t .people among its followers. It certainly doesn't

_make JamIsm nor Shaivism into intolerant ideologies.The final example I prefer to quote in its full

c?nte~t of a typical secularist argumentation: JNUhIStOrIan Harbans Mukhia's contribution to Communalismand th~. Writing of Indian History. He writes that "thedemolItIOn of temples in enemy-territory was symbolic ofconqu~st by the sultan. Incidentally, many Hindu rulersalso dId the same with temples in enemy-territory longbefore t~~ Muslims had emerged as a political challenge to

112. Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, p.34.


these kingdoms. Subhatavarman, the Paramara ruler(1193-1210 AD), attacked Cujarat and plundered a largen~mber of Jain temples at Dabhoi and Cambay. Harsha,ruler of Kashmir [efr. supra],..plundered all the temples inhis territory barring four in order to replenish histreasury."112

He does not give any other example. This meansthat in order to prove his point that "many Hindu rulers"plundered temples "long before the Muslims hademerged", he names two kings of. the 12th century, whenthe Muslims had more than emerged. Harsha employedMuslim ' 11¥rcenaries (an occasion for spying whichHarsha's successors would regret), and Subhatavarmanhad to deal with Qutub-ud-Din Aibak, MohammedChori's companion.

Just when Subhatavarman .started his rule, manythousands of temples in North-India were being destroyedby Chori and Aibak. It is not impossible that the trendthey set was followed by one, just one, Hindu ruler. I donot know what grounds Subhatavarman had for singlingout Jain temples (if at all he did), perhaps it was becauseJains were often quick to collaborate with the Muslimconquerors. Jains were mostly merchants, a class that<Contrary to rulers and brahmins) wouldn't lose that muchfrom the change of regime.

At any rate, if the story is true, that makes for 2attested cases of violent clash between Hindus and Jains,in 3 millennia of co-existence. Considering the vicious andviolent elements in human nature, that is not bad at all.

A different kind of argument that can be broughtup in favour of the theory that Hindus did to Buddhistsand Jains what Muslims did to Hindus, concerns the factthat quite a few converted temples are known: exBuddhist, now Hindu, etc. Remark first of all, no cases of


destroyed temples have been mentioned, only convertedones. As for the converted ones, this is not difficult toexplain without recourse to any conflict hypothesis.

Firstly, in a free society there are waves and trends,ups and down in the popularity of ideologies. It is possiblethat, often through the impact of single charismaticpersonalities, an entire town or community gets moreinterested in this or that new teaching, and loses interest inthat other teaching of which th~re is no inspiring proponent around anymore. And then gradually a new idolcomes centre-stage in the local temple, which finds itselftra~formed from, say, essentially Jain into predominantlyValShnava. In Muslim countries, this is quite rare: once amosque, always a mosque.

Secondly, temples are mostly built by rich people:the rulers and the merchant class. This is still true today,the best example being the Marwari merchant c~te : it isone of the most active' sponsors of religious activities andtemp.le-~uilding.In more than one r~pect (insl,1,1ding theirascehc lifestyle) they resemble the Jains. The merchantclass is traditionally also very mobile. Again, this ' stillcounts for the Marwaris, whom you find far from theirnative Rajasthant in Calcutta or Madras.

Now the so-called heterodox schools, Le.Buddhism and Jainism, flourished mostly among thetemple-building classes, i.e. the rulers and, even more, themerchant class: It was not at all uncommon that whenthey settled somewhere, ,they built, say, a Jain temple, andwhen they moved on, left it to whomever could use it~ven, say, as a Buddhist temple. This non-violent explana~hon should be accepted as long as no positive proof offorcible conversion of the concerned temples is given.

. The hypothesis of peaceful co-existence, indudingoccasl~nal peaceful trading of temples, is corroborated bythe eXIStence of temple-complexes in which each of thedifferent traditions had their own shrines, side by side,

113. Varahamihira: Brihatsamhita, ch.59, translatiOf\ published as appendix A to Jitendra Nath Banerjea : The Development of Hindu Iconography [Munshiram Manhorlal, Delhi 1985 (1956)]114. Brihatsamhita ch.57, published with translation in op. cit., appenpixB.


often sponsored by one and the same merchant family orking. The complexes of Ajanta and Ellora are among thefamous examples of this positive tolerance.

That this symbiosis was not accidental, but ratheran application of an established doctrine of Sarva-dharmasamabhava (compatibilityIco-existence of all religions), isshown by classical treatises on religious practice andtemple-building like the Brihatsamhita (6th century A.D.),which treat of the temples of each of the traditions on the ,same footing. For instance, on the installation of the idol, itsays: "Images of Vishnu, Surya, Shiva, Matriganas,Brahma, Buddha and the Jinas should be installed by aBhagavata, a Maga, a Pashupata, one well-versed [inShakti-worship], a Veda-knowing Brahmin, a Shakya anda Digambar Jain respectively."113 Buddhism and Jaipismrank as equals in the list, together with Shaivism,Vaishnavism etc. And Buddha is iconographicallydeseribed together with Shiva,and the rest. ll4

Among the many other proofs of symbiosisbetween 'Hinduism' and Buddhism, I might mention onethat also has another link with our topic: the BuddhistRamayana. Even before Valmiki, there were already anumber of Ram legends, which have contributed toValrniki's classical version of the Ram epic. Several ofthese stories are known to us through Buddhist sources.Hinduism and Buddhism are not two separate andopposing religions, or belief systems, the one 'believing' inRam, the other one consequently rejecting Ram. In fact,Ram and the Buddha were scions of the same renownedroyal family, the Ikshvakus. The Buddhists refer to thislinea&e of the Shakya clan with great prid.e.


115. Nehru sometimes talked positively about Hinduism, but that wasin the context of interviews about abstract philosophical Hinduism.\yhen it came to controversial religio-political issues, he was always onthe anti-Hindu side. '

To sum up, the allegation that Hindus did toBuddhists and Jains what Muslims did to Hindus, is quitebaseless. Firstly, there is an almost complete lack of similarfacts. A few isolated events of Hindu-Buddhist or HinduJain violence do not compare with the systematic andlarge-scale oppression and destruction that characterizedthe Muslim period of Indian history.

Secondly, there is a complete lack of rationale forcampaigns of temple destruction in the case of Hinduism,Jainism and Buddhism. Whereas many Muslim rulers andhistorians add elements of scriptural justification to theirreports of temple destruction and other acts of fanaticism,such ideological ' rationale for even the few cases offanatical confrontation between the native religions ofIndia has not been offered by any of the ancient writers,nor has it been discovered by any modem historian.

Nevertheless, this religious conflict model ofancient history has been given wide currency ever sinceJawaharlal Nehru made Buddhism the unofficial statereligion of India. He glorified Ashok, beCause he believedAshok actively promoted Buddhism (in fact, Ashok'sedicts only say he promoted Dharma, which canmean several things) and therefore must have opposedHinduism; he did not .notice that such lack of impartialitywould have been a very bad case of clericalism, quitedifferent from his own professed ideal of secularism. Atany rate, Nehru tried to emulate his Ashok: he opposedHinduism and promoted Buddhism. lls

Nehru favoured Buddhism for two reasons. Thefirst is that, with some rewriting of history, it could beused as a wedge against Hinduism. Nehru had some


116. see his essays 'Who were the Shudras ?' and 'The Untouchables' together re-published as vol.7 of Dr. BabaStlheb Ambedkar : Writings andSp«ches. I regret having to comment that Ambedkar was great at lawand social reform, but very poor at history.

admiration for Hindu philosophy, but despised Hindusociety and hated the politically organized Hindu'communalists'. He saw in Buddhism and actualHinduisn~ two opposing conceptions of humanity andsociety.

In Nehruvian (i.e. Indian Marxist plus 'nationalistMuslim') historiography, as well as in B.R. Ambedkar'sversion of history,116 this view was 'radicalized' and theybecame opposing classes : the Buddhists became themasses, the Brahmins an oppressive elite. In reality, it hadbeen rather the opposite, in.spite of the elitist outlook ofthe Brahmin caste: the stem rationalism and asceticism ofBuddhism appealed more to the social elites, while theBrahminical ritualism remained popular with the common people. Buddhism was an urban movement, brahminism dominated the far more populous countryside.The Buddhists were at no time more than a few percent ofthe Indian population.

With a typically Marxist preference forexplanations b)' conflict, Nehruvians have claimedBuddhism as a revolutionary movement that hascontinually confronted Brahmin injustice andobscurantism until its final defeat in the late 12th century(at the hands of a third party, the Muslims). They haverefused to see the deep philosophical consonance and kinship of the two traQitions.

Nehru's second reason for promoting Buddhismwas that Buddhism looked like an appealing ' motif tounderpin the idea of Asian unity, which he envisioned ashaving himself, the leader of Buddha's homeland, in thestarring role. He put the 24-spoked wheel, commonlyassociated with Ashok, in the Indian flag, thinking it was a


116 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS117

Budhhist symbol (actually, both the wheel and the number 24, 3S sacred symbols, pre-date Buddha). He used theBuddhist tenninology of Panch Shee1 ("the five precepts":nonstealing, truthfulness, chastity, non-violence,non-acquisition) for his "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence'.117

However, the vain and hollow nature of his visionbecame undeniable when he used (and contaminated) thatphrase, Panch Shee1, in a treaty with China over Tibet, inwhich he sacrificed not only India's strategic interests, butalso the freedom and independence of Buddhist Tibet. Thesocialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia remarked inparliament that Nehru's 'peaceful co-existence' was basedon the rape of small countries that had the misfortune oflying between big countries that felt like peacefully coexistening. Another vehement critic of Nehru's sell-out_Tibet policy was the Scheduled Castes leader B.R.Ambedkar, who was to convert lakhs of followers toBuddhism in 1956. Nehru's visio'nary balloon of aco-operating Buddhist-leaning Asia was pin-pricked forgood when the Chinese invaded India in 1962.

But the re-interpretation which the Nehruvians, aswell as Ambedkar, have given to India's pre-Muslimhistory, haS- "Since been broadcast by anti-Hindupropagandists of the Christian, Muslim and Marxistvariety. It has become commonplace to assert completelyunhistorical theories, 'all builton top of the hypothesis ofcontinual Brahmin-Buddhist conflict, e.g. that the massesof Shudras (low-castes, currently 46% of ,India's'population) and Harijans (ex-untouchables, 15%) were all'forcibly converted' from Buddhism by the 'Brahminicalreaction'. Writes Christian propagandist Vishal Mangalwadi: "Those of us 'Shudras', whose forefathers were

117. There are really only 3 or 4 principles in the list, but with some rewordi~g of the same, he made 5 out of them in order to fit the expres-sion Panch Sheel. I '

Buddhists but were later made Shudras by the sword ofBrahamanism, have sound historical reasons for opposingBrahma.nical revivalism."118 This sweeping allegation,con~ernI~g vast masses of people over a long period ofIndIan hIstOry, has not a single fact of history as its basis.

. Similarly, the JNU historians imply that ancientHIndus used to demolish Buddhist and Jain temples, andequate their fictional Hindu temple-destruction with~uslim temple-destruction, when they write: "It is whollyrrrelevant today how a mosque was built, whether with~emple materia~s or not, as indeed it would be whollyrrrelevant to HIndus whether in the past their templeswere built with materials from Buddhist or Jainstructures. "119 .

As we have seen in the Bodh Gaya case, Hindus dothink that the origin of a temple may be 'relevant', and arewilling to restore to B~ddhists the important ones among.the sacred places whIch Buddhism in its decline hadabandoned. But more importantly, the JNU historiansh~ve not prese~ted a single case of a Buddhist templeVIOlently demolIshed by Hindus and then re-built as aHindu temple. It is certain that Hindus are willing torestore such a temple to the Buddhists, when and wherethey ask for it, but so far no such case has been indicated.Th~ JNU his~o.rians' allegation is based on nothing buttheIr own polItIcal compulsions. ,

It is my considered opinion that such shamelessdistortion of history is an ideological cornerstone of an allou~ ~ttac~ to, de~troy Hi~~ui~m (t~at is what 'islamizing'or lIberatIng or evangelIZIng IndIa amounts to, isn't it?).If suc~ blatant lies can be spread on the wings of theauthonty of professors of leading state universities, I thinkHindu activists have a point when they clamour that"Hinduism is under siege".

118. Muslim India, 1/ 90, p.22.11-7. Times of India, 23.12.89.

118 . RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 119

The Nehruvian Hindu-baiters should be remindedthat even Nehru himself, for all his bias, never denied thatthe co-existence of Brahminism and Buddhism-had beenperhaps a competitive but essentially a peaceful one: "It isclear that there was no widespread or violentextermination of Buddhism · in India...Even whenBuddhism was at its height in India, Hinduism waswidely prevalent. Buddhism died a natural death i.n In~iia,or rather it was a fading out and a transformation mtosomething else... Its philosophy was entirely in line withprevious Indian thought and th~ ~hilosophy of .theVedanta (the Upanishads) ... BrahmmISm and Buddhismacted and reacted on each other, and in spite of theirdialectical conflicts or because of them, approached nearerto each other, both in the realm of philosophy and that ofpopular belief."120

Anq. if we go beyond historical arguments, andlook at the related events of very recent times, we noticethat in the Sri Lankan civil war 'in the 1980's religion wasnot an issue at all. While the ethnic divide between Tamilsand Singhalas roughly coincided with the Hindu-Buddhistdivide, no temples were singled out for attack, let alonepeople being forcibly converted or other such acts offanaticism. Compare that with the conflict betw~en

Armenians and Azeris, in which the religious antagonismstrongly reinforces the ethnic rivalry, and it shou!d ~eclear that the relation between Hinduism and Buddhism istotally different from that between Islam and otherreligions.

~.4. ''This isn't really Hindu"Many columnists and politicians have decl~red

that the combative stand which the VHP and other Hmduorganizations and individuals have taken on the Ram

120. The Discavery ofJndia, p.179.

Ja~ma~hoomi issue, is contrary to the true spirit ofHmduISm. In general, they maintain that true Hinduismimplies tolerance, adaptability, opi:m-mindedness andnon-violence. .

Before we go into the truth-value of this argumentit may be useful to take a separate look at the reasons wh;people .come up with it. Who are these defenders of 'realHinduism'?

Take the, case of veteran Congress politicianKamlapathi Tripathi, a Brahmin from Varanasi,apparently a real Hindu, who never comes out without atilak on his forehead. He has said that the replacement ofthe Babri Masjid with a Ram Janmabhoorrii Mandir"would sound the death-knell for the ancient Indiantradition of religious tolerance" and that "I will not allowsuch a sin to happen in my lifetime". He has e¥en declaredt~at if the VHP would start the digging before laying thefirst stone of the new Ram temple, he would put his neckunder the spade. Of course, when the VHP did lay the firststone on November 9, 1989, he didn't show up.

Chandan Mitra writesin an article, Rallying RoundRama :121 "[Ram Janmabhoomi campaigner, Lok Sabhamember for the Hindu Mahasabha] Mahant Avaidyanath's ve:r:sion of Hinduism conflicts with otherestablished and legitimate versions. Take, for instance, thecase of Pandit Kamlapathi Tripathi ... Is the venerablePandit a lesser Hindu than Mahant Avaidyanath?" (The'venerability' of the Pandit refers to his age; as a politicianhe has the less venerable reputation of being a schoolmodel of the decline of Congress values from liberationstruggle to corruption and nepotism.)

Purushottam Agarwal writes in the same vein :"Those threatening bloodshed over Ram Janmabhoomi

121. Times of India, 9.2.1990.

.-- • ,_, I

JI • ...., _

122. Times of India, 11.10.1989.123. Indian Express, 14.2.1990.124. Surya India, 8 / 89.125. Times of India, 23.12.89.126. Muslim India, 1 / 1990.

have neither any regard for Ram nor any concern for thetrue character of Hindu religiosity."122

Ram Chandra Gandhi also thinks it would be aninjustice to true Hinduism to pursue the Ram Janmabhoomi demand: "Justice, not tolerance, demands leavingthe Babri Masjid well alone in Ayodhya. Justice toHinduism."123

Another, rather unexpected defender of 'realHinduism' is Bipan Chandra, one of the Marxist JNUhistorians. He comments: "It is an irony that Hinducommunalists are attacking the very values that makeHindus feel proud of their religion. These values are flexibility of mind and approach and tolerance towardsdifferent views, religions and cultures."124

In a joint reply to a letter by the pro-Hindujournalist K.R. Malkani, the JNU historians rejectMalkani's sympathy for the Ram Janmabhoomi cause as anarrow-minded kind of Hinduism: "Mr. Malkani accusesus of failing to understandand and appreciate the Hinduview point. To us this viewpoint is better represented bythe openness of the Upanishads rather than by the worship of bricks."125

In this choir we also find Jyoti Basu, the Communist Chief Minister of West Bengal: "I doubt if Ramawould have felt happy at what is being done in his name,if he were alive today."

And Vishal Mangalwadi, the Christian polemistand deciared enemy of Hindu religion and philosophy(including the 'real' variety), somehow expects 'real'Hindus to take advice from him:126 "The real enemies ofthe religious Hindus are the political Hindus."

. The same thing has been said by just about everyedItor and centrist politician. However, the test of thegenUineness of their concern for 'real Hinduism' was closeat hand.

In the. first ~o~ths of 1990, the Hindus massivelyfled t~e Mushm-maJonty state of Kashmir. They had beenterronzed, and the public address systems on mosques~ad loudly called on them to quit and to make way for anmdependent and Islamic Kashmir. It is not certain thatthey will ever be able to go back. In that case, Muslimcom~unali~m has put an end to a millennia-old presenceof Hmdus m Kashmir, under our very eyes - an eventunmatched since the partition. Now the victims of thisIslamic terr~rism are the most shy, accomodating Hindus,who have hed low for generations, never to offend theMuslim majority. They have suffered a lot of humiliationin silence: certainly they are a secularist's model of what aHindu should be.

Now when this living culture of 'real Hinduism'was being destroyed by Islamic terrorism, not one of thesevocal defenders of 'real Hinduism' has spoken out. Those~ew ~ho have written on Kashmir have done everythingm theIr power to blur the issue, to invent socio-economicaldimensions to the problem of Kashmiri secessionism andto dra.w ~he attention away from the only cause of thissecesslOmsm and of the secessionists' anti-Hindu terrorism: Muslim communalism.

In all the English-language papers and magazines,I have ~?t s~en two editorials devoted to the plight of theKashmm Hmdus. Not one of all those publicists who areso concerned for 'real Hinduism' has spent a column onth~ Kashmiri Hindus, even while it is undisputably asHmdus that t~ey have been hounded out. Of course theymay have wntten about the matter in their diaries but atle~st i~ t~ose ~ery,~edia in which they defend~ 'realHmdUlsm agaInst Hmdu communalism' they have not

121POLITICAL IMPLICATIONSRAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID120

alright to defend yourself with means commensurate tothe seriousness of the aggression. The mainstream Hinduview of nonviolence is quite realistic.

The same thing counts for controversy in general :Hinduism doesn't require giving up your rights, doesn'texclude standing up to claim.what is yours. Even with hisextremist version of non-violence and passivity, MahatmaGandhi is not on record as saying that your should foregoyour rights. You should work to obtain what is rightfullyyours: which he did for India's independence. So, the realissue is : can a real Hindu, for the sake of his religion,militate for a worldly claim, even while Hinduism isdirected to sOul-eulture and preaches renunciation?

What the 'real Hinduism' school wants, is thatHindus forsake one of their sacred places since centuries,simply because someone opposes their using it (of course,if Muslims weren't opposing the Hindu claim, therewould be no issue). That may be a legitimate view, butthere is no way to ground it in Hindu tradition,to portrayit as 'real Hinduism'. Either the Hindus have no right toJanmabhoomi, and then decisive reasons should be givenwhy they haven't. Or they have a right, and then there isnothing un-Hindu about claiming what is theirs.

The only un-Hindu thing about it, is that forcenturies Hindus have been powerless, subdued,demoralized. In Muslim stereotype, Hindus are cowards.And today, it is still some people's opinion that only asubmissive Hindu is a good Hindu. But cowardliness isnot Hindu tradition. The Bhagavad-Gita, the book whichthe Mahatma always carried with him, is precisely thereport of the discussion between Arjun who brings uppacifist and pseudo-wise reasons for renouncing thestruggle, and Krishna who explains that it is his duty tofight, that he doesn't have the right to let those who counton him down. When it is time for militancy, you must bemilitant. You should not create unnecessary contlict and 128. Patanajali : Yoga Sutra, 1:2-4.

violence, but you must do what is called for, to defendyour rights and those of your community.

There is nothing un-Hindu about militancy. If JyotiBasu doubts whether Ram would be all that happy withthe Janmabhoomi campaigners' militancy, I would like toremind him that Ram was a warrior himself.

There may be a more fundamental reason, though,why Hindus shouldn't claim that piece of land with thatuninteresting building on it. The reason is, that a meregeographical location or a mere building isn't worth thefuss. Here again, Gandhi's authority is invoked: wouldn'tGandhi have said that in this case the wisest party is theone that gives in, that only a fool would cling to suchdispensable things? While in practice, once the disputehas become a test of strength, it is hard to argue that thedispute isn't worth pursuing, at least we in our armchairsshould give a fair answer to the question : from the viewpoint of Hindu doctrine, is it worth claiming a piece ofland just because it is assumed to be Ram's birthplace?

The core of Hinduism is a psychological discipline,called yoga. Its aim is to dis-identify the conscious Selffrom its objects (sense-impressions and thoughts), so thatit stops forgetting itself, and rests in itself.128 The majorityof Hindus don't practise yoga, but that yoga is the highesthuman achievement, is a matter of consensus amongMahavira, Buddha, Shankara, Guru Nanak, and all theirfollowers, regardless of the philosophies and specific typesof practice to which they adhere. The simplest peoplevenerate yogis and do puja in places where yogiShave practised. The belief that yoga is the highest andmost worthwile human achievement, is the distinctivecharacteristic of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism in the broadsense), opposing it to the Semitic religions.

125POLITICAL IMPLICATIONSRAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO124

Now, yoga is a matter of consciousness, and hasnothing to do with geographical lOCations and 'sacredplaces'. At that level, there is absolutely no reason topursue a futile,matt,er like the Ram Janmabhoomi. At thatlevel, the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics are at best~ollections of metaphors,. parables of the real struggle, themner struggle against illusion and self-forgetfulness.

However, there are several more popular and moreoutward components or layers to Hinduism. The first oneonly counts for mainstream HindUism, less so for Sikhism,Jainism. and. Buddhism. It ~s a layer of out-and-outhea~hemsm, m the form of 'nature worship', pilgrimagesto nvers and mountains, sun worship, and, to some extent,astrology. Its relev~nce ~or temple-building is that manytemples have an onentatIon and a location determined byele~ents of nature, ~uch as the direction of the sunrays onEq~~ox day,. tellunc energy configurations, or a specificpOSItIon relatIve to certain mountains and rivers. Similarelements of 'sacred geography' and cosmic orientationyou find in the pyramids, Stonehenge, and man;other sacred places of the heathens (many of them laterchristianized or islamized).

. In this age of ecology and respect for Mother Earth,th~ heathen element of nature-worship is not as backwardas It once seemed:, In this category is also the worship of Bharat Mata,

Mother India, who is a piece of nature as well as an idea,but who was nE;!vertheless glorified as the indivisiblehomeland of Dharma by as sophisticated a philosopher asShankara, when he founded his four abbeys in the fourcomers of the country. The temple to Bharat Mata inVaranasi was inaugurated by none other than MahatmaGandhi.

P: seco.n~ la~er of Hinduism, equally present ineach of Its vanetIes, IS the worship of the spiritual preceptors and founders 0t the ..different schools and traditions.

Most of ,the great figures of Hinduism have a placespecially devoted to them. Very often, their chief sanctuary is built on the spot where they were born, or wherethey are thought to have reached Enlightenment. Thus, inVaranasi you have a temple of Ravidas, on his birthplace;one of Kabir, where he was found as a child, left behind byhis unknown parents; one of Tulsidas, where he had livedand written; one of the 23rd Jain Tirthankara, Parshvanath, where he was born. In Lumbini, where Buddha wasborn, emperor Ashok put up a monument, and otherimportant places in Buddha's life are still sacred places forhis followers, chiefly Bodh Gaya and Samath. In Ayodhya,there was a Janmabhoomi temple for each of the JainTirthankaras born there. Sikhs go on pilgrimage to thebirthplace of Guru Nanak, even now that it is in Pakistan;to the place where Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded byAurangzeb, now a Gurudwara in Delhi, etc.

This type of sacred spot, the commemorative placeof pilgrimage, is also widely found in popular Christianityand Islam, although strictly speaking, it is heterodox. Youcannot go on pilgrimage to the Omnipresent (as noneother than Djenghis Khan argued against Muslimpreachers), because it is right here. Those things you cango visit, are not the Omnipresent, and therefore~ attachingany importance to them is idolatry.

A third layer of religiosity is the worship of timeless gods, like Shiva and Ganesh. Even in strictly atheisttraditions like Buddhism, this element tends to creep in, inthe form of the Bodhisattva cult. This type of worship isnot really linked to specific places, except by timehonoured custom, so we need not deal with it here.However, if mosques are dedicated to the Omnipresent,then they too aren't bound to any specific place.

Syed Shahabuddin has been arguing, against theproposal of moving the Babri Masjid, that to Muslims notthe building but the place is sacred, therefore the Babri

126

"":,- .......,.:--. f.,. -.-

RAM ]ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MAS]ID POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 127

128 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 129

Masjid spot cannot in eternity be deprived of its mosquecharacter.129 Now, that is simply one of those convenientassertions w.hich mr. Shahabuddin continues to make uppour fes besoms de fa cause. There are no grounds in Islamwhy a place of worship cannot be moved (although there~re certainly grounds for not replacing a mosque with anIdol temple). A mosque is simply an assembly-hall for thefaithful. Except for the sacred places in Arabia, attachingsacredness to the piece of land on which a mosque standsor'has stood, is un-Islamic.

. In Hinduism, on the other hand, there are placesWhICh are sacred, and to which people persistently returneven after temples or monuments on them have beendestroyed. This is not the deepest layer of Hinduism, but itis incontrovertibly a historical part of it. One may debateover whether saint-worship, idol-worship, and templebuilding existed in the Vedic age, whether hero-worship is~ Dravidian contribution, whether idol-worship originatedIn unorthodox forms of Buddhism, and more suchacademic matters of interest; but it is undeniable thatworshipping a saint or avatar in a temple at his Janmabhoomi has been a firmly established tradition in everybrand of Hinduism for centuries. Therefore, claiming theRam Janmabhoomi because it is a traditional sacred placeof Hinduism, is not un-Hindu at all.

. ' . Som~ ~i~l retort: alright, the claim may behIStOrIcally JUStIfIed. But the situation as it is, is now~nctioned by. time. If we want to undo all the wrongs ofhIStory, there IS no end to it. Especially such broadmindedpeople as the Hindus consider themselves to be should beable to let go of something that otherwise only creates badfeelings. ,

That is right. Hindus should be unattached, theyshould be able to let go of worldly things such as pieces of

129. reported in Times of India, 16.9.89.

land and constructions of stone. In that spirit, someonewho is being robbed, but who is unattached, will not feelaffected by the loss he incurs. And yet, even such anun- attached person would be very wrong to allow therobbers to take those things to which he is not attached. Itwould be very bad for public order, and ultimately for therobbers themselves, if respect for people's property is notenforced. In the Janmabhoomi case too, regardless of one'spersonal attachment or spirituality, it stands to reason thatjustice must be done.

In practice, the Hindus are explicitly notdemanding that all the wrongs wrought by the Muslimsbe undone. They demand a symbolical Wiedergutmachungamounting to one or at most three temples. Regardless ofwhat the specific doctrines of 'real Hinduism' are, anyreligion would demand that much of respect for its sacredplaces. There is nothing narrow-minded about demandingrespect.

2.5 The insecure minoritiesApart from religious reasons, Hindus cite a good

political reason for not letting the Muslims get away withrefusing even one instance of symbolical compensation forthe destruction they wrought. Just after the first stone ofthe future Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir had been laid onNovember 9, 1989, Girilal Jain wrote: "If the ideologicalclaptrap is cut out, as it should be, it would be obviousthat the shifanyas (foundation-laying ceremony) of theproposed Sri Rama temple in Ayodhya last Thursday ispossibly the most significant development in the history ofindependent India.... The initiative now, as in the forties,lies principally with the Muslims. In the final analysis,they decided.... that the country would De partitioned; noattempt at rewriting history can cover up this truth. In thefinal analysis, they will now decide whethei we will moveinto the future as a reasonably united people ... or as a

130 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 131

deeply divided people 'ready to cut each other's throats atthe slightest provocation. . . In a fundamental sense the. . 'lSsues are sImple. They are (a) whether the proposed SriRama temple is to become a symbol of Hindu-Muslimamity, or of deep discord; and (b) whether or not the ...Hindu search for self-respect is to develop along antiMuslim lines."130

In the heat of the conflict, people tend to forget thatthe problem would be completely solved if the Muslim~eaders just accepted the Hindu claim. And people (includmg each of the above mentioned guardians of ' real Hinduism') .fo~get to ask. the Muslim leaders if at all it is 'reallyMuslIm to reclaIm an abandoned third-rank mosquestanding on a spot sacred to the Hindus.

. Giri411 Jain states that "one point can be madestraIghtaway. The Muslims should recognize that thestatus quo ante [as when it was a real mosque] cannot berestored; th~t issue cannot be settled by [judicial] means;that frustratIon of the move to build a Sri Rama templewould open a festering sore in the hearts of millions of?rd~~ry Hindus; that they cannot afford the luxury ofmflIctmg a second defeat on the Hindus (the first onebeing in 1947)..."

Aggressors always tell their victims to be "reasonable", and to give in to the aggressors' demands. Here,they demand. from the Hindus that they give up the RamJanmabhooml, so as to make it a national monument, or aBabri Masjid. They repeat with words what Babar did with'physical destruction.

T~e Muslim communalists, supported by thecommunIsts, forced the Partition on the Hindus. Immediately after the Partition, the Muslims left behind in Indialied low. for a while, but increasingly, and again withcommUnIst support, their pre-Partition attitude re-

"130. Sunday Mail, 12.9.89

emerged, and now Muslim communalist politicians candictate quite a bit of the political agenda in India.

While the Indian Constitution specifically declaresthat legislation should aim at the gradual establishment ofa common Civil Code, replacing the separate religionbased law systems, the Muslim minority of not even 12%06% according to some ,Muslim leaders) could make theRajiv government overrule a Supreme Court decisionwhich gave a Muslim divorced woman the right toalimony. All those Hindus on the Congress-I benchesthought: if the Muslims want to live in the Middle Ages,let them" But in fact, they have given in to the Muslimcommunalist 'two nation theory', the idea that Muslimsare a separate nation that is 'entitled to s'eparate laws while the rejection of that theory is a cornerstone of theIndian Constitution.

Another success of the Muslim lobby in recentyears has been the recognition of Urdu as a second statelanguage in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (the next target beingAndhra Pradesh). We will not deal with the justificationsgiven for this language policy, but merely observe thatmore and more Hindus feel that the Muslim minoritycan always get what it wants, and that its demandsincreasingly resemble the Muslim League demands beforeindependence. Once more, but so far only marginally, theominous demand for separate Muslim electorates has beenvoiced. And as a step in that direction, Muslims havedemanded, and sometimes even obtained, the re-drawingof constituency borders to create Muslim majorityconstituencies.

In common Hindu perception, the Muslim minority in India is politically privileged, while the Hinduminority in Pakistan has been virtually exterminated, andin BangIa Desh it is gradually being squeezed out. It isperfectly reasonable that Hindus see this as an injustice.And it is very fortunate that no 'Hindu communalist'

132 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 133

leader is demanding reciprocity: treat the Muslims theway they treat minorities. All that they demand is: "Justicefor all, appeasement of none."

That formula means, a stop to the special priviligesof .the minorities: equal rights to set up and manageschools (now 'minority institutions' have a special status),equal rights to manage temples (now the government interferes with Hindu temples, ·but wouldn't dare to withmosques), replacement of the 'Minorities Commission'with a 'Human Rights Commission' (since people belonging to the 'majority comunity' may have 'grievances' aswell), and the replacement of the religion-based personallaw systems with a common, modem Civil Code.

The standard argument of Muslim spokesmenagainst the abolition of these special rights is, that theMuslims feel 'insecure' and threatened in their identity.Not that any of them has protested with the Sudaneseleader Numeiry when he imposed the Shari'a indiscriminately on all his subjects, of whom a large minority are notMuslims. In Muslim countries, there are no considerationsof the 'security' and 'identity' of the minorities, let aloneprivileges. But in India, they want to protect their identitywith a special status.

The Babri Masjid has become a symbolic spearheadin the struggle of Muslim assertiveness against assimilation; or from another viewpoint, of Muslim chauvinismagainst national integration. Muslim leaders have threatened dire consequences if they don't get their Masjid, butthey also have played the poor victim, pleading thatMuslims will feel even more "insecure" if this preciousmosque is taken away from them. They declare that if theBabri Masjid domino falls, then there will be no stop to theencroachment on the minority's rights by the majoritycommunity.

But as Girilal Jain, quoted above, has argued, thefear that if you give the Hindus one finger, they will take

the entire hand, is unwarranted. The present animusamong Hindus against Muslims is based solely on theperception that Muslims are still at their old game, thatthey still want a superior status for themselves, that theyare still working for world conquest. If the Muslims wouldmake a concession (just one would already be a revolution), they would become just one among the. manyreligions that have flourished in India. History is witnessthat minority religions have survived in India unharmedfor many centuries.

The fear that Hindus will start doing to Muslims asMuslims have done to them, is based on a projection of thecharacteristics of aggressive religions on all otherreligions. When people sloppily speak of "Hindu fundamentalism", they infer from the very word that these mustbe a Hindu kind of Khomeinis, who want to impose atheocratic state with no room for unbelievers. But in fact,both theocracy and religious intolerance are completelyalien to Hinduism, and even the centuries of confrontationwith Islam were not enough to make these concepts takeroot among the Hindus (except lately among the Sikhs, toan extent).

Muslim spokesmen say they fear that anyconcession to Hindu communalism will only encouragethe abandonment of secularism and the creation of 'HinduRashtra' (Hindu state). Indeed, when the first stone of theplanned Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir was laid, on November 9, 1989, some RSS (Rashtriya Swayasevak Sangh, aHindu activist mass organization) people called it theFoundation-stone of Hindu Rashtra. The impact of theRam Janmabhoomi campaign has been such that evenRajiv Gandhi declared, on November 6, 1989, in a Faizabad election speech, that his aim was the creation of RamRajya. Well, isn't that proof enough that Hindus preparefor a theorcratic one-religion state?

134RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID POLITICAL 1MPLICATIONS 135

First of all, it is a bit incongruous for Muslims tostart defending secularism. When Muslim c.ountries pr?tested against the Ram Janm~bhoomi c.am.palgn, .they sal?that India has to live up to Its seculanstldeals. Why thISconcern for secularism, when they themselves refuse tocreate secular state in their own countries? The answer isgiven by the fundan:'entalist par~y Jamaat-i-Islan:'i-~ind:"No religious entity IS more anxIOUS and e~thuslastIc tosee Bharat really multi-religious than MuslIms, the solereason being that in a plural dispe~ation alone .t~ey canaspire to maintain their identity and mtro~uce theIr ldeol.ogyto others." (emphasis added)131So, there must be pluralIs~as long as Muslims are a minority, but ~nc~ t.hey are. mpower they declare the Islamic state. ThIS IS m keepmgwith the Prophet's example, who had said conciliatingthings like "Unto you your religion, unto me min~" whenhe was weak, but crushed the infidels once he becamepowerful. While I agree that t~e Muslim .villagers are g~nerally tolerant and don't mmd pluralISm, the MuslImcommunal leaders sound very false wh~n they startadvocating secularism against a perceived threat of theo-

cracy. .As for Ram Rajya, it simply means Dharma Ralya,

rule of righteousness. It is in no way sectarian, and th~term was used by the great secularist Mahatma Gandh.l.To quote from an unsuspect source, the Roman Cathol~cFather Premananda (Sanskrit name as part of the Church sindigenization policy): "All Ram's subjects were equal.They were free from fear of any kind. All the four castesbathed at the same ghat. Each caste performed its dutyfaithfully. People lived as the Vedas enjoined on them.They loved one another and were honest ... There was noneed for magistrates to punish criminals for there was nocrime. The staff (symbol of the power to punish) was used

131. in its weekly, Radiance, 23.2.86.

only by wandering sannyasins as a symbol of self-discipline . .. Ayodhya, the seat of king Ram, excelled all otherplaces in beauty and prosperity ... In Ram Rajya, not onlyhuman beings but every creature was happy andcontented."132

Ram Rajya is more a matter of mentality than ofstructures : "Tulsidas [writer of the Hindi Ramayana, RamCharit Manas] does not place all -his hopes for an idealsociety on a set of laws or structures to contain evil andpromote good. Neither does he believe that abundance ofmatetial goods cap/make man happy. It is bhakti, n~arnessto the supreme source of good, Paramatman [the cosmicSelf], that makes people good in themselves and good toothers."133 I don't know if Rajiv was aware of that when hemade his election speech, but he certainly wasn't promising a theocr~tic state either.

In this connection, mention should be made of theRamayana TV serial, which was showing on Doordarshanduring part of the time of the Janmabhoomi campaigns.Many vocal secularists and Muslim organizations havedemanded the ban on this 'communal' serial. This demandin the name of secularism was ~imply ridiculous: in .all thesecular states of the West, religious films are freely showing, without anyhow endangering the secular character ofthe state. The Ramayana is not a belief system, but a storyinvolving universal human values. Says Ramanand Sagar,the producer of the serial: "The serial Ramayana is in noway communal... Lord Rama is more an embodiment oftruth and duty than being a god." He also said that theserial had endeared itself to people of all faiths, which iscorrect and very disquieting to Muslim preachers withtheir de-hinduizing tabligh campaigns among the Muslimpopulace. And he explained that misinterpretation of the

132. Ram Chilrit Manas, p.113-114.133. id., p.llS.

136 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIDPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

137

word 'secular' was responsible for the rumours that theserial is 'communal' quoting Nehru to the effect thatsecularism doesn't mean atheism.134

As for the more ominous-sounding Hindu Rashtra,it will take a longer study than this one to grasp thisconcept in its fullness, but at least all its proponents agreethat it is not a theocratic, much less a one-religion state.135

In the kingdoms of .Shivaji and of Ranjit Singh, foundedafter bitter struggle against Muslim rulers, the only limitations on .the Muslims' freedom of religion were theprohibition of cow-slaughter ·and, sometimes, of thepublic call to prayer in so far it contained the intolerantbattle-cry "There is no godhead except Allah", a publicinsult to all other cults, which can be allowed as a matterof individual free speech, but which must be containedfrom becoming institutionalized.

It should also be made clear that even this hannless .concept of Hindu Rashtra is not advocated bythe main 'Hindu communalist' party, the BJP, preciselybecause the declaration of India as a Hindu state is "only"a largely symbolic issue. In Anglican England, there is fullfreedom of religion; and nobody bothered to protest whenin recent peace talks, it was decided to declare Buddhismthe state religion of post-eommunist Cambodia.

So there is no Hindu Khomeini anywhere in sight.What the Hindus derr:and of the Muslims is merely thatthey give up their pretence of having a God-given right tolord it over-the unbelievers, and that at least in their publicactions, they accept that they are just human beings likethe rest of us. The Babri Masjid is an excellent occasionfor the Muslims to show some distancing from theirtraditional boundless self-righteousness.

134. Kanpur, 1.1.89.135. e.g. Balraj Madhok : Riltionale of the Hindu State (Indian Book Gallery, Delhi 1982); c.P. Bhishikar : Concept of the Rashtra, part 5 of PanditDeendayal Upadhyaya : Idology and Perception (Suruchi Prakashan, Delhi1988).

On the other hand, if the Muslims have their wayand their Babri Masjid, the perception that the Hindus aresecond-class citizens in their own country, ruled by aMuslim minority regime, would be very muchstrengthened. And that would be very, very bad forHindu-Muslim relations. The Muslims have been gettingone concession after another, but what concession havethey ever made? This imbalance in the relations betweenMuslims and others has not gone unnoticed, and itcontinues to breed bitterness.

If the Hindus don't give in on this issue, thatwould break the pattern of Hindus complying withMuslim intransigence, as they did in agreei1}g to the Partition and many other Muslim demands, from the specialstatus of Kashmir down to the ban on The Satanic Verses.

That is exactly what Hindu leaders expect as thehopeful outcome of this unfortunate controversy: setting anew pattern of humane co-existence of different religions(sarva-dharma-samabhava). An amicable bilateral decision toleave the Ram Janmabhoomi to 'the Hindus would teachthe Hindus that even the wounds of centuries can behealed. It would teach the Muslims that they cannotcontinue to regard their own third-rank abandoned buildings as more sacred than other people's places of pilgrimage. It would make the Muslims face their . ownhistory, and teach them that they too have to respectothers.

For an effective secular polity, it is essential thatpeople start to take some distance from'medieval claims ofhaVing God on their side. It is beyond dispute that Hindushave made many concessions to the Muslims. Before therecan be equality, Hindus feel it is necessary that someconcessions come from the Muslim side as well. I believethe Hindus are right in saying that it is time for the Muslims to show that they are not above doing what theynever tire of demanding from others.

138 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO

To conclude, I want to cite one more relevant conside~at,ion. Hindus quote a very simple non-religious nationalist reason why in the Indian Republic, Ram shouldprevail upon Babar: Ram was an Indian, Babar an invader. 3. The Ram JanmabhoomiJ

Babri Masjid's recent history

3.1. History before 1857Before we look at t~e certified recent history of the

Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid, let us hear the Hinduversion of what happened under Moghul rule. In thechapter on the historians' debate, we didn't get to hearthat, because the Hindu version was a priori deemeduntrustworthy.

Musa Ashikan was a Muslim religio.us seeker, whoalso took lessons from a Hindu yogi, in the RamJanmabhoomi temple complex in Ayodhya. But this caseof 'composite culture.' didn't kill the Muslim in him. Oh thecontrary, when he heard of Babar's advance upon Awadh,he expressed his desire to convert this place of which he,had felt the extraordinary power, into a mosque.

When Mir Baqi attacked the Ram Janmabhoomitemple complex in 1528, the Hindus offered re~istance forseventeen days. Even when MirBaqi finally entered thetemple, the priest Shyamanand and h~ family tried toprevent him trom .approaching 1hJil' sqoctuary,' but theywere killed. In t.he sanctuary, Mir · Baqi to his surprisefGUli<i ne- ~l;1olsYb .

. ImIJlediately after' the Babri Masjid was built, Pan-dit Ramqeen and Raja Mahtab Singh organized an offensive against the Moghul forces. Mir..B~i was taken bysurpris~ but prevailed in the end. Later, Raja RanvijaySingh of Hansvar fought a lO-day battle agai,nst theMoghuls, but he was defeated. Rani Jairaj Kumari waged a

136. related by Radhey Shyam : Babar I p.458.

137. related by A. Shani and Mahipal Singh, Surya India, 8 / 90, p.19.

guerilla war and won many skirmishes, but she couldnever consolidate her gains, and she died on the battlefield, together with her guru Meheshwarananda. Anotherof the latter's disciples, Swami Balramchari, led 20' campaigns against the local Moghul forces, captured the BabriMasjid several times, but couldn't maintain his hold.137

Akbar allowed a small temple to 'be built in theprecincts of the mosque. Under Jahangir and Shahjahanthe peaceful co-existence continued, but Aurangzebdemolished the temple and barred Hindus from enteringthe area. After that, Moghul power faded and wasreplaced by the Nawabs in Awadh. They were indulgent 'towards the Hindu demands.

At the fag end of Nawabi rule, Hindu-Muslimrelations deteriorated, fighting took place, and the Britishintervened and used this trouble as one of their pretexts toannex Awadh in 1856. But during the uprising of 1857, theerstwhile Nawab promised the Hindus the entire RamJanmabhoomi area. Unfortunately, that agreement nevermaterialized because the British won, and they gave theMasjid to the Muslims. So much for the Hindu traditionconcerning the Babri Masjid's history.

The Nawabs ("princes") succeeded the Moghuls asthe dominant rulers in North-India in 1722. Under the firstNawab, Saadat Khan (1722-39), Ayodhya was the flourishing capital of the new expanding state. His successorSafdarjang (1739-54) moved the seat of government to thenewly built neighbouring town of Faizabad. Later in thatcentury, the throne was moved to Lucknow.

It seems that Hindu life in Ayodhya was thrivingduring most of the Nawabi period. One factor thatexplains this, is no doubt the presence of Hindus in the

138. Van der Veer names specifically the Srivastava Kayasth and theSaksena Kayasth subcastes. More details in his Gods on Earth, p.37-39.139. id., p.38.

141RECENT HISTORY

Nawabi administration, as mentioned in ch.1.10.138 Eventhe armed forces had a strong Hindu presence, viz. theNaga Sadhus, a martial Shaiva sect.

A conjecture that might add to the explanation, isthat this two-stage provincialization of Ayodhya led to adecline in Muslim population, since many Muslims wouldhave been in government employment. And it is probablethat the Islamic pressure on Ayodhya was weakened, inthe sense that the pressure which Muslim court clericstended to exert on Muslim rulers to keep heathenism incheck, would concern more what happened under theirnoses, than what happened in ,a provincial town. Van derVeer considers this factor of less importance than theHindu Diwans' influence, but it may have been decisiveon an occasion or twO.139

Under the last Nawab, Wajid Ali Shah (1847-56),Sunni leaders asserted themselves against the Shia rulers.In 1855, Sunni leader Ghulam Hussain claimed that therehad been a mosque in Hanumangarhi temple hill, anddemanded it back. The Muslims gathered in the BabriMasjid and threatened the Naga Sadhus (elsewherereferred to as Bairagis, renunciates) with an attack onHanumangarhi. The battle that followed, was won by theSadhus. Some 70 Muslims were killed and buried just nearthe Masjid.

In the description of HR. Neville : "The desecration of the most sacred spot in the city caused greatbitterness between Hindus and Mussalmans. On manyoccasions the feeling led to bloodshed, and in 1855 anopen fight occurrred, the Mussalmans occupying theJanmasthan in force and thence making a desperateattempt on the Hanuman Garhi. They charged up the


142 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO RECENT HISTORY 143

steps of the temple, but were driven back with considerable loss. The Hindus then made a counter-attack andstormed the Janmasthan at the gate of which 75 Mussalmans were buried, the spot being known as the GanjShaheedan or the martyrs' resting place."140

The. British tried to calm the population andorganized a three-party investigation. The Sunni claimwas found to be unjustified, but the Sunni preachers calledon ·their followers to start a jihad against the Sadhus.Maulvi Amir-ud-din, alias Amir Ali, led an army toAyodhya, which the British army stopped at the Nawab'srequest.

Soon after that, in February 1856, the Britishannexed Awadh. They put a railing around the BabriMasjid, and separated the Muslim worshippers, who gotthe Masjid, from the Hindu worshippers, who had nochoice but to do their puja outside.

3.2. The judicial debateThe first attempt in modem times to have a Hindu

temple built on the controversial spot took place inJanuary 1885. Mahant Raghubar Ram made a plea beforethe Sub-judge of Faizabad, to obtain permission to build atemple on the spot just outside the Babri Masjid where theHindus had been allowed for long to worship idolsinstalled on a platform. The plea was rejected by the Subjudge in Febrary 1885, "since it is so close to the existingmasjid". It was also rejected by the District Judge in March1886.

This ·is how the British Judge col. F.E.A. Chamier_assessed the case : "It is most unfortunate that a· MasJidshould have been built on land specially -held sacred bythe Hindus, but as that occurred 356' years ago, it is ,too

140. Faizabad District Gazetteer, 1905, p.168, quoted by A.K. Chaterjee inIndian Express, 2.5.90.

late to remedy the grievance."141 And this statement by thejudicial commissioner shows that his verdict was basedessentially on other considerations than the historical dispute: "There is nothing on record to show that the plaintiff[Le. the priest] is in any sense the proprietor of the land."142

In 1912 and 1934, riots took place over the mosque.The 1934 riot, sparked by a cow-slaughter on the MuslimBakr-Id festival,143 claimed many lives,144 and the mosquewas damaged during an attack by the Hindus. Thegovernment paid for repairs, but imposed a punitive taxon the Hindus of Ayodhya.

Until 1936, the Babri Masjid was being used as amosque by the local Muslim community. In those days,many Muslims migrated to nearby Faizabad for economical reasons, and the Muslim presence in Ayodhya wasdiminishing. The family that was in charge of the mosque,was found to be corrupt, and was deposed without beingreplaced. Other sources say that the mosque went out ofuse because people were found murdered inside themosque, and the local Muslims considered the place toodefiled and impure for use as a prayer-hall.

Subsequently, the Commissioner of Waqfs (Le.mosque management trusts) set up an enquiry into theownership of the prop~rty, which was eventually declateda Sunni mosque in Marc;h 1946. Therefore, the provincialSunni Waqf Board has been one of the parties to the laterjudicial proceeciings.145

141. dated 18.3.1886, Civil Appeal no.27 of1885, DistrictCourt, Faizabad.142. quoted in India Today, 15.12.89.143. as mentioned by dr. B.R. Ambedkar, in Pakistan or the Partition ofIndia, p.178.144. "Hundreds of Muslims seem to have been massacred", according toVan der Veer, op. cit., pAO; 'Thousands of Hindus were slaughtered"according to A. Sahni and Mahipal Singh in Surya India, 8 / 90. p.19.145. Pankaj Pachauri (India Today, 15:12.89) puts it differently : "A civiljudge decreed the mosque is a Waqf property shared by both Sunnis and

hias." (emphasis added). This distinction may be important given themore accomodating position of the Shia leaders.

146. letter to Hindustan Times, 21.12.89.147. in the case Gopal Singh Visharad versus Zahur Ahmad et al.; quoted inthe BJP resolution on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, Palampur, 11.6.89.148. e.g. Pankaj Pachauri in his 'Countdown to the Shilanyas', in IndillTodily,15.12.89.

It is disputed whether after 1936 the mosque was,if not regularly, at least occasionally used for offering1ramaz. Some people deny it, but Babri Masjid campaignerSyed Shahabuddin claims to have witnesses who themselves have participated in namaz at -the Babri Masjid inthe 194Os. That the mosque was not being totally abandoned in 1936 is certainly plausible. On the other handthe complete abandonment and negligence of mosques isnot unusual in Ayodhya. KC. Kulish, editor of RajasthanPatrika , quotes "administrartive officials of Faizabad" assaying that in Ayodhya "there are 26 masjids of which justhalf are in use for offering Namaz. The rest are in badshape."146

At any rate, on March 23, 1951, the Civil Judge atFaizabad observed that "at least from 1936 onwards theMuslims have neither used the site as a mosque noroffered prayers there, and that the Hindus have beenperfonning their Pooja etc. on the disputed site".147 I. guesswe can consider that as the official version: the BabriMasjid was not effectively used as .a mosque since 1936. Inspite of that, many 'secularist' papers, in their historicalsurveys of the controversy, systematically omit thisinformation. I'll

In December 1949 several hunderds of Ram devotees held a fortnight-long session of kirian (chanting) infront of the building. Finally, during the night of December 22, 1949, Hindu idols "miraculously appeared" in thebuilding. In Muslim terms,the mosque was "desecrated"by these uninvited pagan inhabitants.

145

149. India Magazine, 2 /90, p.60 ff.

The Nehru government took over the disputedproperty and declared the matter sub judice. It did notremove the idols, but had the gate locked. Nevertheless,worshippers could offer puja from the outside. The RamJanmabhoomi Seva Committee obtained pennission toworship the idols once a year on the anniversary of theidols' "appearance". A group of Hindu .activ.ists startedakhand kirian (uninterrupted (relay) chantIng), Intended togo on until the Ram Janmabhoomi is completely l~berat~.

After the idols were installed in the Babn MasJId,the building was put under padlocks by administrativeorder, on the grounds that communal harmony was indanger if entry were pennitted to either Hindus orMuslims. According to Gyanendra Pandey,149 theauthorities thereby acquiesced in an illegal situation, .sincethe idols had been installed illegally: "The police guard onduty could either do nothIng, or ref~ed. to do a~ything, toprevent this illegal act. The then DIStrIct MagIstrate andhis personal assistant (both Hindus) may have had. a handin this acquiescence. II). any event, both were retired. fortheir openly pro-Hindu stance in the course of the notsthat followed."

It seems that the idols weren't removed onlybecause the District Magistrate, KKK Nair, refused to doso when the Commissioner of Faizabad, Shyam SundarlalDar, ordered him to. Nair's ground for refusing was, thatremoving the idols would rekindle communal passions.When he and his assistent Gurudatt Singh were forced toretire, his decision not to remove the idols was notreversed. On the contrary, the aforementioned decision ofthe Faizabad Civil Judge in 1951 sanctioned the status quo,confirming the same court's 'order of January 19, 1950(on a suit filed by Gopal Singh Visharad seeking unrestricted right to worship), that had stated: "The parties

RECENT HISTORYRAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID144

150. Civil Appeal no. 6/1986.151 . India Magazine, 2 /90, p.72.

are hereby restrained by means of termporary injunctionto refrain from removing the idol in question from the sitein dispute and from interfering with puja etc. as at presentcarried on." The status quo order was again confirmed bythe Allahabad High court on April 26, 1955.

In December 1961, the Sunni Waqf Board movedthe court demanding possession of the Masjid and thegraveyard adjoining it. This claim has not been decided atthe time of writing, and today it is only one of severalclaims pending before the court.

On February 1, 1986, the padt'ocks wen:; removedby order of the Faizabad District Judge, KM. Pandey,accepting the plea of advocate Umesh Chandra Pandey.The judge referred to the 1951 order and directed that ,as"for the last 35 years Hindus [have had] unrestricted rightot worship" at the place, the locks put on the two gates ongrounds of law and order be removed. ISO He argued thathe had been assured by the District Magistrate thatlocking the gates was no longer necessary either for thepreservation of law and order or for "the protection of theidols". Doordarshan (India's national T.V. station)cameras were present when, within hours of the verdict,the gates were opened.

According to Gyanendra Pandey, the governmentacquiesced in a verdict that meant "protection of thisillegal encroachment", as a part of its policy of appeasingcommunalism: "It was the Hindu part of an electoral quidpro quo in which the Muslims had been 'rewarded' ~iththe infamous Muslim Women's Protection Act. "lSI (Byvoting this Act, the Congress-I government gave in to theMuslim fundamentalist demand to overrule the SupremeCourt verdict that a divorced Muslim woman should bepaid alimony by her ex-husband)

This Faizabad verdict concerned practical measures of law and order. It did not decide the more basicissue of the ownership of the property, which has beenpending in the courts for decades, and at the time ofwriting is still sub judice.'

On August 14, 1989, the Allahabad High Co~rt

clubbed ·together the cases concerning the JanmabhoomilMasjid, already five in number. It issued an interimdirective to maintain the status quo about the disputedpropterty pending a final judgement: "The parties to thesuit shall . . . not change the nature of the property inquestion." By then, the parties to the suit included theSunni Waqf Board, the UP State Government, RamJanmabhoomi Nyas represented by Ashok Singhal andDeoki Nandan Agarwal, VHP leaders, and variousMuslim and Hindu religious personnel, including arepresentative of the nearby Ninnohi Akhara (a martialabbey) and an individual Shia claimant. "

The BMCC said it would abide by the AllahabadHigh Court verdict. It has also reminded the public thatthe 1951 Faizabad Court order contained an injunction tomaintain the status quo, meaning that the idols shouldnot be removed, but also that the structure shouldnot be demolished. The All-India Babri Masjid ActionCommitttee (see ch.3.3) prefers adjudication by a specialthree member bench consisting of South-Indians who areneither Hindu nor Muslim.

The VHP leadership signect an accord with HomeMinister Buta Singh on September 27, 1989, promising thatit would "abide by the directive of the Lucknow Bench ofAllahalJad High Court given on 14.8.89 to the effect thatthe parties to the suit shall ... not change the nature of theproperty in question and ensure that the peace andcommunal harmony are maintained". But it has alsoreiterated its well-known position that this is fundamen-

147RECENT HISTORYRAM ]ANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MAS]ID146

148 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIORECENT HISTORY 149

tally not a matter which can be decided by the judicialapparatus.

But what is exactly the disputed property ? Thereis first of all the Masjid itself: it is beyond dispute that it isdisputed. In front of the Masjid there ar~ two more pl~ts,

not at all rectangular in shape. To the nght (when facmgthe Masjid) is an undisputed area, in the judicial documents called Plot no. 578. To the left is a wedge-shapedplot, known as Plot no. 586. Part of it is close.r to t~e

Masjid than Plot no. 578, part of it is on the far sIde of It.The Sunni Waqf Board has claimed all of Plot no. 586,arguing that it has been used as a Musli~ bUrial-~ro~~d:

that makes all of it disputed, and subject to a JudIcIalruling. .

The VHP has always unambiguously stated that Itintended to build the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on theundisputedly disputed area where the Masjid stands, aswell as on part of the land in front of it. The Congress-Igovernment had hoped that at least the ceremonialFoundation-laying would take place on some of the undisputed land in front of the Masjid. While one religiousleader, Swami Swaroopanand, the Shankaracharya ofDwarka, declared that the only right place for theShilanyas was inside the Masjid, on September 27 the VHPagreed to have the Foundation ceremony at about 60metres away from the Babri Masjid's gate. That way, ~ll

options were still open: perhaps a temple could be bUIltthat would not displace the Masjid, so that temple andmosque would stand side by side. No matter what exactlythe long-term outcome ' would be, at any rate no onewould have definitely lost by election day, Novermber 26.

That was the government's calculation, but therewas one problem. The Shilanyas spot was still in a~ areaclaimed by the Sunni Waqf Board, Plot no. 5~6. !~at IS .n~t

part of the big Mandir/ Masjid debate, but JUd.lcially I~ IStl\e iobject of the same legal dispute. Therefore, If the HIgh

Court has used the terms 'disputed' or 'in question' in thetechnical-juridical sense (as one would expect in a Courtruling), the prohibition on changing the status-quo alsoapplies to the Shilanyas spot. .

For the VHP, having the Shilanyas on disputedland, only a few meters away from the undisputed plotwhich would seem to be just as fit for the purpose, was astrange strategic risk, or maybe carelessness. But for thegovernment, it was a crucial blow to its face-saving policyof not offending the Muslims, nor the Hindus, nor the lawof the land, until the elections were over. In fact, it turnedout that the government had pressured Ram Gopal Dass,the owner of undisputed plot no. 578, to invite the VHP toconduct Shilanyas on his land, and that the VHP had atfirst agreed. At any rate, on November 2, the Bajrang Dalpresented the government with an accomplished fact byhoisting a saffron flag on disputed Plot no. 586.

On November 6, the UP State Government askedthe Allahabad High Court to clarify which areas exactlywere in dispute. In its application, the GovernmentexpreSSly assumed that the spot marked for Shilanyas ~ason disputed land: "The district authorities have adVIsedthe VHP that their actions in hoisting the flag andbarricading the land are in clear violation of this court'sinterim order dated August 14, 1989."

On Novermber 7 the Allahabad High Court gaveits clarification. The four-page order issued by the threejudge bench clarified that their status quo order concernedall the plots brought up in the Sunni Waqf Board suit,including Plot no. 586. The wording, however, was insome places a bit complicated: "Our injunction should beread to be operating to these plots, more specificallydescribed by letters ABCD, which is included in the largerboundary described by letters EFGH in the site planattached to the [Waqf Board's] plaint."

152. much of this survey of the judicial dimension of theJanmabhoomi /Masjid- ·affair is adapted from the the Indian Press, especially India Today,31.1tJ:S9.and 15.12.89, and Sunday Mail, 19.11.89.153. India Today, 15.12.90.

151RECENT HISTORY

Government and the UP State Government passed fromCongress-I into Janata Dal hands, the new governmentincluding its Muslim Home Minister, ra ther thancondenming its predecessor, confirmed the latter's interpretation, and reiterated that the Shilanyas spot was noton disputed land.

Moreover, the judges, who gave the clarificationknowing fully well that the question concerned theShilanyas spot, have not explicitly declared that spot wasin the disputed area. On the contrary, where theymentioned Plot no. 586, they did not add anythingaffirmative, like "in its entirety", but they qualified itrestrictively : ". . . Plot number 586, in so far includedwithin the boundary described by letters EFGH in the siteplan." (emphasis added) This left open the possibility thatpart of the plot is not disputed. It seems to me that it wasnot so much the govrnment that forced its interpretationon the clarification, but that it was the judges themselveswho made their statement a bit vague. .

3.3 The Ram Janmabhoomi and Habri Masjidcampaigns

In April 1984, the VHP-sponsored Dharm Sansad,a gathering of all kinds of sadhus and Hindu religiousleaders, launched a movement to 'liberate' the RamJanmabhoomi. It is alleged that the VHP, a kind ofideological front organization of the RSS (which in itself ismore action - oriented), had not publicly raised this issuein the two decades that it had been in existence. However,in April 1978 it had already raised the issue at a

lpublic

meeting in Delhi, and inside the organization, the idea hadbeen around since the very first session in 1966.

In June 1984, The Ram ]anmabhoomi Mulcti YajnaSamiti (Committee for the Ram Birthplace LiberationRitual) was formed. In October 1984, it organized a mass

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJIO

The site plan was a notional plan, i.e. it showed thedifferent plots as rectangles (with letters ABCD etc. in thecomers), not true to shape. The order's final conclusionread: "We clarify that the order dated August 14, 1989,was in respect of the entire property mentioned in the suit,including plot number 586, in so far included within theboundary described by the letters EFGH in the siteplan." IS2

The government could not admit that it wasallowing the 5hilanyas to take place on disputed land,which would mean complicity in an act of contempt ofCourt. 50 it interpreted the clarification as not meaningthat the 5hilanyas spot was on disputed land. The ?tate'sAdvocate-General 5.5. Bhatnagar argued that, going bythe scale on the map, the 5hilanyas spot fell outside themap. Commentator PankaJ Pachauri interprets hisreasoning as follows: "He thus mtroduced.a new element:since the notional map was rectangualr, the property indispute too was rectangular - something never mentionedin court. By superimposing the notional sketch on thedisputed area, he formulated an interpretation to bail outthe government."lS3

. Another explanation offered on behalf of thegovernment was that since the adjacent Plot no. 578 wasnot disputed, the part of Plot 586 on the far side of Plot no.578 was a fortiori also undisputed: as if disputednessdiminishes proportionally to the distance from the Masjid.

The secularist press spoke with one voice incondemning the government for its distorted reading ofthe Court clarification. But we shouldn't get carried awayby that one voice. When only a few weeks later, the Union

150

RECENT HISTORY 153152 RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID

manifestation, the Ram ]anmabhoomi Mulcti Yajna, andmade the controversy a national issue.

In 1985, the VHP organised the Ram-Janaki Rathyatra, the Ram-Sita processions, in which the deitieswere shown as being behind bars.

In February 1986, the Faizabad District Judgeordered opening of the building for· Hindu worship. InMarch, Muslim leaders set up the Babri Masjid Coordination Committee (BMCC). It immediately organizeda nation-wide Muslim "mourning".

In March 1987, three lakh Muslims gathered at theBoat Club in Delhi to demand the handover of the BabriMasjid. In April, Hindus gathered in Ayodhya to pledgefull liberation of the Ram Janmabhoomi. .

In 1988, the BMCC issued calls for marches onAyodhya, planned for August 12 and <?etober 14, b~t bo~h

times it cancelled them. But not without somethmg mreturn. In fact, it is quite probable that the second marchwas announced with the cancellation in mind, just tofrighten the government into some concessions. The VHPhad announced a five-day Sri Ram Maha Yajna in the heartof Ayodhya, starting on October 11. O~er a ~akh VHP ,a~d

Samiti supporters gathered and remamed on guard tillOctober 15, to prevent the BMCC-planned march onAyodhya announced for October 14. Knowing very wellthat the government would willingly make someconcessions to avert such a massive confrontation, BMCCspokesman Syed Shahabuddin went to talk with PrimeMinister Rajiv Gandhi.

The outcome of the talks was that the BMCCmarch was called off, and also something else, somethingthe world would hear of. Apart from some cheappromises and other minor gestures, the governmentagreed at once to ban a book freshly published in England:The Satanic Verses, written by a British writer born inBombay, Salman Rushdie. Not that mr. Gandhi needed a

lot of convincing to ban the book: in his earlier book, Midnight's Children, Rushdie had sharply criticized Rajiv'smother Indira, so the family had an account to settle withthis Salman Rushdie. But it came in handy that thisbanning could also pacify Syed Shahabuddin and hiscrowd.

Soon after that, the Babri Masjid Co-ordinationCommittee split. The deals that Shahabuddin made withthe government were construed by other Muslim leadersas a sell-out. During a meeting in Shahabuddin'sresidence, a quarrel ended with Shahabuddin showingsome colleagues the door. He went as far as expulsingSyed Abdullah Bukhari, the imam of the Jama Masjid inDelhi (after Moghul fashion, still called the Shahi (royal)Imam). On November 26, the dissidents held their ownseparate Babri Masjid convention.

It is widely believed that it was more a clash ofegos than a political difference. The Shahi Imam wouldhave felt sidelined by Shahabuddin, who was emerging asthe leading spokesman for Muslim causes. AndShahabuddin was also described as a difficult man towork with ("Who does he think he is? Shah-in.5hahabuddin ?")154 At any rate, the spli~ was calculated todo most harm to Shahabuddin's political career. By"depriving ' him of clerical suport, Imam Bukhari made aserious bite into Shahabuddin's standing among theMuslim masses.

As for the political part of the quarrel, thedissidents on the one hand felt that Shahabuddin wassacrificing Muslim interests, and not getting any majorconcessions. Zafaryab Jilani, convenor of theUttar Pradesh Babri Masjid Action Committee saidShahabuddin was being fooled by the government: "By

154. Shah-i"-Shah, "King of Kings", was the title of many Persian rulers,Including the late Shah Reza Pahlevi.

155. statements quoted in Probe India, 1 /90.156. for an excellent study of the logic of communalist out-bidding, seeArun Shourie: Secularism - Real and Counterfeit, published as ch.ll of hisReligion in Politics.157. KumbhMela isa religious festival which takes placein Prayag, at theconfluence of Ganga and Yamuna when Jupitar is in sidereal Taurus, andthe sun is in sidereal Capricon and Aquarius (=Kumbh), Le. every 12 yearsin January-February. Crores of people go there.

prolonging the negotiations, the government wants tokeep the issue pending till the next elections." But on theother hand, they said he was fomenting communal tensionto consolidate his political standing. Ahmad Bukhari, theShahi Imam's son, declared: "We are against those whocreate an atmosphere of hatred to keep their political shoprunning." To an outsider, however, it would seem that atleast this time, Shahabuddin had lowered the communaltension by calling off the Ayodhya march, no matter whathis motives were. And he called "the dissidents "fundamentalists". 1~5

It is just not true that the split in the Committeewas a split between moderates and extremists. And thevery fact of the split was a new factor that would probablyexacerbate the situation, because if communalist groupshave to compete, they usually compete in radicalism, notin moderation.l56 But so far, the two Babri Masjid actioncommittees, the BMCC and the new All-India BabriMasjid Action Committee (AIBMAC), have not reallydone anything harmful that a single committee would nothave done just as well.

In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela157 in Prayag(Allahabad), the biggest gathering of people so far inworld history, a Maha Sant Sammelan ("Great Saints' Conference") was.held, and it decided to construct a temple inAyodhya. In May, another Sant Sammelan in Haridwarlaid down the construction schedule: the Shilanyas cere··mony would take place on November 9, 1989.

155RECENT HISTORY

In June 1989, the Communist Party of India tookout a peace march in Ayodhya. Also in June, an alternativeHindu Sammelan, sponsored by the Congress Party,took place in Chitrakoot. There, Swami Swaropanand,Shankaracharya of Dwarka, vehemently criticized theVHP and its Shilanyas plan, though for a different kind ofreason: they were going to do it on an astrologicallyinauspicious time. In July, the .Bajrang Dal gathered inAyodhya and pledged to lay down their lives for the Ram}anmabhoomi.

On September 30, the VHP started with Shila Puja,consecration of temple bricks, in all villages of India withover 2000 inhabitants, altogether in about two lakhvillages. Shila Puja was also performed in Indian communities abroad, as well as in other countries where theRamayana is popular, such as Indonesia and Cambodia.The bricks were brought in procession to Ayodhya, wherethey were stored in temples. Some bricks from foreigncountries were proudly put on display: from Botswana,Holland, Guyana, Canada, etc. The Left and the Muslimparties called on the central government to ban the ShilaPujas. The CPI (M) government in West Bengal banned theprocessions, but would (and could) not ban the ShilaPujas. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu declared: "If anybodywants to worship bricks, he is free to do it at home, but wewon't allow it in public places at the cost of communalharmony."

Girilal Jain commented on the Shila Puja campaign: "The idea of organizing Shila Puja (consecration ofbricks) through the length and breadth of India, withspecial emphasis on North India where Bhagwan Rama isthe supreme reigning deity, was a stroke of genius. OnlyLokmanya Tilak's move to convert Ganesh worship onGanesh Chaturthi into a public occasion [of anti-colonialnationalism] and Mahatma Gandhi's talk of Rama Rajyacan match it. It did not, on the one hand, involve violation


158. Sunday Mail, 12.11 .89

of the laws of the land, and on the other, it assured a kindof Hindu mobilization which would otherwise have beenimpossible."158

Girilal Jain added to this observation some sharpcriticism of his colleagues, journalists and intellectuals,whose only 'solution' to this 'catastrophe' of nationwide'communalism' was of the unimaginative and sinister variety : suppressing this popular wave with the law and order machinery. Such an authoritarian approach wouldhave led to many Tian-An-Men scenes, and moreover, itwouldn't have worked: "I find it difficult to determine,even for theoretical purposes, the stage at which thegovernment could have effectively intervened to stop theprogramme. In facti I have the horrible feeling that theadvocates of official intervention have learnt nothing fromthe failure of all Communist governments, especially theSoviet government, at suppression.

"Unlike the great pandits of modernity andsecularism who have hauled Rajiv Gandhi over the coalsfor his decision not to use ·the machinery of the mightyIndian state to suppress the VHP and fight what they callHindu 'chauvinism, fanaticism and bigotry', I believe thathe acted correctly and indeed wisely, when he refused todeny millions of Hindus their constitutional right to organize pujas and take out processions so long as they didnot engage in violence and disturb public peace."

However, one problem with 'the Shila processionshas been that they have sparked riots in several places. Itis a matter of academic debate in how far the processionsmade a difference: in the last years, communal rioting hasbeen intense in North India even without the Shila Pujas/and shortly before elections there is usually a peak incommunal riots. Still, in some cases, the processions werethe actual occasion for rioting.

One of these riots was one of the worst since independence/ and took place in Bhagalpur, Bihar. A RamShila procession was moving through the city, andstopped at a crossroads for some deliberations betweenthe organizers and the law and order personnel about achange of rotite. Bombs were thrown at the processionfrom inside a Muslim college. Shots were fired and aviolent free-for-all followed. This is the classical scenarioof a Hindu-Muslim riot. Less classical was what happenedthe following days, after the bricks had moved on:revenge parties were taken out to neighbouring Muslimvillages and killed many helpless innocent people.Estimates of the total number of victims vary between 200and 700.

There have been all kinds of theories about whatexactly had happened: a Hindu show of strength, Musliminfiltrators from BangIa Desh, goondas hired by this or thatpolitician, economical rivalry between Hindu and Muslimcraftsmen that had been settled in the guise of acommunal riot (massive amounts of weaving equipmentwere destroyed). There is little doubt that if not the outbreak/ at least the outrageous dimensions of the Bhagalpurriots were due to conscious intervention by a politician,combined with guilty neglect by the (Congress ruled)state. It has often been alleged that the Congress Partywilfully fomented communal violence in order to frightenthe Muslims into voting for the .'secular' Congress-I. Ingoonda-infested Bihar, human lives are very cheap in thealculations of even established politicians. In this case

also, some indications to this effect were cited, but nopolitician was definitely found out. As a TV commentatoraid: "We have seen the hand. Now we need to see the

face."There is of course no justification for the Hindu

part of the bloodshed, but it should be stressed that by all, ccounts, the riot started with an attack on the procession.

157RECENT HISTORYRAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASJID156

AJ,so, the Hindu part of the violence took place mostly after the cars with the bricks had moved on to Ayodhya,and by people beyond the organizers' control. Of course,the organizers should have taken it upon themselves tocalm down their fellow Hindus, even the antisocial elements among them, and should have gone out of theirway to take the urgent calming and healing steps that theadministration (by all accounts) criminally neglected.

Those who want to discredit the RamJanmabhoomi campaign, say that the processions have"created violence". No, they have encountered violence,and that is a radically different matter. It has been saidthat people in the procession shouted provocative slogans,but that is not an excuse. Firstly, you can answer sloganswith slogans (give tit for tat, as it were), instead of withphysical violence. And secondly, bombs are not somethingyou pick up from the street in reaction to "Slogans. Youhave made and brought them beforehand, knowing fullywell what to do with them.

There is no doubt that the violence was wroughtby people who primitively opposed "the Ram Shilaprocession, but was engineerded by more sophisticatedpeople who wanted to destroy communal harmony and ordiscredit the whole Ram Janmabhoomi campaign. Even aglance at the "Cui prodest ?" (who benefits ?) aspect of theBhagalpur massacre would reveal that much. Theengineer of the riot must be grinning to see how the'secularist' journalists are playing into his hand with theiranti-VHP explanations.

The VHP had every reason not let their Ram showdegenerate into a bloodbath. Those in the press who havetried to make the Ram processionists the culprit, are noteven logical. They are literally the same people who in allseriousness have accused the Hindu refugees from

159. as was done by Pankaj Pachauri in India Today, 31.3.90.160. A Requiem for Norms, editorial on 22.11.89.

Kashmir of "creating a communal crisis".159 They are thesame ones who blamed (and forced to resign) the Indiangovernor Jagrnohan when Maulvi Farooq, the 'moderte'pro-independence preacher in Kashmir, got killed by his'militant' friends, etc.

On November 9, the Shilanyas took place peacefully. Much to the chagrin of the 'secularist' commentators,the Hindu organizations and the army had no problem tokeep the peace on Ram's big day. Of course, a lot of security personnel and equipment had been deployed.Another factor of peace was certainly that Hindus all overthe country were holding their breath, and were consciousof the iIpportance of a good atmosphere so as not to marthe big event. The Times of India blamed "the confusionthat surrounded developments on that day" for theabsence of the loudly predicted violence on Shilanyasday.160

At 9:15 a.m., Mahant Avaidyanath, president of theRam Janmabhoomi Mukti Yajna Samiti, raised the pickaxeto start the digging. Cameras were present, and all thehigh-priests took care to be filmed in the act of digging forRam Rajya. Thousands of activist Hindus stood aroundchanting mantras.

The first stone was laid by a Harijan, in order toshow that Hinduism has broken with its past of casteism(critics wondered if the positions of honour and profit inthe temple management would also be given to Harijans).For indeed, this was intended to be not just the foundationstone of a temple, but of the new Hindu society. .

The complete Shilanyas ceremony lasted till noonof the next day. It was left at thpt, for the time being. Afterdiscussions with the government, the further constructionwas delayed till February. For now, it had been a great


161. English translation published in Arun Shourie etel :Hindu Temples:What Happened to Them, appendix.

and untainted success. The BJP congratulated the VHPwith the orderly conduct of the ceremony, but theCongress-I government claimed the honour for itself: Itcounted that it was making Hindus happy by allowmgthe Shilanyas, and Muslims by forestalling the actualconstruction. But, as it turned out, Congress had ratherantagonized both communities, losing Hindus to the BJPand Muslims to V.P. Singh's Janata Dal.

Official spokesmen of Pakistan, BangIa Desh, SaudiArabia and Iran condemned the Shilanyas. Many papersin those countries had reported "the demolition of amosque". Benazir Bhutto expressed her "deep. concern".Muslim mobs in BangIa Desh also expressed theIr concernby attacking more than 200 Hindu ~laces of w?rship aswell as many private houses and busmesses, sett~n~ . man.y

of them on fire. The number of Hindus killed or mJured isnot known, but a list of the incidents has been publishedby the Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council in Dhaka:Incidents of Communal Repression in BangIa D~sh,. Oc~urr~d

on the Pretext of Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomz Sztuatzon In

India. 161

It goes like this: "1) On November 11, 1989, the fourhundred-year-old historic Kali temple at Chinishpur ~as

looted and set on fire. 2) On the same day the ShlVatemple of Brahmanadi was looted and set on fire ... 20) ?nNovermber 10, 1989, the Ramakrishna Mission in the CItyof Moulavi Bazar was attacked and burnt down . .. 30) InMagura Sadar Upajilla . .. armed attacks were made,Ranjit Roy and Jagadish Roy were killed ... 53) OnNovember 14, 1989, in .. . Lakshmipuf District, some 36houses, shops and businesses belonging to the ~inority

communities were attacked, looted and set on fire, andwomen were raped and rendered destitute. Besides these,

some 11 temples were attacked and destroyed by settingon fire .. . 72) Temples and shops and businesses in thecity of Pabna were attacked and looted... " The BangIaDesh government has agreed to repair a dozen of theaffected buildings.

Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party lost the 1989Lok Sabha elections, owing chiefly to the charges of corruption, of utter failure in handling the secessionistproblem in Panjab and Kashmir, of active. or passiveresponsibility in communal riots, and of bunglmg the RamJanmabhoomil Babri Masjid affair. The National Front,consisting at the Lok Sabha level almost exclusively of itsJD component (the others being regional parties of Assam,Panjab, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu), formed aminority government, supported by an odd couple ofopposition blocks: the vehemently 'secularist' Communistparties, CPI and CPM, and the outspoken Hindu parties,BJP and Shiv Sena.

After the dirty last years of Congress rule, the newgovernment led by V.P. Singh got a lot of goodwill to startwith. In the Ayodhya affair too, people eXIJ-eCted V.P.Singh to come up with an amicable solution. The VHP hadannounced the beginning of the actual temple construction for February 8, 1990, less than three weeks before theVidhan Sabha (state parliaments) elections. But a few daysbefore the scheduled date, the VHP leadership'had ,a ·talkwith the Prime Minister. After the meeting .they announced, much to the dismay of their own followers, thatthey would give him four months to work out an amicablesolution.

Speculations have it that caste considerationsplayed a role in this decision to postpone the templeconstruction. Both V.P. Singh (an erstwhile raja) andJanmabhoomi campaign leader Mahant Avaidyanath arekshatriyas, and the Mahant would have given the PrimeMinister more time out of caste solidarity. Others say the


VHP was pressured by its most important friend amongthe political parties, the BJP. At least as important was thePrime Minister's rhetoric of not endangering nationalunity at a time of crisis (in ~shmir).

On March 8, 1990, the VHP ran into trouble,.whenthe papers wrote that there had been financial malversations involving the 8.29 crore Rupees (some three timesthe projected amount needed for the temple construction)collected by the VHP. The VHP was said to have "eateninto its corpus", which is incompatible with its fiscal statusas a charitable trust. A notice to this effect was served toVHP by a junior Income Tax officer, but was withdrawnby the Directorate of Income Tax, which declared: "It hasbeen found that the notice issued by a Deputy Director...calling upon the VHP to furnish its return of income forthe assessment year 1990-91 is not in accordance with thelaw." Whether this was a final clearing of the VHP's nameor a bureaucratic trick to evade confrontation, is a matterof dispute. Some say that the withdrawl shows thepolitical clout of the VHP, others that the very notice to theVHP, which was immediately and undeontologicallyleaked to the press, just proves that politically motivatedcivil servants, in connivance with the press, are trying toembarrass the VHP. On the whole, it is improbable thatthe VHP, regardless of what one may think of its ideology,would indulge in double dealings for crass financial gain:apart from its vocal commitment to a moral revival, itknows very well that with its high profile, it is beingwatched by its enemies for fatal mistakes.

One of the people who joined the chorus and 'accused the VHP of financial crimes, was SwamiSwaroopanand Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Dwarka.He would say just anything to attack the VHP. He was allfor the Shilanyas, but not at the VHP's chosen time andplace. He would conduct a second Shilanyas inside theBabri Masjid on May 7, 1990, i.e., with the sun in the

3.4 Ram ]anrnabhoomi and the electionsOn October 6, 1984, the VHP issued a declaration

saying that "lack of collective thinking for the protection ofHindu interests and the absence of the realization of one'sduty in the Hindus is the main cause of the miserable anddisgraceful condition of Hindu society". Consequently, theVHP called on all Hindus to vote, in the upcoming LokSabha elections, for candidates who would endorse andchampion a list of five Hindu demands. One of thedemands was: 'To pass an Act to return to Hindu Samaj[= society] the original places of Rama Janmabhoomi, SriKrishna Janmabhoomi and Kashi Vishvanath temple."

163RECENT HISTORY

Northern hemisphere. However, a week ,before that, heand eleven followers were arrested on the orders of UPChief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav ("Despite mygreat regard for the Shankaracharya, I had to take theunpleasant decision. . . "). The central governmentcongratulated him on this bold move. The VHP, the otherShankaracharyas, and other prominents protested againstthe arrest, but did not for that support the SwamiSwaroopanand's initiative. From Chunar Fort where hewas held, the Shankaracharya called on his followers to goahead with the second Shilanyas on May 7. However, thepo~ce prevented the ceremony and arrested 150 people.Soon after, the Shankaracharya was released.

With all that, the four months that the VHP hadgiven to V.P. Singh to find an amicable solution, werealmost past, and the great hesitater had not come up withanything. There had been an initiative by a Jain Muni tomediate and bring about an agreement between thereligious leaders, thus relieving the politicians of thisdifficult task, but it had failed. So, with the end of thefour-month term in sight, the VHP announced a sessionfor mid-June at which the next steps would be decided.


165RECENT HISTORY

162. Surjit S. Bhalla in Sunday, 11.3.90.

parties, the Shiy Sena and the Hindu Mahasabha, alsobagging 3 and 1 respectively.

It ·seems und~niable that the Hindu parties havebenefited from · a .surge in Hindu political awareness,in which the Shila Pujas have certainly played a role. Atthe same time, many of their voters seem to have beendisappointed with the Congress-I policy of "appeasement"of the .Muslims, also called "minorityism". ,The question ishow many supporters of the Ram Janmabhoomi causehave, because of other considerations and loyalties, votedfor the other parties.

A poll published in Sunday magazine suggests that,contrary to what one would expect if one believes journalistic stereotypes, the 'communal' voter is attracted inroughly equal measure to BJP, JD, and Congress-I. The'communal' voter was defined as one who, elsewhere inthe questionnaire, showed preference for building the.Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir right where the Babri Masjidnow stands. Of these respondents, 29% identified with theCongress, .27% with the JD, and 28% with the BJP. "Inother words, the results resoundingly confirm what hasbeep known to most non-Congress analysts, i.e. thecommunal voter sees all the three major parties as equalvehicles for fulfilling his communal dreams."162

Parties have accused each other of communalism,the main ta~get of course being the BJP. It may be pointedout that the Janata Dal has brought Babri Masjid campaignleaders into the Lok Sabha and the governments, and thatImam Bukllari has called on the Muslims to vote for theJD. In the case of Congress, the claims to secularism by itsspokesmen like M.J. Akbar are contradicted by many facts.In the last state elections in 'Mizoram, Congress declareditself the champion of the Christian community there. Itwas behind the rise of the Sikh extremist Bhindranwale. It

RAM JANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASjIO164

Soon after that, mrs. Indira Gandhi was killed bvher Sikh bodyguards, and attention was pulled away fromthe Ayodhya controversy. Several thousands of Sikhswere massacred in Delhi by goondas belonging to orhired by the Congress Party as was alleged. By contrast,workers of the "Hindu communalist" BJP saved manySikhs' lives (as was admitted evenby anti-Hindu intellectuals like Khushwant Singh).

Still, it was not the BJP but the Congress-I that gota landslide victory in the 1984 elections. This does notmean that the "Hindu vote bank" which the VHP wastrying to create, had not materialized. To an extent, it had.But those people who cared about Hindu demands likethe Ram Janmabhoomi, had as much faith in the CongressI as in the BJP. This was partly due to the perdeved threatto India's unity, against which the Congress-I as the onlyall-India party seemed the best guarantee; and partly tothe fact that many activist .Hindus, including the leadership of the Hindu mass organization RSS, sympathizedWith Indira because of her championing Hindu demandsin -the 1983 state elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Thissupport from the activist Hindu voters, in turn, is part ofthe reason why the Congres.s-I government did nothing tostop the Janmabhoomi campaign when it gained nationwide momentum in 1989.

A lot has been written about the effect of the Shilanyas on the Lok Sabha elections of late 1989 (the trendsof which were confirmed in the Vidhan Sabha elections ofearly 1990). The results of those elections are well known: the Congress lost its comfortable majority, butremained the single largest party and did well in theSouth; the JD became a credible alternative and were in aposition to form a minority government; the communistparties did well; the spectacular winner was tile BJP,which jumped from 2 to 88 seats, with the other Hindu

163. Fifty lakhs rupees havebeensanctioned for flooring onlyof.theJamaMasjid at Delhi which, according to the Archaelogical Survey, is nota.protected. monument entitiled. to receive government grants. On the otherhand, a sum of only one crore has been sanctioned. for more thfm one lakhrefugees from Kashmir.

had a big hand in the Sikh mas~cre after Indira's murder.It had used Arun Covil, ,the actor who played Ram in theRamayana TV serial, as a vote attractor in the Allahabadby-elections (he declared that JD had also asl,<ed him, butthat Congress was his personal preference). Andcommunal tension was strongest in Congress-ruled states.

The Muslim vote in North-India has clearlyswung from the Congress-I to the JD. Political stientists aswell as politicians have always considered the Muslimcommunity as a solid vote bank. Recently, academics haveexpressed doubts about the solidity of this "Muslim votebank", but politicians still work with it. There is no doubtthat the Shahi Imam's call to Muslims to vote down Congress and to support V.P. Singh has influenced the electionresults. The Imam didn't have to do it for love: in March1990, the JD government agreed to pay for repairs on theImam's Jama Masjid in Delhi, when everybody knows thathe could get the money from the Arab countries.l63 Butthese are things politicians do as a matter of alliancebuilding.

'Secularists' claimed the election result as a victory.A point in their favour is that the district which contai~

the Ram Janmabhoomi / Babri Masjid voted a CPI candIdate into the Lok Sabha, when the CPI had campaigned onan anti-communal platform. Also, M.J. Akbar, the'secularist Muslim', had stoo~ against Syed ~hahabud?in

in Kishanganj , Bihar, and Syed Shahabuddm had WIthdrawn because of (many commentators say: under thepretext of) formal problems With his candidacy papers.Syed Shahabuddin then fought the elections from

13 ngalore, but lost. On the Hindu activist side, byontrast, several Janmabhoomi campaigners won a seat.

Among them was, surprisingly, a Hindu Mahasabhaandidate, the only one of that party who was elected:

Mahant Avaidyanath, who had led the Shilanyasremony.

It is quite certain that the VHP effort to make Hinduism into a politically conscious unity, has met withconsiderable success. It is equally certain that the RamJanmabhoomi campaign has been instrumental in thisdevelopment. The question is whether the VHP will proveright in predicting: "Make no mistake. We will build aHindu Rashtra and we have taken a start on November 9,1989."

167RE ENT HISTORYRAM jANMABHOOMI VS. BABRI MASjIO166

Index

Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (AliMian), 8-9

Abul Kalam Azad, . Maulana, 89Advani, L.K., lOInAgarwal, Deoki Nandan, VHP

leader, 147Agarwal, Purushottam, on 'real

Hinduism', 119-20 .Ahmad Bukhari, son of Imam

Bukhari, 154Akbar, M.]., 'Secularist Muslim',

38,165,166Akbar, Mughal emperor, 42, 45,

57, 100, 140Aligarh School of Historians, 85All India Muslim League, 93All India Shia Conference, su

pports the Hindu claim, 92Allah, 87, 88Allahabad High Court, 95, 146,

147, 149Ambedkar, B.R., 115,116Amir Ali Amethawi, 7, 64, 77,

142Amir Khusrau, 84Anand Krishna, (ProL), 99nAnti-Hindu propagandists (Chris-

tian, Muslim, Marxist) and theirshameless story of continuousHindu-Buddhist conflict in preMuslim India, 116-17

Arnold, Edwin, 103Ashghar Ali Abbas, Shia Muslim

leader, 92Avaidyanath, Mahant, 119, 159,

161, 167Aurangzeb, Mughal emperor, 53,

71, 74, 77, 84, 99, 100, 127, 140

Awadh Nawabs, 71, 72, 75-76,77,140-41

Ayodhya, 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 15, 16, 21,24-26, 27, 29, 30, 31-32, 33, 37,50, 51, 72; archaeology of, 2324, 29-30; Birthplace traditionat, 59, 60, 61; Buddhist testimony about, 25, 33; Jain tradition in, 18-22, 33, 40'

Babar, 1, 2, 4, 8, 29, 37, 41, 47, 50,52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 71, 72, 73, 74,75, 130, 138, 139; his testamentto Humayun is a forgery., 45-46;his demolition of Jain templesat Ayodhya, Jain statues atUrwah and Hindu temples ingeneral at Chanderi, 42, 48, 49

Babri Masjid, 1, 4, 41, 42, 142-44;an abandoned mosque, 144; asper Muslim sources, 6,8,51,60,61, 64-65, 67-69, 70-71, 72;archaeology of, 10, 57, 58;date of construction, 1, 8, 52, 65,69-71; F.E.A. Chamier on, 14546; Hindu tradition about,139-40; Joseph Tieffenthaler on,9, 10, 74; Montgomery Martinon, 10, pillars from Jaintemples, 42; William Finch on,10

Babri Masjid Action Committee' (BMAC), 92, 97, 147, 153, 154

Babri Masjid Coordination Committee (BMCC), 5, 147, 152, 153;nature of split in, 154

Bahujan Samaj Party, 93Bajrang Dal, 91, 149, 155

INDEX

kker, Hans, 70nerjee, SK, on Babar, 47ngla Desh, 80, 131, 157; destruction of Hindu temples in, 160-61

o su, Jyoti, Communist ChiefMinister of West Bengal, 125,155; on 'real Hinduism', 120

Bhagalpur riots, 157-58Bhai Parmananda, Hindu Maha

sabha leader, 104Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 92,

lOIn, 136, 144n, 160, 161, 162,164, 165

Bhutto, Benazir, 160Bidwai, Praful, 3Bipan Chandra, JNU historian, 3,

38; on 'real Hinguism', 12060dh Gaya Buddhist Temple,

restoration of, 102-04Brahmanical reaction, theory of,

108Brahmanism, 115, 117British machinations theory,

untenability of, 63-64, 72, 140,142-43

Buddha, 125, 127Buddhism, 89, 105, 114, 117, 126,

127; Muslim tfeatment of, 80;Marxist view of, 115

Buta Singh, Home Minister inRajiv Gandhi Government, 147

Chamier, F.E.A., the British handover Ramjanmabhoomi to Muslims on political grounds, 14243

Chanderi, Hindu temples demol-ished at, 49

Chatterjee, A.K., 9, 70, 73-75Choudhry, K.5., 73Communist Parties, 94, 155, 161,

164, 165-66'Composite culture', a case of, 139

169

Congress Party, 94, 119, 151,155,'157, 160, 161, 164, 165-66

Dalai Lama, 93Defenders of 'real Hinduism',. 119-22, 124, 130Destruction of Hinduism, ideol

ogies devoted to, 117Dixit, S.c., VHP leader, 97Djenghis (Changiz) Khan, on

Muslim preachers, 127Durant, Will, on Muslim conquest

of India, 84

Fakhr}lddin Ali Ahmad MemorialCommittee, suppresses a historical document, 7

Falsity of Muslim fears aboutHindu aggression, 133-34

Ferozshah Tughlaq, Sultan, 100Finch, William, 10

Gandhi, Indira, 153, 164Gandhi, Mahatma, 102, 122, 123,

124, 125, 126, 134, 155Gandhi, Rajiv, 133, 135, 152, 153,

156, 161Gandhi, Ram Chandra, on 'real

Hinduism', 120Gael, Sita Ram, 81, 82, 87n, 97Gopal, Sarvapalli, JNU historian, 3Gupta, S.P. (Dr.), 10, 25-26, 27, 29,

51, 57, 58, 59, 96Gyanvapi mosque at Varanasi, 57,

100

Habib, Irfan, 82nHabib, Mohammed (Prof.), 85-86,

88,89Hadis,87Hakim Sayyid Abdul Hai,

Maulana, 7-8Hanuman Garhi, 7, 64, 71, 76, 77,

141

RAM JANMABHOOM! VS. BABRI MAsnD170

Harsh Narain (Dr.), 5, 7, 60, 64,65-66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 83

Heathenism in Hinduism, 126Hindu-baiters, Nehruvian, 117-18'Hindu fundamentalism', 133Hindu Mahasabha, 92, 104, lOS,

119, 128, 165, 167Hindu-Muslim relations, 137Hindu Rashtra, concept of, 133,

136, 167Hinduism, 110, 114, 122, 124, 125,

126, 127, 128, 133, 159Hindus and Jews, 78, 80Hindus and Parsis, 78Hindus in the Muslim mind, 124

. Hsuan Tsang, 23, 26, 39, 40, 108,109

Humayun, Mughal emperor, 4445

Ibn Taymmiyah, on how jihadrestores lands to the Muslims, 6

Idgah at Mathura, 99Imam Bukhari, Syed Abdullah,

94, 153, 154, 165, 166India Todily, IOnIndian Muslim Youth Congress

(lMYC), supports the Hinduclaim, 92

Indian National Congress, 104Indian (Nehruvian) Secularism,

7, 45. 84-85; character of theMuslim Concern for, 134- .

Iqbal Ahmad, 92Iqbal, Muhammad, all lands be

long to the MusliJ'lls, 6Islam, 43, 44, 45, !l9, 72, 79, 86, 87

88, 89-90, 105, 117, 118; placeof mosque in, 127-128

Islamic iconoclasm, 87-88, 114Islamic glorification of religious

persecutions, 107

Islamic Law, regarding landowned by the infidels, 6

Islamic terrorism, 80, 83-84; inKashmir, 121

Jahangir, Mughal emperor, 42,140Jain, Cirilal, 13, 98, 129-30, 132-33,

155-56Jainism, lOS, 110, 114, 123, 126Jamaat-i-Islami-Hind, 93, 134Janata Dal, 94, lSI, 160, 161, 164,

165,166Jews, Muslim treatment of, 79-80Jihad, 6, 43-44, 49, 64, 142JNU (Marxist, Nehruvian,

Secularist, Stalinist) historians,3, 4, 9, 10, 11-12, 13-14, IS, 16,17, 18, 24-25, 26, 30-31, 32-33,36, 37, 51-52, 53-54, 58, 59, 63,73, 75-76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85,93,94, 105, 106, 108, 109,110-11,lIS, 116, 117, 118; stage retreat6, 27, 53, 55; on 'real Hinduism', 120

Ka'aba at Mekka, 87; a pagantemple converted. into a mosque,S

Kabir, 127Kalidas, Sanskrit poet, about

Ayodhya, 26, 32Kanauj, temples demolished at, 50Kashi Vishwanath at Varanasi, 97

98, 100-01, 163Kashmir, secessionism in, 1, 121

22Kashmiri Hindus, test case for

defenders of 'reai· Hinduism',121-22, 159

Khan, A.R. (Prof.), 11, 13, 15-1b,18, 24, 27, 29, 53, 56, 58, 76, 77,94

INOEX

hanna, Dau Dayal, Congressleader, 94

Khomeini, 80, 133Khushwant Singh, 164Kosambi, D.o., Marxist historian

on Yugas, 16Krish na D,as, Rai, 99nKrishna Janmabhoomi at Mathura

96,97, 98-100, 101, 163Kulish, K.C., on Babri Masjid, 144

Lal, B.B. <prof.), archaeology ofAyodhya, 10, 23, 29

Lal, K.S. (Prof.), 82nLamote, Etienne, historian of

Buddhism, 107 .Lohia, Ram Manohar, on Nehru's

Panch Sheel, 116

Mahavira, Jain Tirthankara, 125Mahmud Chaznavi, 64, 84, 85, 86,

87, 89,99,101,109Maimonides, Jewish philosopher,

on forcible conversion of Jewsin Muslim Spain, 79

Majumdar, R.c. (Prof.), 82, 109Makhdum Shah Zuran Chori,

destroys a Jain temple atAyodhya,51

Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 99Malkani, K.R., 120Mangalwadi, Vishal, Christian

propagandist, 116-17, on 'realHinduism', 120

Martin, Montgomery, 10, 74Marxism in India, elitist .character

of,18Mathura, 85, 88Mir Baqi, 41, 42, 47, 50, 51, 52,

54, 61, 71, 91, 139Mirza Jan, 64, 83Mirza Rajab Ali Beg ,Surur, 7'0-71,83

171

Mitra, Chandan, on 'real Hinduism', 119

Mohammed, prophet, 87, 88,134; his treatment of Jews, 79

Mohammed Azam Khan, 92Mohammed Chori, 50, 51, 59,

84, 100, 109, 111Mosques, legitimate and illegiti

mate, 5-6; too many of themstand on the sites of deliberatelydemolished Hindu temples, :;

Mukhia, Harbans, JNU historian,110-11

Munshi, K.M. (Dr.), 82, 84, 102Musa Ashiqan, 42, 57, 61, 65, 67,

71,139Muslim aggression, character of,

130, 131, 132, 133Muslim call to public prayers,

character of, 136Muslim chauvinism, 112, 132-33Muslim countries, 132, 134, 160Muslim historians, 81, 84, 85Muslim intransigence, 93, 130-

31,132-33Muslim League (pre-partition),

131Muslim-Marxist alliance, 130-31Muslim period of Indian history,

83,84,114Muslim vote-bank, 166Muslims in India, a privileged

minority, 131-32Myth of Hindu-Muslim amity, 82,

89-90

Nair, K.K.K, 145Nanak, Curu, 43, 125, 127; on

Babar, 43Nehru, Jawaharlal, 84, 85, 102,

114-15, 116, 118, 136, 145; whyhe patro~isedBuddhism, 115-16


Neville, H.R., on Hindu-Muslimfight at Ayodhya in 1855, 141-42

Non-violence, Indian doctrine of,123-24

Pachauri, Pankat 143n, 144n, 150.159

Padgaonkar, Dilip, Hindu-baiter,13

Palam, Babar's mosque at, 50Panch Sheel, Nehru's contamina-

tion of, 116Pandey, G.c. (Prof.), 82Pandey, Gyanendra, secularist. journalist, 145, 146Panipat, Babar's mosque at, 50Parshvanath, Jain Tirthankara, 127Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai, 101-02Peaceful co-existence of Hindu

sects, 113·14; Nehru on, 117Persecution of Buddhists and

Jains by Hindus, unfoundedstories about, 106-10, 111-12

Pilakhana, Babar's mosque at, 50Prasad, Maheshwari (Prof.), 30Premananda, Catholic Father, on

Ram Rajya, 134

Quraishi, Muhammad AbdulRahim, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 73

Quran, 78, 86; on jihad, 43-44; oniconoclasm, 88

Qutub-ud-din Aibak, Sultan, 100,111

Qutub Minar, 81

Radhey Shyam (Dr.), 46, 47, 48Rajendra Prasad, first President

of independent India, 102, 104Ram cult, 4, 26-27, 28, 29, 33Ram Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya,

history of, 139-42. Hindu-Muslim fights on, 143

Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti YajnaSamiti,94, lSI-52, 159

Ram Janmabhoomi $eva Committee, 145

Ram Janmabhoomi Temple demolition tradition, 4, 6, 9, 61, 65, 67,70-71

Ram Rajya, concept of, 28, 133,134-35

Ram Swarup, 87nRamayan TV serial, character of,

135Ramkot, 66-67, 69, 74-75Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

(RSS), 82n, 133, lSI, 164Ravidas, Sant, 127Rohtak, Babar's two mosques at,

50Rushdie, Salman, 83-84, 153-54

Sagar, Ramanand, producer ofthe Ramayan TV serial, 135

Sambhal, Babar's (?) mosque at,40-41,50

Sayyid Salar Masud Ghazi, 64Secularists, 3, 9, 44, 64, 85, 93-94,

106, 110, 121, 135, 144, 150-51,156, 157, 158-59, 166 .

Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor, 140Shahabuddin, Syed, 5, 12, 58, 59,

63, 65, 67, 70, 71-72, 83, 93, 98,127, 128, 144, 152, 153, 154, 166;stages retreat, 6, 9; on Indiansecularism, 63n

Shaikh Ali Hazin, 71Shaikh Azmat Ali Kakorawi

Nami, 7,67Shankar (acharya), 125, 126Sharma, Sri Ram (Prof.), 48, 49Shila Puja, 155-56, 157, 165; no

provocation for Hindu-Muslimriots, 157-58

Shiv Sena, 92. 161, 165

INDEX

hourie, Arun, 7, 8, 87n, 154nSikandar Lodi, Sultan, 99ikhism, lOS, 127ingh, V.P., 94, 160, 161, 162, 163,166

Singhal, Ashok, VHP leader, 147Sirsa, Babar's mosque at, 50Skand Gupta Vikramaditya,

Gupta emperor, 21, 22, 26, 27,29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 40

Somanath, 88; restoration of, 101-02

SoniI!'at, Babar's mosque at, 50Spoiled children of Allah, 136Srivastava, Sushil (Prof.), 59Surinder Kaur (Mrs.), 37, 40, 41,

42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 58Sushil Kumar, Muni Acharya,123,

163Swaroopananda, Swami, 148, ISS,

162-63

Tabligh, movement for islamizingthe Muslims, 89

Tagore, Rabindranath, 104Tagore, Surendranath, 103Tariq, conqueror of Spain, 6Tegh Bahadur, Guru, 127Temples turned into mosques,

81-82. 83, 90, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101Thapar, Romila, 3, 38, 109nTieffenthaler, Joseph, 9, 10, 53, 57,

73-74Tilak, Lokmanya, 155Times 'of India, in its secularist

role, 3, 13-14, 159Tripathi, Kamlapathi, the 'real

Hindu', 119, 122Tulsidas, Goswami, 28, 56, 127,

135

173

Umar, the second rightly-guidedcaliph, 86-87

Urwah, Babar destroys Jain sculptures at, 42-43, 48

Valmiki, 4, 14, IS, 16, 17, 23, 25,29,30

Van der Veer, Peter, 30-31, 34, 36,61, 141, 143n

Varanasi, temples destroyed at,50; Gyanvapi mosque at, 57, 100

Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), 2,5, 91, 94, 96, 97, 100, 117, 118,119,122,147,148,149, lSI, 152,ISS, 156, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163,164, 167

Vivekananda, Swami, 103

Western Orientalists, 14-15What Hindus expect from Mus

lims, 136-37Wheeler, Tolboys, 39

Yadav, Mulayam Singh, secularistChief Minister of Uttar Pr"ldesh,163

Yukteswar, Swami, Sri, on Yugas,16-17

Yoga, the core of Hinduism andthe highest Hindu achievement, 125-26

Zafaryab Jilani, Muslim activist,97, 153

Zaheer Hasan, (Dr.), lOS, 106Zaki Kakorawi, Muslim historian,

7Zoroastrians, Muslim treatment

of, 79-80

ram janmabhoomi

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