Volume 4, No. 11, November 2003

Archaeology is the science that studies cultures of the past from material remains left by humankind ever since its pristine times which helps construction of mankind’s history. It throws light on what happened in history, but does not muddle it. But, this is what the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has done recently. This is the first ASI report steeped in severe controversy as it was guided not by the principle of scientific pursuit but goaded by tendentious considerations to suit the interests of Hindu communal forces.

A special bench of the Allahabad High Court hearing the title suit of the Babri Masjid site, on March 5th, directed the ASI to excavate beneath the ‘disputed’ site of 2.77 acres in Ayodhya and asked the ASI to complete its work in a month.

The excavation is aimed at discovering whether there was a temple/structure at the site and if the mosque was constructed after its demolition. The Court issued an order to the ASI in 2002 to get a survey done by a Ground Penetrating Survey (GPR) and Geo Radiology. The ASI engaged a dubious company, Tojo-Vikas International Pvt. Ltd, a Delhi based Canadian company, which has no experience of archaeological work to its credit. It submitted its report on February 2003. The survey has apparently shown "anomalies" that suggest that there were layers of buried structures at the disputed site. The High court gave the order after the company suggested archaeological excavations at the site. The High Court set aside the genuine objections raised by the parties to the dispute that the GPR findings can not be accepted as evidence and excavations cannot be made, as the Supreme Court ordered earlier to maintain the status quo of the site. After five months of excavations, the ASI submitted its final report on August 22nd.

The Ramjanambhumi-Babri Masjid dispute is more than a century old. The first suit was filed in 1885. On 29th November, 1885, Mahant Raghubar Das sought the right to construct a temple over the chabootra (platform), claiming it to be birth place of Ram, outside the precincts of the mosque. His plea was turned down by the Faizabad courts calling for maintaining of the status quo. Next year, the Judicial commissioner of Awadh dismissed the appeal. The controversy went in to dormancy for six decades except for a clash in 1934.

On the night of December 22, 1949 an idol of Ram was placed by the mobs in the mosque and it was proclaimed as a miracle. The idol remained there ever since. The idea was to take over the mosque as a Hindu place of worship. This happened in the backdrop of the human holocaust of partition. Fundamentalist frenzy was sweeping throughout North India. Apart from communal killings, mobs belonging to the Hindu community, took over a number of mosques in North India.

The Second phase of litigancy started the next year, on January 16th, when the local resident Gopal Singh Visharad filed a suit before the Faizabad judge seeking a permanent order to offer prayers to the deity inside the mosque and preventing the removal of idols which were surreptiously put inside. An injunction was passed disallowing people to offer worship, but allowing the local pujari to perform the daily rituals. Paramhans Ramchandra, who died recently, filed a similar suit the same year. Injunctions were granted in the combined suits. Thus the desecration of the mosque was legalised by our secular courts.

In 1959, Nirmohi Akhara made wide claims for the possession and delivery of the property. Thus started the property dispute. After two years the Sunni Waqf Board led by Mohammad Hasim too appealed in the Faizabad district court on December 8, 1961 to declare the Babri structure as a mosque, a Muslim property and sought removal of the idols. But the dispute was under hibernation till it was resurrected by the saffron goons for poitical reasons.

When the tempo for constructing the so-called Ramjanambhumi temple was building up on a petition by a local lawyer, U C Pandey, seeking permission to offer prayers, the Faizabad district judge K M Pandey ordered the gates of the ‘disputed site’ be unlocked on February 1, 1986. The Sunni Waqf Board and the Babri Masjid Action committee moved the Allahabad High court against the order. But the stay order was not granted.

The dispute over the Babri Masjid then took an ugly and political turn, with the Ayodhya movement becoming a turning point for the BJP. The shilanyas programme followed by the rathyatra of LK Advani set the communal agenda to an unprecedented pitch. The saffron hooligans unleashed the fascist juggernaut which got them entrance into south block. Emboldened by the new-found power, and instigated by the leaders, through a conspiracy hatched before hand, the saffron marauders vandalised the Babri Mosque on December 6th, 1992.

In the wake of the controversy on Ayodhya and other religious places, the PV Narasmharao government made an Act in 1991 which declared a status quo of all sites as they stood on 15th August 1947. But the Places of Religious Worship Act made an exception of the Babri Mosque. Thus began the legitimising of the Ayodhya issue in favour of the Hindu communalists in law and politics. While the Sangh Parivar was burning the communal cauldron the Neros the of Congress were appeasing the Hindu communal forces at all key junctures.

The New dispute over Ayodhya is overtly political. Sushma Swaraj on April 14th ,2000 at Bhopal said: "Ram janma bhoomi movement is purely political and nothing do with religion." The BJP brigand enhanced the Ayodhya movement to a stature of nationalism. PM Vajpayee gave several statements to this effect. On April 6th, 1989, he said, rejecting any other option on the Babri Mosque dispute, that " Hindus were the rightful claimants to the site" adding that he was speaking not as a BJP leader but as a Hindu and a swayamsevak. The construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya was necessary "to save the honour of the Hindu Community", he said on May 12th, 1991. On 6th December, 2000 he said in the Lok Sabha that "the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya was an expression of national sentiment which is yet to be fulfilled". Those were the partisan and communal utterances of the prime minister of a ‘secular’ country!!

The justice M S Liberhan commission was set up by the P V Narasimha Rao government 10 days after the demolition to inquire into the incident. The order stipulated that the commission complete the probe "as soon as possible but not later than three months" and submit its report immediately thereafter. Eleven years hence, no verdict has come out. The title disputes regarding the site in Ayodhya started much earlier. There are at least five cases and none of them has been settled as yet. The Rae Bareilly Court has already exonerated LK Advani and is on the way to do the same for the culprits involved in the demolition crime. Justice in the courts! What a travesty!!

The entire Ayodhya dispute raised by the Sangh Parivar is on myths and fiction. Their arguments are: that Ayodhya was the birth place of Ram; there was a temple at his birth place constructed in 12th century; that the temple was demolished by Babar in the 16th century and on it, the present Babri Mosque was constructed. The arguments are interlinked and at the same time on different trajectories.

Unlike Jesus, Buddha and Mahavir, there is not an iota of evidence in history, that Ram was a historical person whose birth place could be located at one place, not to speak of Ayodhya. That was why a section of the VHP clearly says that it was a matter of faith that Lord Ram was born in Ayodhya.

The Brahminical literary tradition of Ayodhya is essentially mythological. Historians like Sarvepalli Gopal, and Vinay Lal argued that Ayodhya of the epic is fictional. They say that Skanda Gupta(who styled himself as Vikramaditya) renamed Saket as Ayodhya in a bid to gain prestige for himself as a descendent of Ram of the epic. RC Singh, a former Director of the Archaeology Department of Uttar Pradesh, explored 17 sites in Ayodhya. According to him, at most places, signs of habitation are not earlier than second century B.C. BB Lal’s excavations of the Ayodhya sites, also shows that Ayodhya was of not any scale until the 7th century B.C. Those who believe in Ram’s historicity, fix his date around 2000 B.C. This is done on the basis that Rama lived nearly 65 generations before the time of the Bharata war. It is accepted generally that this war took place around 1000 B.C. There is a gap of more than 1000 years between the settlement of Ayodhya and the age of Ram in Ayodhya. It is because of this difficulty, some Hindu scholars try to locate Ayodhya either in Afghanisthan or Rajasthan. Some others look for it in Balia district of UP or Munger district of Bihar.1

Is there any historical evidence to support the view that Ram’s temple was built in Ayodhya in the 11th or 12th century?

No evidence at all. In the whole of the Ramacharitamanas, Tulsi Das nowhere speaks of the worship of the idol of Ram. Had a temple of Ram existed in Ayodhya it could not have escaped his notice. In fact Tulsi Das clearly talks of temples on two occasions. He speaks of the presence of a temple of Parvati in Mithila and mentions a temple of Svayamprabha near Mahendra mountain. He also talks of many temples on the banks of Saryu, but does not refer to any temple of Ram in Ayodhya, let alone the Rama Janmabhumi temple.

Three temples of Ram are historically attested in the twelfth century AD in Madhya Pradesh. But in Uttar Pradesh there was neither a Ram temple nor of any Rama Janmabhumi temple until the end of the seventeenth century. The earliest Ram temple belongs to the eighteenth century.

The historical evidence available for a Ram temple having been demolished to build the mosque is extremely slender. The fact that Babar himself records his visit to Ayodhya twice in his Babarnama but does not mention either the Ram temple or the construction of a mosque in his name is the first source of doubt about it. The verses carved on the entrance to the prayer hall of the mosque and the inner wall announcing the construction of the mosque, when it was intact, made no mention of the temple either. The fact that silence on the issue reigns among numerous medieval historians who have left behind a long series of court chronicles, reinforces the doubt significantly. The silence of Tulsi Das is quite significant. A resident of Ayodhya, and writing within 50 years of the construction of the mosque, i.e. within living memory of the incident, he could not have missed the fact. Nor do the many European travellers.2

Richard M Eaton, a renowned U.S. historian of medieval India, is aware of the Sangh Parivar’s ever inflating figures of temples demolished in medieval India and mosques built on their sites, first pegged at 300 some 15 years ago but by now having grown to 30,000. He has meticulously documented the desecration of each and every temple between 1192 AD and 1760 AD and arrives at the figure of 80. The list does not include the temple at Ayodhya. 3

An effective refutation of this claim was done by Professor Mandal in his book.

In history it has been a privilege of the ruling classes, whatever might be their religion, to plunder and oppress their subjects and their enemies and to distribute the booty, preferably among the members of the upper sections of the ruling class. The cause of such plunders have to be analysed and explained, as has been done in the case of the plunders of Mahmud of Ghazni by Mohammad Habib in his book Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin. Even a lay man could see that although all Hindu temples may not have been as rich as those of Somanath and Tirupati, in general, the temples were relatively far wealthier than the mosques. In the early 11th century the Somanath temple had 500 devadasis, numerous priests and was endowed with as many as 10,000 villages. In contrast to temples, the very architecture of the mosque leaves no room for storage of wealth. It is an open structure meant for prayers. It is because of the accumulation of wealth in the temples that some Hindu rulers appointed special offers for destroying the idols made of precious metals and seizing its wealth for the treasury. Such was the case with Harsha who ruled in the end of the eleventh century. He appointed an officer whose function was uprooting the idols. The Maurayas melted the metal image of the idols to fill their coffers. In their desperate need for money, the Maurya and other rulers did not spare even the sanctity of religious idols.

Pushamiytra Shunga, who put an end to the remnants of Maurya power and set up a brahmana dynasty around the end of the 2nd century BC, appears as a great persecutor of Buddhists in the Divyavadana, a text of about the second third century AD. He marched out with a fourfold army destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing the monks, as far as Sialkot. At Sialkot he announced that whoever would bring him the head of a Buddhist monk would get a reward of 100 gold coins for it. We also learn that Shashanka, a Shaivite ruler of Gauda in West Bengal, cut out the Bodhi peepul tree under which Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. In the seventh century King Harsha jailed and executed brahmanas who were charged with burning the tower raised in honour of the Buddha at Kannauj. In early medieval times in South India there were open hostilities between the Jains and the Shaivites, in which as many as 8000 Jains were impaled.

These are the historical reasons behind the demolition/desecrations of temples or other religious structures. They were not done by Muslims rulers alone. The Sangh Parivar’s selective interpretation of history is politically motivated.

Let us see the findings presented in the final report. There are serious omissions and manipulated conclusions in the ASI report. Serious doubts and criticism were raised by eminent historians with regard to the conclusions. Earlier the the saffronite historians strained every nerve to prove historically the fantastic claims of the Ayodhya campaign. But they were ably refuted by reputed historians like Irfan Habib, RS Sharma, D. Mandal, K.M. Shrimali,et al.

Since 1990, there are serious attempts to lend archaeological legitimacy to the ‘temple destroyed- Mosque construction’ theory of the Sangh parivar. In continuation of the efforts, we have to see BB Lal’s deliberation in Manthan, the RSS’s theoretical organ. BB Lal’s suggestion to relocate the Babri site to do excavation underneath the site could not have been done, had the Babri Masjid been there. That obstacle was also removed. Then, after the GPR’s report on the "anomalies", the VHP’s contention was that the idols were found in the acquired site. These nebulous attempts have been exposed as mendacious and politically motivated by many a scholar. The High court order was seized upon by the saffronised scholars to complete the job. The ASI report is the result of such endeavour.

To prove that there was a ‘massive structure of temple’, the ASI report says:

* An important structure found was a circular ‘shrine’.

* there was a ‘water-chute’ which may signify the symbol of shivite ones.

* a statue of ‘divine couple’ was found

* there was massive burnt structure comprising a massive fired brick wall

* massive burnt–brick structure was associated with 50 pillar bases(once supporting stone pillars constituting 1 or 2 halls).

* It had been identified as a temple built in 12th century AD.

* It continued until 16th century when the Babri masjid was constructed on top of it in 1528.

It answered in the affirmative the questions set by the Lucknow Bench: Whether there was a Ram temple at the site and if the mosque was constructed after its demolition. The ASI has extolled its efforts saying: "..this is an unprecedented event (the submission of report in such a short period) in the history of one hundred and forty two years of the existence of the survey". Self congratulation for its monumental fraud!

The response of the Hindutva clique is obvious. They are jubilant. Their foot soldiers have done a yeoman service for the Hindutva cause. The spokespersons of the RSS and VHP commended the ASI report on the Ayodhya excavation for giving the official stamp of approval to their claims of the previous existence of the temple at the site. It is another thing that ‘the hand that wields the official stamp is controlled by the very people who do the applauding’4

The RSS now wants that a mosque can be taken over on the basis of the community’s perceived historical wrongdoings. "There is no doubt now that the structure (Babri Masjid) was built by demolishing a temple and everybody should get together to rebuild that temple," says Ram Madhav, spokesperson for the RSS. Togadia spitting venom said that Muslims now had to decide whether they want to live with Hindus as brothers or not. The BJP held a victory rally on August 26th at Bhopal saying that the ASI has produced proof that "Sri Ram is present in Ayodhya". The BJP president M.Venkaiah Naidu said that in the light of this "conclusive evidence", the temple in Ayodhya should now be built.

The VHP seems to have known about the ASI’s conclusions much before the submission of the report. The language used by a Karasevak archaeologist, SP.Gupta, at a VHP press conference 10 days before the ASI submitted its report has a striking similarity to the conclusions of the report. He said: "Foliage patterns …. in association with the huge structure, are indicative of remains which have distinct features associated with the temples of north India."

The Sunni Central Waqf Board, a party to the temple-mosque dispute, has termed the ASI report "vague and self-contradictory". The All India Muslim Personal Law Board’s Chairman Syed Rabe Hasan Nadvi angrily called it ‘fabricated’ and said: "neither of the two interim reports mentioned about the existence of temple. The ASI report is a jungle of confusion, self contradictory, and laboured conclusions suggested a clear political motivaton". Zafaryab Jilani, convener of the Babri Masjid Action committee, said the report would naturally be challenged in court. In the three interim reports, the ASI did not mention the existence of a temple-like structure. "How come this sudden revelation?" asked Hashim Ansari, head of the Babri Masjid Reconstruction committee.

"This is a completely fabricated report," said Professor R.C.Thakaran, Department of history, Delhi University.5 Prof. Irfan Habib said: "It may serve a short term purpose in giving the saffron forces something to exult over."4 Prof Suraj Bhan and Prof Irfan declared that the ASI had "twisted the facts to support the fiction of the Sangh Parivar". K. M. Shrimali, Prof. of History, Delhi University reacted: "The present report is an example of the negligent obliteration of a page in the history of human endeavour".6 Rajiv Dhavan, a Supreme Court lawyer averred: "the report must be rejected as incompetent on the grounds of insufficiency."7

This interpretation of the findings has caused a furore in academic circles. There is almost a vertical divide. The massive structure, say the critics of the report, is not a temple, but a mosque with the construction plan and material "totally tallying with the Babri mosque". "I was observing the excavations for about a month with the High Court’s permission. It was a constant struggle to get the ASI to note extremely important finds like animal bones with cut marks and human skeletons. The ASI has crossed all boundaries. There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate their claim that a pre-Sultanate temple existed at the site," Professor RC Thakaran, adds.

The ASI’s claims, says Thakaran, do not tally with observations made by any of the professional archaeologists – like Shereen Ratnagar, D.Mandal, Sita Ram Rai and Suraj Bhan – who had surveyed the excavations extensively. "The ASI talks about pillars that support the theory of the temple. How do they explain the fact that these pillars are at various levels and are made of different construction material? How can they correspond to one temple structure? Moreover, they are fragile pillars not made for bearing load," says Thakaran8.

Professor Suraj Bhan, a member of the expert team which surveyed the site during the excavation, agrees with the ASI about the three-layered structure. "But this structure, by no stretch of imagination, can be termed a ‘temple’. The floor plan and the construction material belong to the Sultanate period.".. and "not to the pre-Sultanate (11th to 12th century AD) period. The floors are made of lime-surkhi, typical of Muslim architecture of that period. The building plan tallies with the Babri mosque. A mosque belonging to the Sultanate period was expanded to build the Babri Masjid and that is the truth no matter how the ASI interprets it," he says. Professor Irfan Habib says: "The geometric figures in the report actually reconstruct the imaginary temple. This affair is a lot like the fake Harappan horse that their so-called historian, N.S.Rajaram, fabricated with help of computer graphics."9

The ASI report is full of anomalies, pre-conceived conclusions that have not the support of the findings. It lacked professionalism, seriously violating compliance with established norms of archaeology.

For the geophysical survey it has chosen the firm- Tojo Vikas International- which has no previous experience of archaeological work. It reported "pillar bases" as a mark of the temple. The saffron litigants obtained an order based on this report to have excavations by the ASI. By not confining to digging the points suggested by the GPR, the ASI had dug the entire area. It obliterated all the remains of the Babri Mosque. It has not done the thermo luminescence (TL) test to find out the date of the pottery that was found. It has not carbon dated the animal bones found in the excavations. Without tampering, the case of the ‘temple’ could not have been made. Had these tests been done, the cat would have been out of the bag.9

There are serious discrepancies between what is shown in the main text and in the "summary results". For example, it is said in the main text that animal bones were recovered from many levels. But in the conclusion there was complete silence.

The important argument was that of "pillar bases" to maintain that there was a temple.

No pillar was found in the layers nor near any pillar bases, except one in the masjid debris. Why are there no hollows or marks of pillars on the calcrete stones? Why does the fifty "pillar bases" supposedly sustaining the grand temple rest on different layers?

Existence of "pillar bases", as an evidence of the ‘temple’, was first produced by Professor BB Lal, a former Director General of Archaeology, GOI in 1990.10 Earlier he never mentioned it. Nor did he mention in the Encyclopaedia of Archaeology when he wrote the entry on ‘Ayodhya’. The Encyclopaedia was published in 1989, suggesting that this ‘discovery’ was an afterthought when it was politically convenient.11

The Pillar bases have no religious symbols to establish a Hindu temple. 50 so called pillar bases have not been plotted on the site plan to make alignments trustworthy.

Evidence against the temple is overwhelming. What are the "pillar bases then"? They are brickbats and stones used to fill the holes on the ground and ruined floors. This is why they are available in many floors.

The construction date of the "structure" was wrongly given as 12th century.

1 The report says that Lime and surkhi have been used on the floors.

2 Plaster and mortar for the "pillar bases" and the use of lime and mortar on such a scale only existed after 1206 AD ie in the Sultanate period.

3 A ‘niche’ in the burnt brick wall had an arch, so typical of the sultanate period.

4 The use of sculptured stones in the foundations wall of the ‘massive’ structure, would lead to the conclusion of a Masjid, since Hindus normally immerse sculptured remains rather than bury it in the ground or in the foundation.

The possibilities are that the structure might have been a sultanate mosque. It broadly corresponds with that of the Babri mosque.

There is no explanation for the presence of lime-mortar and surkhi which are evidences of Mughal period remnants. The presence of lime mortar and surkhi rules out a temple.

The ASI had initially, ignored the animal bones, only after complaining, the High court gave an order to keep the animal bones and glazed ware. Bones with cut marks and chewed bone fragments, attesting to persons cooking, eating and throwing away bones could hardly conform to the presence of a temple at the site. The ASI has ignored the evidence.

The glazed ware found in the excavation is a characteristic of Muslim habitation. No analysis is present how they came to the conclusions. Has the excavation revealed any destruction of the temple? The report is completely silent about it. What was sure is, there were remnants of Muslim habitation.

Are these lapses innocuous? There are strong indications that since 1990, there is a lobby of saffronite archaeologists, which is trying their best to get archeological legitimacy to the ‘temple destruction and Masjid construction’ theory, by hook or by crook.

It was in 1990, that BB Lal brought the "pillar base" argument to suggest that underneath the Babri Mosque site, there stood a temple structure. BB Lal had been engaged in the excavations of Ramayana sites since the 1970’s though his work stopped much earlier, but never suggested the present theory. This theory was effectively rebutted by eminent archaeologist D. Mandal.12

Then comes the claims of the saffronite archeologists on the finds after the Babri Masjid was demolished. The ASI has uncriticallly accepted the new finds of brickbat clusters in the light of an interpretation which is in vogue and propagated by the VHP camp. It is curious that it has cleared the other supposed finds made while the site was under the effective control of the Hindutva body. In April 1992 for instance, the land surrounding the Babri Masjid was taken over by the UP government and handed over to a VHP – affiliate, ostensibly for the promotion of tourism. Certain finds were allegedly made in the course of unsupervised earth-moving work in the area, which the VHP-affiliated "Historians’ Forum" described in a lavishly illustrated brochure: "At a depth of about 12 feet from the ground level near the Ramjanma bhoomi temple, towards the south and beyond the fencing, a big hoard of beautifully carved buff sandstone pieces was located in a large pit, dug down below the old top level. A careful study by a group of eight eminent archaeologists and historians found that all these objects are architectural members of a Hindu temple- complex of the 11th century A.D."

After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the VHP claimed to have found "clinching archaeological evidence" of the prior existence of a temple at the site. As S.P.Gupta, a former Director of Allahabad Museum and a leading figure of kar sevak archaeology, wrote in the RSS weekly Organiser. "This most clinching archaeological evidence is a 12th century inscription discovered at the disputed site on the 6th of December 1992(!!)."

The History Congress has warned against the dangers of this assumption being accepted. The first post-Babri Indian History Congress, on February 15th, in 1993, in a resolution said: "The Indian History Congress is deeply perturbed at the way in which, in two distinct rounds, the kar sevaks have been permitted to dig up the ground, destroy evidence of stratification, and remove or destroy materials like the mosque inscriptions. The kar sevaks have claimed ‘discoveries’ that by their own admission have been made in the total absence of archaeological control and of independent observers."

As mentioned above, the VHP affiliated "Historian Forum" came out with the claim that objects were found out which establish a temple complex of the 11th century AD underneath the Babri Mosque site.

Then comes the Ground Penetration Report (GPR)by the Tojo-Vikas international. Accepting the dubious findings of the survey, the Lucknow Bench Order of excavation follows, in violation of the Supreme Court direction to mainatain the status quo. The SC blinks over the decision. How is the excavation going to decide and settle a property dispute? "As far as the property suit in Ayodhya is concerned, what lies under the ground has no bearing on who owns the property now?", says Rajiv Dhavan, an eminent lawyer in the Suprme Court.13 Gautam Bhatia, a Delhi Based architecht, angrily asks: "If a group of villagers were to stage a dharna outside Rashtra pati Bhavan, claiming that Lutyens Building was built on the site of their ancestral village on Raisina Hill, would the High Court help them demolish the president’s house and establish their rights to the site?"14 The High Court will not answer this, but gave a favourable order to the VHP camp to complete excavations within a "month". Any sensible person who knows about archaeological excavations understands how preposterous this order is! When the courts are taking decades to settle the disputes why so much hurry to unravel the truth which will have tremendous significance in the present political situation? Anyhow, the ASI has lived up to the expectation of the High Court and to the VHP camp too! The result is before all of us.

The Sangh Parivar can not depend on mythology to drive its point forever. It needs a ‘scientific’ edge to its goebbelian propaganda of ‘historical wrongdoing’. The ASI report tried to serve that purose.

But the basic question remains. Suppose in the excavation, it was found that there was a temple and on that was constructed a Masjid. Does that give valid reason for the saffron hooligans to demolish the Masjid? Does that settle the property dispute between the Hindus and the Waqf Board? Does it not open a Pandora box of disputes on each and every religious stricture? Will the courts direct excavations every where to dig the ‘truth’? Would that not be giving legitimacy to politics of revenge and revanchism?

The 53rd History Congress in 1993 said: "..the Congress wishes to express its grave concern at the principle implicitly accepted by the GOI in its reference to the Supreme Court, namely, that a monument can be destroyed or removed if there are any grounds for assuming that a religious structure of another community had previously stood at its site". And also it adopted by an overwhelming majority, opposing the principle that "a monument can be destroyed or removed if there are any grounds for assuming that a religious structure of any other community had previously stood at its site. Such a post facto rationalisation will place in jeopardy the fate of numerous historical monuments all over the country, an increasing number of which are being targeted for destruction by the communal forces."

It is not only on archaeological issues that such an alarm needs to be sounded. What must be opposed more fundamentally is the adoption and acceptance of the principle, politics and philosophy of revanchism on the specious ground that it rights a historical wrong. It is as absurd a principle as the one under which, say, Oriyas of today are called upon to settle scores with the Biharis to avenge the killings of King Ashoka’s Kalinga war. Will revived memories of Chera-Pandya-Chola battles rationalise internecine conflicts in South India? Will the history of the early Jains’ persecution under some Hindu kings warrant a retaliatory movement? Vendettas can be no way of life for any country, least of all for one of India’s long and labyrinthine history.15

As the elections for five states are fast approaching, the decibel levels of the Ayodhya campaign are rising. A section of Sangh Parivar does not want to wait till the court decision. It wants immediate initiation of construction of the Ram temple.

The communal forces have to be destroyed. And their motivated propaganda too. Broad sections of people should be rallied against the fascist agenda of these forces. There is need to fight against those who appease these Hindutva forces. On the 11th anniversary of the day when Hindu communal forces vandalised the Babri Masjid, let us demand and fight for the construction of Babri Masjid on the same site.

Whether Babar had destroyed or not, it is an undeniable fact that the Hindu Communal forces, conspired and led by Sangh parivar, demolished the Babri Masjid. The culprits are in the highest echelons of power. Only a anti-fascists powerful people’s movement against the Hindu can punish the culprits and bring justice to the beleaguered minorities.

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