Paper III: Digging out the proof
The
Archaeological Survey of India’s report on excavations
Introduction
3.1. Before it submitted its final report to the Allahabad
high court on its excavations at the Babri Masjid site, the ASI team had
submitted a succession of interim reports. We have not taken these into
consideration because by the orders of the Allahabad high court dated May
22, 2003 these were not to be considered for “substantive evidence”. Its
ruling (para 223, sub-para (1)) ran as follows:
“It is only the final report that will be taken as an
evidence on record which will be subject to the objection and evidence
which may be led by the parties.”
Thus the ASI’s final report supersedes everything stated
or claimed in its interim reports.
Manipulation of stratification and periodisation
3.2. The elementary rules of excavation, as may be seen in
any good textbook on archaeology, lay down that from alterations primarily
visible in soil, different layers should be established as one digs (see
Peter L. Drewett, Field Archaeology: An Introduction, Routledge,
London, 1999, pp. 107-08) and then the artefacts and other material found
in each of these layers are to be carefully recorded and preserved. The
lower layers are older than the upper and this sequence gives one a
relative chronology of the layers. It is only through establishing dates
of artefacts in different layers, by the C-14 method or thermoluminiscence
or inscriptions, or comparisons with artefacts already securely dated,
that the periods of different layers can then be keyed to absolute time
(centuries BC or AD). (See Kevin Greene, Archaeology: An Introduction,
New Jersey, 1989, Chapter 3: ‘Excavation’.) The first major defect of the
ASI’s final report submitted to the high court is that it plays with
periodisation of the layers in the most unprofessional fashion (and with
undoubted motivation), quite contrary to Justice Agarwal’s commendation of
their conduct (paras 3821 to 3879).
3.3. The ASI’s report’s authors’ clumsy manipulations are
seen in their gross failure to provide essential data and the blatant
contradictions in their period nomenclature, both of which we shall now
examine.
3.4. The gross omission in the ASI’s report that we have
just mentioned is the total absence of any list in which the numbered
layers in each trench are assigned to the specific period as distinguished
and numbered by the ASI itself during the digging. The only list available
is for some trenches in the charts placed between pages 37-38. A list or
concordance of trench layers in all trenches with periods was essential
for testing whether the ASI has correctly or even consistently assigned
artefacts from certain trench layers to particular periods in its main
report. Where, as we shall see below, in connection with bones, glazed
ware and other artefacts and materials, the finds can be traced to trench
layers that are expressly identified with certain periods by the ASI in
its above-mentioned charts, it can be shown that the ASI’s assignment of
layers to particular periods is often demonstrably wrong and made only
with the object of tracing structural remains or artefacts there to an
earlier time in order to bolster the theory of a Hindu temple beneath the
mosque. (See sub-para 4 of Dr RC Thakran’s evidence, reproduced in para
537 of the judgement, hereafter referred to as Judgement, para 537,
RC Thakran.) We will be returning to the acts of manipulation repeatedly
detected in the report when what it attributes to a trench in one place it
omits in another.
3.5. As to periodisation, let us consider the following:
In Chapter III, ‘Stratigraphy and Chronology’, of the ASI
report the nomenclature for Periods V, VI and VII is given as follows (in
a description extending over pages 38-41):
Period V: “Post-Gupta-Rajput”, 7th to 10th Century
Period VI: “Medieval-Sultanate”, 11th-12th Century
Period VII: “Medieval”, End of 12th to beginning of 16th
Century
The curious inclusion of the Sultanate in layers that the
ASI officials wished to date to the 11th-12th centuries is on the very
face of it a display of gross ignorance, since the Delhi sultanate was
only established in AD 1206 and such designation for the period 11th-12th
centuries has no precedent in the annals of the ASI. The purpose of this
ignorant innovation clearly is to take cover under “Sultanate” in order to
assign “Islamic”-period artefacts to the 11th-12th centuries when in
actual fact the Gahadavala kings ruled over Ayodhya. Thereafter, the term
“Sultanate” is forgotten and the period made purely “Hindu” by a simple
change of nomenclature in the ‘Summary of Results’ (pp. 268-9). Here the
nomenclature is given as follows:
Period V: Post-Gupta-Rajput, 7th to 10th Century
Period VI: Early medieval, 11th-12th Century
Period VII: Medieval-Sultanate, 12th-16th Century
This transference of the name “Medieval-Sultanate” from
Period VI to Period VII has the advantage of ignoring Islamic-period
materials like glazed ware or lime-mortar bonding by removing them
arbitrarily from Period VI levels to those of Period VII so that their
actual presence in those levels need not embarrass the ASI when it sets
forth its thesis of the construction in Period VI of an alleged “massive”
or “huge” temple. The device is nothing but manipulation and the so-called
single “correction” of nomenclature of Period VI, much after the report
had been submitted to the court, constitutes simple admission of the
manipulation.
3.6. Justice Agarwal gives no concession to the critics of
the ASI’s erroneous periodisation “which would ultimately may (sic)
result in rejection of the entire report itself” (para 3846).
So without coming anywhere to grips with the issue of the ASI’s
simultaneous application of the designation ‘Medieval-Sultanate’ to two
different sets of centuries (11th-12th centuries in one portion and
12th-16th centuries in another), Justice Agarwal declares that he found
“no reason whatsoever in the above background to hold periodisation [which
one?] determined by ASI as mistaken” (para 3878).
3.7. Justice Agarwal thought he had not said enough about
critics of the ASI’s scheme of periodisation and so in para 3879 he
takes them further to task: They should know that ASI officials “are
experts of expert (sic!)”. Then Justice Agarwal offers this opinion of the
ASI’s critics in the same para 3879:
“The result of a work if not chewable(!) to one or more,
will not make the quality of work impure or suspicious. The
self-contradictory statement [whose?], inconsistent with other experts
made against ASI of same party, i.e. Muslim extra interest, and also the
fact that they are virtually hired experts, reduces trustworthiness of
these experts despite of (sic!) their otherwise competence.”
3.8. Let us not here worry however about Justice Sudhir
Agarwal’s opinion of the ASI’s critics or about the difference between
“hired” and “virtually hired” experts. Let us keep our eyes on the way in
which the entire stratigraphy has been manipulated by the ASI, and certain
layers obviously of Islamic provenance pressed into pre-Muslim periods
(Period VI and earlier), as shown in Annexure No. 1, Table 2, attached to
the objection of Mr Hashim dated October 8, 2003 (para 3821). This
kind of false stratigraphy has led to situations that are impossible in
correctly stratified layers, namely the presence of later materials in
earlier strata. The presence of earlier materials in later or upper layers
is possible but not the reverse except for pits but these have to be
demarcated clearly from the regular layers as the digging takes place (and
not later as an afterthought), which has not been done at all. Obviously,
the entire stratigraphy has been frequently played with by the ASI to
invent a temple in “Post-Gupta-Rajput” times.
The above facts were duly brought to the notice of the
court vide para 537, RC Thakran, sub-paras 10, 11 and 12.
Structural remains beneath the mosque
3.9. While digging up the Babri Masjid, the excavators
claim to have found four floors, numbered, upper to lower, as Nos.
1, 2, 3 and 4, Floor No. 4 being the lowest and so the oldest. In Chapter
III of the ASI’s report, Floor 3 is put in the “Medieval Period” (i.e.
13th-16th century) by categorisation adopted in this Chapter. It is stated
to consist of “a floor of lime mixed with fine clay and brick-crush” (p.
41) – in other words, a surkhi of standard ‘Muslim’ style (see
below, the subsection on Lime Mortar and Surkhi). Floor 4, placed
in the “Medieval-Sultanate Period”, has also a “red-brick crush floor” (p.
40), which too can come only from the use of surkhi. The word
“Sultanate” is apparently employed to explain away the use of surkhi.
Floors 3 and 4 are obviously the floors of an earlier qanati
mosque/ idgah, since a mihrab and taqs (niches) were also
found in the associated foundation wall (not, of course, identified as
such in the ASI’s report). Such a floor, totally Muslim on grounds of
technique and practice, is turned by the ASI into an alleged temple floor
“over which”, in its words, “a column-based structure was built”. Not a
single example is offered by the ASI of any temple of pre-Mughal times
having such a lime-surkhi floor though one would think that this is
an essential requirement when a purely Muslim structure is sought to be
represented by the ASI as a Hindu one.
3.10. Once this arbitrary appropriation has occurred (p.
41), we are then asked by the ASI’s report to imagine a “Massive Structure
Below the Disputed Structure”, the massive structure being an alleged
temple. It is supposed to have stood upon as many as 50 pillars and, by
fanciful drawings (Figures 23, 23A and 23B) in the ASI’s report, it has
been “reconstructed”, Figure 23B showing the reconstructed temple with 50
imaginary pillars! Now, according to the ASI’s report, this massive
structure, with “bases” of 46 of its alleged 50 pillars allegedly exposed,
was built in Period VII, the period of the Delhi sultans, Sharqi rulers
and Lodi sultans (1206-1526): This attribution of the grand temple to the
“Muslim” period is not by choice but because of the presence of
“Muslim”-style materials and techniques all through. This, given the ASI
officials’ peculiar view of medieval Indian history (apparently shared by
Justice S. Agarwal), when intolerance is supposed to have reigned supreme,
may have further induced them to imagine yet another structure below,
assignable to an earlier time.
About this structure however, it is admitted in the
Summary of Results that “only four of the [imagined] fifty pillars exposed
during the excavation belonged to this level with a brick-crush floor” (ASI
Report, Chapter X, p. 269), and it is astonishing that this should be
sufficient to ascribe them to the 10th-11th century (the “Sultanate” tag
of Chapter III for it now forgotten) and to assume that all the four
pillars belong to this structure. That structure is proclaimed as “huge”,
extending to nearly 50 metres that separate the alleged “pillar-bases” at
the extremes. If four “pillar bases” with their imaginary pillars were
called upon to hold such a vast roof, it is not surprising that the
resulting structure was, as the ASI admits, “short-lived”.
3.11. Furthermore, the four alleged pillar bases dated to
the 11th-12th centuries are said “to belong to this level with a brick
crush floor”. This amounts to a totally unsubstantiated assumption that
surkhi was used in the region in Gahadavala times (11th-12th
centuries). No examples of such use of surkhi in Gahadavala period
sites are offered. One would have thought that Sravasti (district Bahraich),
from which the ASI team has produced a linga-centred Shaivite “circular
shrine” of the Gahadavala period for comparison with the so-called
“circular shrine” at the Babri Masjid site or, again, the Dharmachakrajina
Vihara of Kumaradevi at Sarnath, another Gahadavala site of early 12th
century AD, which the report cites on other matters (e.g. on p. 56), would
be able to supply at least one example of either surkhi or lime
mortar. But such has not at all been the case.
One can see now why it had been necessary in the main text
of the report to call this period (Period VI) “Medieval-Sultanate” (p.
40): By clubbing together the Gahadavala with the Sultanate, the surkhi
is sought to be explained away; but if so, the alleged “huge” structure
too must come to a time after 1206, for the Delhi sultanate was only
established in that year. And so, to go by the ASI’s reasoning, the
earlier allegedly “huge” temple too must have been built when the sultans
ruled!
3.12. The way the ASI has distorted evidence to suit its
“temple theory” is shown by its treatment of the mihrab (arched
recess) and taqs (niches) found in the western wall (running
north-south), which it turns into features of its imagined temple. On page
68 of the ASI’s report are described two niches in the inner side of Wall
16 at an interval of 4.60 metres in Trenches E6 and E7. These were 0.20
metres deep and one metre wide. A similar niche was found in Trench ZE2 in
the northern area, and these have been attributed to the first phase of
construction of the so-called ‘massive structure’ associated with Wall 16.
Such niches, along the inner face of the western wall, are again
characteristic of mosque/ idgah construction. Moreover, the inner walls of
the niche are also plastered (as in Plate 49 of the ASI’s report), which
indicated that the plaster was meant to be visible. A temple niche, if
found, would in any case have to be on the outer wall and if it contained
an image, the plaster would be on the image, not the niche’s interior.
In the first phase of construction, the supposed massive
structure was confined to the thin wall found in Trenches ZE1-ZH1 in the
north and E6-H5/H6 in the south (p. 41). How then does one explain the
location of niches outside the floor area of the massive structure? This
is typical of a mosque/ idgah, which would have a long, wide north-south
wall, the qibla being in the western direction, with niches at
intervals on its inner face and there may be a small covered area in the
centre which would have narrow demarcating walls. The ASI is able to
produce no example of a similar recess and niches from any temple.
3.12A. The context and positions of the recess and niches
show that these could only have belonged to a Muslim mosque or idgah. The
argument advanced by the “Hindu parties” has been that the niche (taq)
and mihrab (recessed false doorway) in mosques are invariably
arched and here the niche at least is rectangular and so must belong to a
temple (para 3991, VHP Counsel, sub-paras XXXIV to XXXVIII).
But if we look at Fuhrer’s The Sharqi Architecture of
Jaunpur (a book submitted to the court), we find in its Plate XXVII (‘Jaunpur:
Interior of the Lal Darwaza Masjid’) a refutation of this facile
assumption. The niche (taq) close to the mimbar on the right
is rectangular while the mihrab to the left, on the other
side of the mimbar, is basically rectangular (flat-roofed) with the
arches above being only ornamental. The VHP advocate’s claim that the
floor of the mihrab is always at the same level as the main floor (para
3991, VHP Counsel, sub-para XXXVIII) is a ridiculous one, as
may be seen from the illustration of mihrabs in the Jaunpur Jami
Masjid (Fuhrer, op. cit., Plates LXIII and LXIV), where the floor of the
mihrab stands, in one case, two courses and in the other, one
course above the main floor. (See also Fuhrer’s text, p. 47, for how the
mihrab is always placed ‘towards Makka’ i.e. to the west.) The
evidence from the 15th century Lal Darwaza Masjid is crucially relevant,
since the Babri Masjid in its design closely followed the style of Sharqi-period
(15th century) mosques of Jaunpur.
3.13. Now let us see the way in which Justice Agarwal in
para 3928 dismisses all the objections to the attribution of
remains of the walls and floors, found under the extant floor of the Babri
Masjid, to an imagined temple:
“The statements of Experts (Archaeologist) (sic!) of
plaintiffs (Suit-4) in respect of walls and floors have already been
referred to in brief saying that there is no substantial objection except
that the opinion ought to [be?] this or that, but that is also with the
caution that this can be dealt with in this way or that both and not in a
certain way.”
This presumably means that no precise objections of the
Muslim plaintiffs (Suit-4) need be considered!
3.14. Here a further point has to be made about the use of
scientific dating methods. It is to be noted that the ASI made no use of
thermoluminiscence (TL) dating although this should have been used where
so much pottery was involved; and in the case of TL, unlike most carbon
dates obtained from charcoal, the artefacts in the form of fired pottery
can be directly dated. Yet only carbon dating was resorted to and no
explanation is offered as to why the TL method was not also employed.
Clearly, it was feared that the TL dates for glazed ware would upset the
apple cart of the ASI’s stratification and periodisation.
3.15. On page 69 of the ASI report we are told:
“The available C-14 dates (sic!) from the deposit between
floors 2 and 3 in the trench ZH-1 is 1040±70BP (910±70 AD) having the
calibrated age range of AD 900-1030. The early date may be because of the
filling for levelling the ground after digging the earth from the previous
deposit in the vicinity.”
So in the words of ASI officials themselves, this carbon
date (from BS No. 2124) is valueless for determining the period of the
Floor 2-3 interval. But what about the other carbon date or dates, for the
word “dates” in the quoted passage implies that there was more than one
carbon date obtained for the Floor 2-3 interval. In the statement of
Carbon Dates (Appendix I) there are only two other dates bearing a
calibrated date in AD. But since one of these two dates, that from sample
BS 2123, dated to CAL AD 90-340, came from a depth of 265-270cm whereas
the carbon date sample yielding AD 900-1030 (BS No. 2124) came from a
depth of 50cm only, this is out of the question here. There then remains
only sample BS No. 2127 whose depth is only 3cm less than that of BS No.
2124 (being 47cm). Its carbon date is AD 1500 (±110) and its calibrated
date has a range of AD 1400-1620. Why should this not be used to date the
Floor 2-3 interval?
Pillar bases
3.16. Since the entire basis of the supposed “huge” and
“massive” temple structures preceding the demolished mosque lies in the
ASI’s reliance upon its alleged numerous “pillar bases”, these have
now to be examined. In this respect, one must first remember that what are
said by the ASI to be pillar bases are in many cases only one or more
calcrete stones resting on brickbats, just heaped up, and the ASI admits
that only mud was used as mortar to bond the brickbats. (One should not be
led astray by a highly selective few “pillar bases” whose photographs
appear in the ASI’s volume of illustrative plates.) In many claimed
“pillar bases” the calcrete stones are not found at all. As one can see
from the descriptive table on pages 56-67 of the report, not a single one
of these supposed “pillar bases” has been found in association with any
pillar or even a fragment of it; and it has not been claimed that there
are any marks or indentations or hollows on any of the calcrete stones to
show that any pillar had rested on them.
The ASI report nowhere attempts to answer the questions
(1) why brickbats and not bricks were used at the base; and (2) how
mud-bonded brickbats could have possibly withstood the weight of
roof-supporting pillars without themselves falling apart. It also offers
not a single example of any medieval temple where pillars stood on such
brickbat bases.
3.17. In paras 3901 to 3906 Justice Agarwal
reproduces statements and arguments advanced by Shri MM Pandey, though
these include statements that are not even made in the ASI report on a
general basis at all, such as (a) “brickbats in the pillar bases are not
heaped up but are carefully laid in well-defined courses” (para 3901);
(b) “the foundation of pillar bases has been filled with brickbats covered
with orthostat, which prima facie establishes its (sic) load-bearing
nature” (para 3903); and (c) “all the fifty bases, more or less
are of similar pattern except the orthostate (sic) position” (para
3903). These words of wild generalisation, quite overlooking the
brickbat heaps passed off as pillar bases by the ASI, and the
technological wisdom about highly dubious ‘orthostats’ are, to put it in
the mildest of terms, highly controversial. Yet Justice Agarwal, in
para 3907, says shortly: “We find substance in the submission
(sic!) of Sri Pandey.”
3.18. Despite the claim of these pillar bases being in
alignment and their being so shown in fancy drawings in the ASI’s report
(Figures 23, 23A and 23B), the claim is not borne out by the actual
measurements and distances and there is indeed much doubt about whether
the plan provided by the ASI is drawn accurately at all. The fact that the
alleged pillar bases do not stand in correct alignment or equal distances
is admitted by Justice Agarwal in para 3917 but he
speculates on his own that “there may be a reason for having variation in
the measurement of pillar bases that the actual centre of the pillar bases
could not be pointed out…” The ASI admitted to no such disability.
Moreover, the justice goes on to state that “Figure 3A in any case has
been confirmed by most of the Experts (Archaeologist) (sic!) of plaintiffs
(suit-4)” when actually it has been held by them to contain inaccurate and
fanciful details. Indeed there are enormous discrepancies between Figure
3A (the main plan) and the Table in Chapter 4 on the one hand, and the
report’s Appendix IV on the other. Trench F7 has four alleged “pillar
bases” in the former, for example, but only one in the latter!
3.19. In fact, the way the ASI has identified or created
“pillar bases” is a matter of serious concern. Complaints were also made
to the observers appointed by the high court that the ASI officials were
ignoring calcrete-topped brickbat heaps where these were not found in
appropriate positions, selecting only such brickbat heaps as were not too
far off from its imaginary grids, and helping to create the alleged
“bases” by clearing the rest of the floor of brickbats. Despite Justice
Agarwal’s vehement rejection of these complaints (not so summarily
rejected however by the bench to which they were made), the complaints do
not lose their validity. (See Paper IV for relevant particulars.)
3.20. The most astonishing thing that the ASI so casually
brushes aside relates to the varying levels at which the so-called “pillar
bases” stand. Even if we go by the ASI’s own descriptive table (pp.
56-57), as many as seven of these alleged 50 “bases” are definitely
above Floor 2 and one is at level with it. At least six rest on Floor
3 and one rests partly on Floor 3 and 4. Since Floor 1 belongs to the
mosque, how did it come about that as many as seven pillars were erected,
after the mosque had been built, in order apparently to sustain an alleged
earlier temple structure?! More, as many as nine alleged “pillar bases”
are shown as cutting through Floor No. 3. Should we then not understand
that when the mosque floor was laid out, there were no “pillar bases” at
all but either extant parts of earlier floors (now taken to be or made to
look like pillar bases) or some kind of loosely bonded brickbat deposits
connected with the floors?
3.21. It may be added that even the table on pages 56-67
of the ASI’s report may not correctly represent the layers of the pillar
bases, since its information on floors does not match that of the report’s
Appendix IV which in several trenches does not attest the existence of
Floor No. 4 at all though this was the floor the “pillar bases” in many
cases are supposed to have been sealed by or to have cut through or stand
on! For example, “pillar base 22” on pages 60-61 is indicated as resting
on Floor 4 but there is no Floor 4 shown as existing in Appendix IV of the
report in Trench F2 where this base supposedly stands. Similar other
discrepancies are listed in Table 1.
Thus in over 20 cases Floor 4 is presumed in the report
whereas no proof of this is provided in Appendix IV. (See para 537,
RC Thakran, sub-paras 16-20.)
3.22. There is also the crucial matter of what happened to
the pillars that the alleged pillar bases carried. Justice Agarwal
dismisses this as unworthy of consideration, since, in his view, they must
have been demolished when the supposed temple was destroyed to build the
mosque (para 3917). He says:
“One of the objection (sic!) with respect to the pillar
bases is that nothing has been found intact with them saying (!) that the
pillars were affixed thereon. The submission, in our view [is?] thoroughly
hollow and an attempt in vain (sic!)… If we assume other cause (sic!) to
be correct for a moment, in case of demolition of a construction it is a
kind of childish expectation to hope that some overt structure as it is
would remain intact.”
The real question is here bypassed: no one is asserting
that pillars should have been found standing erect but they should have
been found in recognisable fragments. The simple fact is that destruction
does not mean evaporation. If the mosque was built immediately upon the
alleged temple’s destruction, as Justice Agarwal holds, then the 50 stone
pillars would have been used in the mosque and their remains should have
been found in the debris of the demolished mosque which the ASI dug
through. But no such pillar, or any recognisable part thereof, was
found. Only one pillar fragment was found and that belonged to the set
of 14 non-uniform decorative non-load-bearing black basalt pillars which
were part of the Babri Masjid structure (On these see RS Sharma, M. Athar
Ali, DN Jha and Suraj Bhan, Ramjanmabhumi-Baburi Masjid, A Historians’
Report to the Nation, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1991,
pp. 8-10.)
3.23. The ASI should surely therefore have looked about
for other explanations for the heaps of brickbats before jumping to its
“pillar bases” theory. There is at least one clear and elegant explanation
for many of them, first proposed by Dr Ashok Datta (para 540, sub-para
10). When Floor No. 4 was being laid out over the mound sometime during
the Sultanate period, its builders must have had to level the mound
properly, using stones (the latter often joined with lime mortar) and
brickbats to fill such holes. When Floor 4 went out of repair, it received
similar deposits of brickbats to fill its holes in order to lay out Floor
3 (or indeed just to have a level surface) and this continued to happen
with the successive floors. This explains why the so-called “pillar bases”
appear to “cut through” both Floors 3 and 4 at some places while at others
they “cut through” Floor 3 or Floor 4 only. They are mere deposits to fill
up holes in the floors. Since such repairs were in time needed at various
spots all over the floors, these brickbat deposits are widely dispersed.
Had not the ASI been so struck by the necessity of finding
“pillar bases”, which had to be in some alignment, it could have found
scattered over the ground not just 50 but perhaps over a hundred or more
such deposits of brickbats. A real embarrassment of riches of false
“pillar bases”, that is!
3.24. It may here be pointed out that when Dr BR Mani, the
first leader of the ASI team at Ayodhya, excavated at Lal Kot, district of
South New Delhi, he thus describes “pillar bases” of “Rajput style”, of
about the 11th-12th century:
“These pillar bases rest on stone pedestals and are 2.90m
apart from each other. They might have supported some wooden canopy” (Indian
Archaeology 1992-93 – A Review, official publication of ASI, New
Delhi, 1997, p. 9).
Dr Mani illustrates these four pillar bases in Plates VI
and VII of the same publication. Each comprises a number of squarish stone
slabs resting on each other with a larger stone slab at the bottom. Yet
these were not thought by him to be strong enough to support anything more
that “a wooden canopy”. And yet at Ayodhya, single calcrete slabs resting
on nothing more than brickbats are often held by the same Mr Mani and his
team to have supported stone pillars bearing “massive stone structures”!
(See also paragraph 3.58 below.)
3.25. Having thus shown that there is no basis for the
ASI’s illusory 50-pillared structure, and without at all conceding the
reality of the claimed 50 pillar bases, it is still pertinent to ask why
the ASI regards colonnades to have necessarily been part of a temple and
of no other structure. In this respect, the ASI should have noticed such
pillared structures of the Begumpuri Mosque, the Kali Masjid and the
Khirki Masjid, all built at Delhi by Khan Jahan Firozshahi in the AD
1380s, the original photographs of which are printed in Tatsuro Yamamoto,
Matsuo Ara and Tokifusa Tsokinowa, Delhi: Architectural Remains of the
Delhi Sultanate Period, Tokyo, 1967, Vol. I, Plates 14b, 18c and 20c.
What of Delhi, the ASI could have looked closer at the
15th century mosques at Jaunpur, viz the Lal Darwaza Masjid and Jami
Masjid, described by A. Fuhrer in his The Sharqi Architecture of
Jaunpur, Calcutta, 1889, the account of Lal Darwaza Masjid
being given on pp. 43-51 and the Jami Masjid on pp. 52-58. Both mosques
have long colonnades with dozens of pillars carrying roofs on the trabeate
(not arcuate) principle. The Lal Darwaza Masjid plan (Plate XXVIII in
Fuhrer’s volume) shows about 150 such pillars in Lal Darwaza Masjid and
Plates XXIX and XXX give good views of the Masjid’s colonnades. The Jami
Masjid had equally numerous pillars of a similar kind but there has been
much damage to the building. Still, even the extant remains give us an
idea of its grand colonnades (Fuhrer’s Plates XLIV, L and LI). It is
astonishing that the ASI should have closed its eyes to such structures
but this is just another proof that its report is a simple product of bias
and partisanship.
However, this point is raised merely incidentally just to
illustrate the degree of bias and non-professionalism in the ASI’s
approach. There in fact exist no real pillar bases to sustain any vision
of pillared halls or grand colonnades, either of temple or mosque.
3.26. One of the assumptions in Justice Agarwal’s censures
of the experts on the Muslim side has been that they have denied the
existence of all pillars and pillar bases. The Babri Masjid also
used quite large pillars to carry the roof and, as we have shown, pillars
and colonnades were a feature of the Sharqi mosques. Thus Justice
Agarwal’s contention that all pillar bases of whatever kind and
those especially in the north are being rejected by critics of the ASI
report, and then to discredit them on that basis (cf paras 3887 and
3890), is based on an incorrect inference. Nor is there any ground for
the assertion that there was any suggestion on the part of the critics
regarding a “north-south row of the wall 16 and 17” i.e. west of the
mosque’s western wall (para 3895). It is therefore all the
more unfortunate that, in para 3900, Justice Agarwal deals with the
proper objections raised by Dr Jaya Menon and Dr Supriya Varma in the
following manner:
“…it can easily be appreciated that the mind of two
experts instead [of?] working for the assistance of the court in finding a
(sic!) truth, tried to create a background alibi so that later on the same
may be utilised to attack the very findings. However, this attempt has not
gone well since some of these very pillar bases have been admitted by one
or the other expert of plaintiffs (Suit-4) to be correct.”
All buildings, including the Babri Masjid and its
predecessor, the qanati mosque or idgah, needed to stand on walls
and pillars and it is naturally inconceivable that the concerned
plaintiffs’ experts would deny the existence of such structures, as if
mosques cannot contain pillars or their roofs only stand on walls!
The circular shrine
3.27. Much is made in the ASI report of the “Circular
Shrine” (Report, pp. 70-71), again with fanciful figured interpretations
of the existing debris (Figures 24 and 24A in the Report). Comparisons
with circular Shaivite and Vaishnavite shrines (Figure 18) are made. The
ASI had no thought, of course, of comparing it with circular walls and
buildings of Muslim construction – a very suggestive omission. Such shapes
are indeed fairly popular in walls of medieval Muslim construction. And
then there are Muslim-built domed circular structures such as the circular
corner structures at the 13th century tomb of Sultan Ghari at Delhi. (See
Ancient India, official publication of the ASI, No. 3 (1947), Pl.
VIII-A.)
3.28. Even if we forget the curiously one-eyed nature of
the ASI’s investigations, let us consider the shape and size of the
alleged “shrine”. The extant wall makes only a little more than a quarter
of a circle (ASI Report, Figure 17). Though there is no reason to complete
the circle as the ASI does, the circular shrine, given the scale of the
Plan (Figure 17 in the Report), would still have an internal diameter of
just 160cm, or barely 5.5 feet! Such a small structure can hardly be a
shrine. But it is in fact much smaller. Figures 3 (General Plan of
Excavations) and 17 in the report show that not a circle but an ellipse
would have had to be made by the enclosing wall, which it has to be in
order to enclose the masonry floor. No “elliptic (Hindu) shrine” is
however produced by the ASI for comparison: the few that are shown are all
circular. As Plate 59 makes clear, the drawing in Figure 17 ignores a
course of bricks which juts out to suggest a true circle much shorter than
the elliptic one: this would reduce the internal diameter to less than
130cm, or 4.3 feet! Finally, as admitted by the ASI itself, nothing has
been found in the structure in the way of image or sacred artefact that
can justify it being called a “shrine”.
3.29. Indeed if the ASI insists on it being a shrine, it
is strange that it did not consider the relevance of a Buddhist stupa
here. Attention was drawn to Plate XLV-A showing “exposed votive stupas”
at Sravasti, in the ASI’s own Indian Archaeology 1988-89 – A Review.
It is indicative of the ASI’s bias that while it provided an example of an
alleged circular Shaivite shrine from Sravasti, along with a photograph
(Report’s Plate 61), it totally overlooks the circular structures
representing stupas there. As shown above, the small size of the so-called
“circular shrine” at the Babri Masjid site precludes it from being a
shrine which anyone could enter, and the votive stupa (which is not
entered) is the only possible candidate for it, if the structure has to be
a pre-Muslim sacred structure. But the stupa is not a temple, let alone a
Hindu temple. (See para 537, RC Thakran, sub-paras 24-26.) It is
characteristic that despite no “circular shrine” of this small size being
brought to the attention of the court, Justice Agarwal gives his own
reasons, citing however no example or authority, to say that there could
be a circular shrine which need not be entered (para 3947)!
3.30. We now come to Justice Sudhir Agarwal’s own reading
of the evidence. We have seen above that the ASI on page 69 refers to a
sample from “the deposit between Floors 2 and 3 in the Trench ZH-1”,
giving the date AD 1040± calibrated to AD 900-1030 which it itself
rejected as “too early”, the sample being held to be a possible intrusion
from disturbed soils. Justice Agarwal, in para 3937 however,
uses this reference to date the “Circular Shrine” which has no
relationship to Trench ZH-1 (situated far on the northern side of the
Masjid) or Floors 2 and 3. He says:
“The structure [the alleged Circular Shrine] may be dated
to 9th-10th century. (the ASI carried out C-14 determination from this
level (!) and the calibrated date ranges between 900 AD 1030 AD).”
The words in round brackets are, of course, those of
Justice Agarwal and show that he here uses a carbon date which could be
from disturbed strata according to the ASI itself and has nothing to do
with the so-called circular shrine. He might also have considered the
other sample (BS No. 2127) from a similar depth (47cm) but from Trench G7
adjacent to the “circular shrine”, which gives the calibrated range of AD
1400-1620. This date should make it a presumably “Islamic” structure!
3.31. Before we close this discussion on the “Circular
Shrine”, let us come to the parnala which Justice Agarwal
pronounces to be the decisive evidence (“an extremely important feature of
this structure” – para 3936). The basic claim with regard to this
supposed water outlet is in the ASI’s report, page 70:
“The structure was squarish from the inner side and a
0.04m wide and 0.53m long chute or outlet was noticed on plan made through
the northern wall upto the end where in the lower course a 5.0cm thick cut
in ‘V’ shape was fixed which was found broken and which projects 3.5cm
outside the circular outer face as a parnala to drain out the
water, obviously after the abhisheka of the deity, which is not
present in the shrine now.”
In para 3929 Justice Agarwal reproduces the
“serious” objection made to the circular shrine, in which, in sub-para
6.10, it is pointed out that the channel cannot be a draining chute at all
not only because of its Lilliputian proportions but also because it is
uneven in width and narrow at the end (see Plate No. 60 in the ASI’s
volume of illustrations), measurements by a levelling instrument revealed
it had no slope and, finally, there were no residues or traces of deposits
that are formed within water drains after a period of use.
3.32. Not only does Justice Agarwal not take any notice of
these objections but, in para 3937, considers the ‘v’ cut in
a brick as a “gargoyle”. A “gargoyle” implies that there is a “grotesque
spout, usually with human or animal mouth, head or body, projecting from
gutter of (especially Gothic) building to carry water” (Concise Oxford
Dictionary). No such sculptured figure is found so that this possible
support for a “shrine” here is also absent.
Bones, artefacts and materials and their significance
3.33. Now we proceed to examine the archaeological finds
that go entirely against the thesis of there having been a temple beneath
the mosque.
Animal bones
3.34. The most sensational act of misconduct of the ASI
officials has been that despite their being reminded by the bench of the
need to preserve and record animal bones properly, they failed to do so.
3.35. The bones of large- and medium-sized animals
(cattle, sheep and goats) would be a sure sign of animals being eaten or
thrown away dead at the site and therefore rule out a temple existing at
the site at that time. In this respect, directions were given by the high
court to the ASI to record “the number and wherever possible size of bones
and glazed wares”. (Order, April 10, 2003, reproduced in para 230).
Yet the ASI officials have provided in their report no chapter or
sub-chapter or even tabulation of animals by species, by kinds of bones,
whether with cut-marks or not, as is required in any proper professional
report of excavation. In fact today, much greater importance is being
attached to study of animal bones, since they provide to archaeologists
information about people’s diet and animal domestication (cf Kevin Greene,
Archaeology: An Introduction, pp. 136-37).
From any point of view, the ASI’s avoidance of presenting
animal-bone evidence after excavation must be regarded as a motivated,
unprofessional act. The report in its ‘Summary of Results’ admits that
“animal bones have been recovered from various levels of different
periods” (Report, p. 270). Where did the unnamed author(s) of this chapter
get this information when there is nothing about animal bones in the main
report? There is much room for the suspicion then that there was a
chapter or sub-chapter on animal bones in the report, on which the writer
of the Summary of Results drew, but it has been suppressed or deleted
because of its dangerous implications. It is characteristic of Justice
Agarwal’s partisan attitude that he does not anywhere take the ASI to task
for this but actually, as will presently be shown, makes use of the
omission of details about animal bones in the ASI’s report to author
imaginary explanations of where the bones were found and hold forth on
what their presence implies.
3.36. Let us however first take the statement actually
made in the ‘Summary of Results’, which we have just quoted. It concedes
specifically that animal bones have been recovered from “various levels”.
Here then it is not a matter of recovery from “pits” that Shri MM Pandey
and, following him, Justice Agarwal enlarge on at length (paras 3966
and 3968). Furthermore, “various” in the context means “all”,
particularly since the ASI report provides no reservation that there was
any area or layers in which the bones were not found. Indeed the above
inference is fully supported from even a random examination of the ASI’s
Day-to-Day Register and Antiquities Register where the bones recovered are
not usually attributed to pits or ‘secondary deposits’. This can be
confirmed from D. Mandal’s tabulation of animal bones in D. Mandal and S.
Ratnagar, Ayodhya: Archaeology after Excavation, Delhi, 2007, pp.
65-66. So where did Shri MM Pandey (an advocate, not a witness subject to
cross-examination) and Justice Agarwal draw their information from?
3.37. Indeed from the Day-to-Day and Antiquities
Registers, we find that in Trench Nos. E-6 (Layer 4), E-7 (Layer 4),
F-4/F-5 (Layer 4) animal bones have been found well below Period VII –
layers i.e. in Period VI (Early Medieval or Pre-Sultanate) or still
earlier and in Trench Nos. F-8, G-2, J-2/J-3 they are found in layers
assigned by the ASI to Period VI itself. Thus bones have been found in
what are allegedly central precincts of the alleged Ram temple allegedly
built in ‘Period VI’. The ASI says that a massive temple was built again
in Period VII but in Trench Nos. E6, F8, G-2 and J-E/J-4 bones have been
found in layers assigned to this very period also in the same central
precincts. The above data are given in the tables produced in the Sunni
Central Board of Wakfs (UP)’s ‘Additional Objection’ dated February, 3,
2004.
3.38. Justice Agarwal, in para 3969, enters
the following explanation of the presence of the bones:
“Moreover, it is a well-known fact that in certain Hindu
temples animal sacrifices are made and flesh is eaten as Prasad while
bones are deposited below the floor at the site.”
He cites no authority for this. Is there a single temple
of this type at Ayodhya today?
3.39. Let us then look at least at one authority for such
sacrifices. According to Abbe J. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and
Ceremonies, translated by Henry K. Beauchamp, with Preface by
Professor Max Müller, Third Ed., Oxford, 1906, p. 647, the Kali Purana
“contains rules of procedure in sacrificing animals and mentions the
kinds and qualities of those which are suitable as victims. Lastly, it
specifies those deities to whom these bloody offerings are acceptable.
Among them are Bhairava, Yama, Nandi and above all the bloodthirsty
goddess Kali.”
Two points here are worth noting: (a) the divinities to
whom the sacrifices are offered are all connected with Lord Shiva except
Yama, god of the dead; on the other hand, Lord Vishnu or any of his
incarnations are in no way connected with the rites; and (b) there is
nothing said of the worshippers eating the flesh of the sacrificial
victims. So far as we know, there was no or little prevalence of the Kali
cult in the Upper Gangetic basin where Ayodhya is situated. In any case,
if one insists on the imaginary temple beneath the Babri Masjid having
contained thrown away animal bones, it would make it not a Ram but a Kali
or Bhairava temple. Yet even so, the sacrificed animals’ whole skeletons
should have been found, not separate, scattered animal bones as were
actually found in the excavations, according to the ASI’s own records.
3.40. One may here respectfully draw attention to the lack
of consistency in Justice Agarwal’s implying, in para 3969,
that the huge imaginary temple beneath the Babri Masjid was a Kali or
Bhairava temple revelling in animal sacrifices and on the other hand
deciding, (para 4070) under issue No. 14, that the Hindus have been
“worshipping the place in dispute as Sri Ram Janam Bhumi Janam Asthan…
since times immemorial”!
3.41. Justice Agarwal furthermore declares in para 3970
that “bones in such abundance” precluded the site from ever having been an
idgah or qanati mosque before the Babri Masjid was built. Here it
must be mentioned that it is his own finding, not that of the “Muslim”
plaintiffs, that the Babri Masjid was built immediately upon the
demolition of a preceding structure. Quite the contrary, the bones and the
scattered medieval artefacts like glazed ware show that the land adjacent
to the walls and main structure remained open, as would be the case with
an idgah or qanati mosque, so that waste matter could be thrown
there. During the period of three centuries preceding 1528, Ayodhya or
Awadh was a city with a large Muslim population along with its Hindu
inhabitants (see for such evidence, Irfan Habib, ‘Medieval Ayodhya (Awadh),
Down to Mughal Occupation’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress,
67th Session, Calicut University, 2006-07, Delhi, 2007, pp.
358-382). Given the dietary customs of the two communities, “abundance of
animal bones” would weigh heavily in favour of there being a Muslim
presence in the immediate vicinity of the disputed site.
Glazed ware
3.42. Glazed ware, often called “Muslim” or
Medieval glazed ware, constitutes an equally definite piece of
evidence which militates against the presence of a temple, since such
glazed ware was not at all used in temples.
3.43. Before we go further, it is best to remove what was
drawn apparently as a red herring but which, unfortunately, has been
accepted by Justice Agarwal (para 3976) – the claim that, after
all, there was “glazed ware” also in Kushana times so why not in
Gahadavala times?
The matter is clarified in the authoritative
Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, ed. A. Ghosh (former director
general, Archaeological Survey of India), New Delhi, 1989, page 260, where
we read under ‘Glazed Ware’:
“Potsherds, light buff in colour, with a heavy turquoise
blue glaze, have been found at Chaubara and Mahauli mounds near Mathura
and at several other sites in the country and have been dated to the
Kushan period. However, it bears no similarity to the reddish buff Kushan
ware which abounds around Mathura and is completely
different from the later-day medieval (Islamic) Glazed ware” (italics
ours).
It may be mentioned that the word “Islamic” within
brackets is in the original. In other words, archaeologists of standing
regard the presence of medieval glazed ware as evidence of Muslim presence
and this ware has nothing in common with the Kushana-period glazed ware.
This passage disposes of the objection raised by Shri Pandey
(quoted by Justice Agarwal in para 3976) that the medieval
glazed ware was the same as Kushana ware and so was used in ancient India.
3.44. The “medieval (Islamic)” glazed ware is
all-pervasive at the Babri Masjid site till much below the level of “Floor
No. 4”, which floor is ascribed in the report to the imaginary “huge”
structure of a temple allegedly built in the 11th-12th centuries. The
‘Summary of Results’ in the ASI’s report tells us that the glazed ware
sherds only “make their appearance” “in the last phase of the period VII”
(p. 270). Here we directly encounter the play with the names of periods.
On page 270, Period VII is called “Medieval Sultanate”, dated to 12th-16th
century AD. But on page 40, “Medieval-Sultanate” is the name used for
Period VI, dated to the 10th and 11th centuries. As we have noted, the
Summary of Results claims (on p. 270) that the glazed ware appears only in
“the last phase of Period VII”. In Chapter V (Pottery) however, no mention
is made of this “last phase” of Period VII; it is just stated that “the
pottery of Medieval-Sultanate, Mughal and Late-and-Post Mughal period
(Periods VII to IX)… indicated that there is not much difference in
pottery wares and shapes” and that “the distinctive pottery of the periods
[including Period VII] is glazed ware” (p. 108).
The placing of the appearance of glazed ware in the “last
phase” only of Period VII appears to be a last-minute invention in the
report (contrary to the findings in the main text) to keep its thesis of
an alleged “massive” temple, allegedly built in Period VII, clear of the
“Muslim” glazed ware because otherwise it would militate against a temple
being built in that period. All this gross manipulation has been possible
because not a single item of glazed pottery is attributed to its trenches
and stratum in the select list of 21 items of glazed ware (out of hundreds
of items actually obtained), on pages 109-111.
Seeing the importance of glazed ware as a factor for
elementary dating (pre- or post-Muslim habitation at the site), and in
view also of the high court’s orders about the need for proper recording
of glazed ware, a tabulation of all recorded glazed-ware sherds according
to trench and stratum was essential. That this has been entirely
disregarded shows that, owing to the glazed-ware evidence being totally
incompatible with any temple construction activity in Periods VI and VII,
the ASI has resorted to the most unprofessional act of ignoring and
manipulating evidence.
3.45. Going by the Pottery section of the report (p. 108),
not by its ‘Summary’, the presence of glazed ware throughout Period VII
(Medieval, 12th-16th centuries) rules out what is
asserted on page 41, that a “column-based structure” – the alleged
50-pillar temple – was built in this period. How could Muslims have been
using glazed ware inside a temple? Incidentally, the claim of a Delhi
University archaeologist (Dr Nayanjot Lahiri) defending the ASI report,
that glazed ware was found at Multan and Tulamba (near Multan) before the
13th century, is hardly germane to the issue, since these towns were under
Arab rule with Muslim settlements since 714 AD onwards and so the use of
glazed ware there is to be expected. The whole point is that glazed ware
is an indicator of Muslim habitation and is not found in medieval Hindu
temples.
3.46. Shri Pandey’s claim (para 3976), that
pottery could be used by anyone and so medieval glazed pottery has no
importance, is like saying that since all men are equal, there could not
have been any untouchability in India at any time! We have surely to
proceed with what the techniques and customs have been and not what we
think should have happened.
Glazed tiles
3.47. The story of glazed tiles is very
similar. These too are an index of Muslim habitation. The two glazed tiles
are found in layers of Period VI, which means that the layers are wrongly
assigned and must be dated to Period VII (Sultanate period). There could
be no remains of any alleged “huge temple” in these layers, then.
3.48. When the ASI submitted its Day-to-Day and
Antiquities Registers for inspection, it turned out that the ASI had
concealed the fact in its report that the layer in certain trenches it had
been attributing to pre-Sultanate Period V simply cannot belong to it
because glazed tiles have been found in it and the layers assigned to
Period VI could not have belonged to a temple, as alleged, because both
glazed ware and glazed tiles have been found in them. In this respect,
attention may be invited to the tables submitted as Annexure I to the
Additional Objection of the Sunni Wakf Board, dated February, 3, 2004.
(Much of the above argument and information was presented
before the bench vide para 537, RC Thakran, sub-paras 6-9).
Lime mortar and surkhi
3.49. Since lime mortar and surkhi are
profoundly involved in (a) the dating of the levels they are found in; and
(b) resolving the issue whether they could have been used in the
construction of a temple structure at all, it is essential, first of all,
to be clear about what these are and what exactly is meant by their use.
It is acknowledged by the ASI’s report, as noted by Justice Agarwal
himself (para 3895), that lime mortar was used to fix
calcrete stones in the so-called “pillar bases”.
3.50. If one looks up the entry on Mortars and Plasters in
A. Ghosh ed., An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, New Delhi,
1989, p. 295, we read: “Plaster is the material used for coating walls,
etc while mortar is the binding material between brick or stone.” It is
nobody’s case that lime plaster of some kind was not occasionally employed
in ancient India. Indeed, according to PK Gode, Studies in Indian
Cultural History, Vol. I, p. 158, lime (churna) in pan (tambula)
was in use by about 500 AD, and the use of lime plaster (occasional) in
certain places is described in the entry on Mortars and Plasters in the
Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology above-cited. In his collecting
sundry references to the use of lime plaster in para 3991, sub-paras
VIII et seq, the VHP advocate, Shri MM Pandey, simply tilts at
windmills, since the issue is not about the find of lime plaster but lime
mortar in the remains of what is sought to be put off as a Hindu temple.
3.51. Now, here too the matter is narrowed to certain
limits of time. Lime mortar is found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the great
cities of the Indus Civilisation (see An Encyclopaedia of Indian
Archaeology, op. cit.). It was found in Besnagar (now in Madhya
Pradesh) in a structure dateable to the second century BC but the “cement”
was here weakened by the low amount of lime (DR Bhandarkar in:
Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1913-14, pp.
205-06). JD Beglar in A. Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India
Report, Vol. VIII, p. 120, claimed to find lime mortar in the
“original building” of the Buddha Gaya temple, dated to the first century
BC/ AD, but from his description of it on page 118, it appears to have
been “lime-plaster”. Lime mortar was also found in Kausambi in structures
dated to early historical (i.e. pre-Kushana) times. But thereafter, it
simply disappears.
Thus Shri MM Pandey is grossly inaccurate when he says
that “surkhi choona were in use in India continuously much before
the advent of Muslims” (para 3991, sub-para XVIII). It is
not present in the first true brahmanical temple of northern India,
Bhitargaon in Kanpur district, dated to c. 500 AD, the bricks being
“throughout… laid in mud mortar” (A. Cunningham in Archaeological
Survey of India Report, Vol. XI, pp. 40-41). No lime mortar nor
surkhi has been discovered at the two Gahadavala sites excavated by
the ASI, namely Sravasti and Sarnath, to judge from the reports of their
excavations published in Indian Archaeology – A Review; nor have
they been noticed by Dr Mani himself in the ‘Rajput’ levels of his Lal Kot
excavations at Delhi.
3.52. Surkhi is still more elusive in pre-Sultanate
ancient India. It is not at all mentioned among mortars or even plasters
by the Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, Vol. I, p. 295, the
volume dealing only with ancient India. This alone testifies to the
rareness, if not absence, of the use of this material in ancient India. We
should here take care to understand what the term signifies.
According to the famous glossary of Yule and Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson, revised by W. Crooke, London, 1903, p. 854, it means
“pounded brick used to mix with lime to form a hydraulic mortar”. It
quotes a description of c. 1770 in which it is spoken of as “fine
pulverised stones, which they call surkee; these are mixed up with
lime-water, and an inferior kind of molasses, [and] in a short time grow
as hard, or as smooth, as if the whole was one large stone”. No surkhi
floor or bonding mortar has yet been found in any pre-1200 AD site in
India, whether in a temple or any other building. One rare exception is
the presence of surkhi as plaster in the lower levels of the
Buddhist temple at Buddha Gaya, by Beglar’s account just mentioned; and
between it and the alleged temple at Ayodhya there is a gap of over a
thousand years. Nor has the ASI in its report, or the VHP advocate, been
able to produce a single credible example from any Gahadavala or
contemporary temple or structural remains.
3.53. The straight answer must then be that all the
levels, especially Floors 1-4, which all bear traces of lime mortar and/
or surkhi must belong to the period after AD 1200 and cannot be
parts of a temple. Yet Justice Agarwal rules otherwise in para 3986:
“whether lime molter (sic!) or lime plaster from a
particular period or not, whether glazed ware were Islamic or available in
Hindustan earlier are all subsidiary questions when this much at least
came to be admitted by the experts of the objectionist (sic!) parties i.e.
the plaintiffs (Suit-4) that there existed a structure, walls, etc used as
foundation walls in construction of the building in dispute and underneath
at least four floors at different levels are found with lots of other
structures.”
Let us here overlook the statement that “lots of other
structures” were found but concentrate on the main argument. The justice
is in effect arguing that it just does not matter that the floors
underneath the Babri Masjid contained all the standard accompaniments of
Islamic (not temple) construction and articles of customary use; the
assumption is that anything found beneath the Babri Masjid ipso facto, by
faith must be ‘un-Islamic’ and belong to a temple irrespective of whether
it bears Islamic features (mihrab and taqs) or is material
exclusively of Islamic manufacture and use.
3.53A. There are two more matters to which attention
should be drawn:
(a) Underneath a “brick pavement” dated to Period VII, two
Mughal coins (Reg. No. 69 and 1061, one of which is of Akbar and the other
of Shah Alam II, 1759-1806) have been found (ASI’s Report, pp. 210-17).
Obviously, the ASI’s dating of the pavement to the Sultanate period (c.
1200-1526) is erroneous and the floor belongs to recent times (late 18th
century or later). So much for the ASI’s expert stratification!
(b) The presence of terracotta human and animal figures is
no index of Hindu or Muslim occupations. In Period II at Lal Kot, Delhi,
along with Sultanate coins were found 268 terracotta human and animal
figurines, the horse being “represented widely” (BR Mani’s report on
1991-92 excavations: Indian Archaeology 1992-93 – A Review, ASI,
New Delhi, pp. 12-13). Muslim children were apparently as drawn to
terracotta figurines (human as well as animal) as children everywhere in
the world.
Evidence for a temple?
3.54. Apparently responding to the objections
raised by critics of the ASI’s report, Justice Agarwal in para 3986
states as follows:
“Normally it does not happen but we are surprised to see
in the zeal of helping their clients or the parties in whose favour they
were appearing, these witnesses went ahead than (sic!) what was not even
the case of the party concerned and wrote totally a new story. Evidence in
support of a fact which has never been pleaded and was not the case of the
party concerned is impermissible in law. Suffice it to mention at this
stage that even this stand of these experts makes it clear that the
disputed structure stood over a piece of land which had a structure
earlier and that was of religious nature.”
One may well feel however that it would be poor experts
who would be guided in their statements by what suitors, as lay persons,
have said or expect them to say. If the justice were to look at A
Historians’ Report to the Nation on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri
Masjid dispute by Professors RS Sharma, M. Athar Ali, DN Jha and Suraj
Bhan, all eminent historians, published in 1991 (12 years before the ASI
excavated the site), there is no statement to the effect that the Babri
Masjid was built on vacant or virgin land. How could this be known? The
historians gave their views as follows (p. 23):
“There are no grounds for supposing that a Rama temple, or
any temple, existed at the site where Baburi Masjid was built in 1528-29.
This conclusion rests on an examination of the archaeological evidence as
well as the contemporary inscriptions on the mosque.”
Thus no “new story” was being told now, after the ASI’s
2003 excavations, by any of the academic witnesses. Their conclusion still
remained that no temple was demolished in order to build the Babri Masjid
and this was the essence of the issue in the lawsuit. Moreover, if any
conclusion which is derived strictly from historical or archaeological
evidence is held “impermissible in law”, this does not mean that it is
thereby wrong. It is the law which should yield!
3.55. What is of interest is that the corresponding
question is not asked of especially the Suit No. 5 plaintiffs and the
“Hindu” parties generally: ‘You said there was a Ramjanmabhoomi temple
underneath the Babri Masjid. What is the evidence that there was a temple
of Lord Ram here, and consecrated to his Ramjanmabhoomi? We will just
stick to this point, for anything else not according with your precise
claim will be “impermissible in law”. That the structural remains beneath
the Babri Masjid are “religious”, as asserted in para 3986, is not
sufficient in itself because such a religious structure could
theoretically be also Islamic, Jain, Buddhist or Shaivite and so not be a
Ramjanmabhoomi temple at all.’
Had this line of questioning been adopted, would not the
claim for a Ramjanmabhoomi temple have been found to be quite
“impermissible in law”?
3.56. Let us however return to the alleged “religious”
structure below the Babri Masjid. It has already been shown that by the
archaeological finds it must be an idgah or qanati mosque (with
much open land), constructed during the three centuries of the Sultanate
(1206-1526) – given its western wall, mihrab and taqs,
glazed ware, lime mortar and surkhi. If we are looking for a Ram or
Vaishnavite temple, what would we have been expecting?
3.57. We would first be expecting images or idols and
sculptured scenes as are seen in the façades and interior of the temples
of Khajuraho, Bhubaneswar and Konarak of the same period. If we begin by
the presumption (as the VHP plaintiffs do) that the temple was demolished
by Muslims to build the mosque, we would also expect as a necessary
corollary such signs of vandalism as mutilated images or mutilated
sculptured figures. They should have been found in levels or fills beneath
the Masjid floor or in the debris of the Masjid because one would expect
all kinds of stone images or stones with sculptured divinities to have
been employed in the mosque with or without mutilation. But not a
single image or sculptured divinity, mutilated or otherwise, has been
found even after such a comprehensive excavation where doubtless these
were the things everyone in the ASI team was looking for.
3.58. Surely this total lack of what would be expected out
of the remains of a massive Hindu or Vaishnavite temple should summarily
rule out the case for a temple having existed beneath the mosque.
As for the alleged pillars, deduced from the fictitious
pillar bases, one needs to record the opinion of an eminent archaeologist,
Professor MS Mate, formerly of the Deccan College, Pune, that “even if it
is granted purely for the sake of argument that the pillar bases are a
reliable affair”, the plan of the structure that would result as per the
ASI report’s Figure 23A-B cannot be that of “the plan of a twelfth-century
temple”. “No shilpi,” he adds, “would venture to adopt such a plan
for a temple, as it would be totally unsuitable for temple rituals” (Man
and Environment, XXXIV(1), 2009, p. 119; see also plans figured on p.
118). Professor Mate then goes on to comment on the unreality of the
alleged “pillar bases without the support of a solid plinth” thus
endorsing the objections advanced above in our paragraphs 3.16 to 3.24.
3.59. Let us then consider what the ASI offers as the main
indicators of a temple at the site besides those controversial pillar
bases we have already discussed: It refers to “yield of stone and
decorated bricks, as well as mutilated sculpture of divine couple and
carved architectural members, including foliage patterns, amalaka,
kapotapali doorjamb with semi-circular pilaster, broken octagonal
shaft of black schist pillar, circular shrine having parnala (water
chute) in the north”. Since Justice Agarwal’s list in para 3979 is
derived from the ASI’s list, so let us primarily consider the list
furnished by the ASI in support of the temple-beneath-the-mosque theory.
3.60. We begin with the curious phrase “stone and
decorated bricks”. Perhaps “stone” is a misprint for “stones” for there
can be no stone bricks. But mere stones as stones have no significance
either for period or for type of structure. As for ‘decorated bricks’, the
sentence in Chapter IV is most revealing: “A band of decorative bricks was
perhaps provided in the first phase of construction or in the preceding
wall (wall 17) of which scattered decorated bricks with floral pattern
were found re-used in the wall 16” (p. 68). All this is just fanciful
conjecture: no decorated bricks at all are mentioned when the supposed
remaining courses of Wall 17, four courses in one and six in another area,
are described (on the same page 68). No bands of decorated bricks but only
some scattered reused bricks of this kind were found in Wall 16. Such
reuse shows that for builders of Wall 16 these bricks had no significance
except as use of constructional material (and the decorations would in any
case be covered by lime plaster). They could have been brought from
anywhere nearby and not been taken from Wall 17 or any pre-mosque remains
on the site.
3.61. In Chapter VI the other alleged temple-associated
items are listed thus: “the fragment of broken jamb with semi-circular
pilaster (pl. 85), fragment of an octagonal shaft of Pillar (pl. 84), a
square slab with srivatsa motif, fragment of lotus motif (Pls.
89-90) [which] emphatically (!) speak about their association with the
temple architecture”. In the same breath, the report also notes “that
there are a few architectural members (Pls. 92-94) which can clearly be
associated with the Islamic architecture” (p. 122). The two sets of finds
are assigned their different dates (10th-12th centuries and 16th century
or later) but such dates are assigned not by the positions of the
artefacts in situ in archaeological layers but purely on perceived
stylistic grounds. The two tables listing the archaeological members found
in the excavations show that none of the finds actually came from layers
bearing remains of the so-called structure beneath the Babri Masjid but
rather from surface or upper layers, or the Masjid debris, or dumps or
pits (see tables of the Report on pp. 122-133). How then, even if the
stylistic ‘temple’ associations of a few of them are acknowledged, can it
be argued that they belonged to the structure beneath the mosque, the one
containing mihrab and taqs, whose ‘religious character’ is
under discussion? They could have been brought for use in the Babri Masjid
from remains of temples and other buildings at nearby sites, just as were
the ‘Islamic’ architectural fragments brought from ruins of older mosques
in what was in the 16th century the headquarters of a large province with
a mixed Hindu-Muslim population.
3.62. As for “the divine couple” which occupies a primary
place in the ASI’s list of supposed temple relics, the following points
are noteworthy: it comes from the mosque debris (see Sl. No. 148 (Reg. No.
1184) in the table on p. 130 of the ASI’s Report) and is thus
archaeologically undateable. The description ‘divine couple’ is an
invention of the ASI because here we have only a partly sculpted rough
stone where only “the waist” of one figure and the “thigh and foot” of
another are visible (see Plate 235 in the ASI’s volume of illustrations).
How from this bare fragment the ASI ascribed divinity to the postulated
couple and deduced the alingana mudra as the posture is evidence
not of any expertise but simple lack of integrity and professionalism.
Yet even if we throw all our scruples to the wind and, for
a moment at least, go along with the ASI officials in their imaginings of
an amorous “divine couple”, where would this take us in the world of
brahmanical iconography? Surely to Uma and Maheshvara (Shiva) who are thus
sculpted together as Uma-Maheshvara. (See Sheo Bahadur Singh,
Brahmanical Icons in Northern India (A Study of Images of Five Principal
Deities from Earliest Times to circa 1200 AD), New Delhi, 1977, pp.
28-31 and Figures 11, 17-19.) We would thus after such a long shot get
only a Shaivite connection, showing at best that here we have a rough-hewn
stone brought for reuse in the Masjid construction from the remains of
some Shiva shrine.
3.63. The black schist stone pillar here presented as
evidence for a temple at the site was recovered from the debris above
Floor 1 i.e. the admitted last floor of the Babri Masjid (ASI’s Report, p.
140; Sl. No. 4, Reg. AYD/1, No. 4). It is merely a fragment of one of the
14 such non-load-bearing pillars installed in the Babri Masjid with no
connection to the imagined pillared edifice underneath the Masjid. (See
above under discussion on pillar bases.)
3.64. The fact that the various articles cited in support
of the existence of an earlier temple at the site have their association
with different sects rules out their having come from a single temple. An
octagonal block with a floral motif has been compared by the ASI with a
stone block at Dharmachakrajina Vihara, a 12th-century Buddhist
establishment at Sarnath (Report, p. 56). If correct, this would be a
piece taken from a Buddhist vihara, not a brahmanical temple. The ‘divine
couple’, if it is such, would be of Shaivite affiliation; and amalaka
has its associations with Brahma. The “circular shrine” has been judged to
be a Shaivite shrine by Justice Agarwal (para 2938) and if so, it
still does not bring us anywhere near to a Ram temple. None of these
elements could ever be part of a single “Hindu” temple – for such a
composite place of worship was unknown in northern India in ancient and
medieval times. There could have been no non-denominational non-Islamic
religious structure which Justice Agarwal postulates but which no “Hindu”
party to the suit has ever suggested, nor is it sustainable by any
historical example. To conclude: The sundry portable elements found in the
Masjid debris, surface or late layers must have come from different sites
for reuse as architectural items in Masjid construction and thus cannot be
invoked in support of a temple underneath the Babri Masjid.
Evidence for temple destruction?
3.65. It may by some be regarded as a lamentable failure
of the ASI’s report that it “does not answer the question framed by the
court, inasmuch as, neither it clearly says whether there was any
demolition of the earlier structure, if [it] existed and whether that
structure was a temple or not” (para 3988). On this Justice Agarwal
says as follows in para 3990:
“ASI has, in our view rightly refrain (sic!) from
recording a categorical finding whether there was any demolition or not
for the reason when a building is constructed over another and that too
hundreds of years back, it may sometimes [be] difficult to ascertain as
[sic] in what circumstances building was raised and whether the earlier
building collapsed on its own or due to natural forces or for the reason
attributable (sic!) to some persons interested for its damage.”
Thereupon Justice Agarwal, after a long reproduction of
the VHP advocate, Shri MM Pandey’s arguments, says (para 3994) that
though “for our purposes it was sufficient that the disputed structure [Babri
Masjid] had been raised on an erstwhile building of a religious nature
which was non-Islamic”, he would still proceed to discuss the “blatant
lie” (his words) that Muslim rulers never destroyed any temples.
Here it seems to be overlooked that the real issue is not
whether some Hindu temples were destroyed by Muslim rulers but whether
Babar or his officials had destroyed any temple at the site of the Babri
Masjid. For this to be decided, not the conduct of other Muslims but only
the conduct of Babar or his immediate successors in India, Humayun and
Akbar, was of relevance to the matter, as indeed, Shri Jilani, advocate,
correctly pointed out (para 3995). For that matter, the fact that a
Panchala ruler in the 11th-12th century, ruling from Badaun (Uttar
Pradesh), honoured a Brahmin priest for having destroyed a Buddha idol in
the south (Epigraphia Indica, I, pp. 61-66, esp. p. 63) does not
mean that every Hindu ruler who built a Hindu temple or patronised Brahmin
priests could be suspected of having connived at the destruction of a
Buddhist image. Justice Agarwal seems to hold however that the case of
Muslims in such circumstances is one apart from all others, for:
“whatever we had to do suffice it to conclude that the
incidence of temple demolition are (sic!) not only confined to past but is
going in (sic!) continuously. The religion which is supposed to connect
all individuals with brotherly feeling has become a tool of hearted (sic!)
and enmity” (para 4048).
3.66. With such a view taken of Islam, it is not
surprising that Justice Agarwal rules out not only the likelihood of there
being an earlier idgah or qanati masjid at the site but takes the
fact of temple demolition prior to the Babri Masjid as proven despite the
ASI’s failure to prove this by means of its archaeological excavation, as
the justice has himself acknowledged (para 3990): He now reposes
his entire faith in what he believes to be the current belief of the
Hindus to settle the whole matter:
“The claim of Hindus that the disputed structure was
constructed after demolishing a Hindu structure is pre-litem not post-litem,
hence credible, reliable and trustworthy” (para 4056).
If this was the core of the matter, the high court need
not have gone into the evidence of history and archaeology, as studied by
the methods of these disciplines, but should have decided in favour of
what one set of suitors believed, irrespective of what the votaries of a
religion that has become the tool of “hatred and enmity” might assert,
pre-litem or post-litem.
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