May  2003 
Year 9    No.87

Investigation


Doctored ASI report?

 

The latest news on the Babri Masjid excavations is that official archaeologists are clutching at straws to please their saffron masters.
A report by an independent team of archaeologists monitoring the
excavations, coordinated by SAHMAT, New Delhi.

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

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

The report on the excavations submitted by the ASI cast gloom among supporters of the saffron brigade who had been led to expect that the official archaeologists would be able, post facto, to justify the 1992 demolition of the mosque through digging out stone–slabs, pillars, images, etc., of a pre–existing, splendid Rama temple.

The ASI’s report does not even mention the word "temple" or "shrine", which it was supposed to look out for. Yet, though the report is disappointing for the VHP supporters, there are doubtful omissions and many motivated suggestions that reveal a clear desire by the ASI, influenced by the central government and its connected outfits to attempt to clutch at straws.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It would seem to anyone not tied to saffron expectations that the so-called "bases" in the southern area (brick–bat base with "calcrete" tops) could only have supported wooden posts carrying thatched roofs (chhappars) over shops and hovels along possibly a lane (so a possible rough alignment). Some of these could belong to a time before the Babri Masjid was built, and so such (but not all) are "sealed" by the Masjid floors. Others were made while the mosque’s original floors were being laid out. Those in the northern side are obviously of a different sort (as shown above) and are possibly of a later time. No temple–structure is in any case involved here. What is especially important in interpreting these "structural bases" is to relate their positions to the mosque wall. In the 15th-century Lal Darwaza Masjid, Jaunpur, "square pilasters" were provided for on the external walls for rows of shops alongside the walls. And BB Lal’s associate, KV Soundara Rajan told Frontline that Lal’s "pillar bases" were really bases for wooden posts for shops ranged along the wall of the Babri Masjid.

The ASI’s report practically exhausts all its space in raising the three issues we have examined above, in the apparent hope of providing some sop to its masters at Delhi and to the VHP. At the same time it takes much care to overlook the evidence that definitely negates the existence of a pre-existing temple.

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

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

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

The mystery of a planted inscription

When on December 6, 1992, hoodlums of the saffron brigade pulled down the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya, there was a suspiciously simultaneous declaration from the VHP "archaeologists" that an inscription had been discovered within the precincts of the destroyed mosque, which allegedly showed that there had earlier been a Rama temple at the site. The inscription after being in VHP’s custody for some time was put in government custody, and its photographs and impressions became available for examination.

The fact that this sandstone inscription was really a plant became clear from the testimony given before the high court, Lucknow bench. A VHP witness, claiming to have seen it fall from a height off the Babri Masjid wall, deposed that it was pulled out of the rubble within the wall and had mortar covering large parts of it. But the inscription shows no trace today either of the mortar or of the scratches or any other traces of the mortar’s removal from its surface. There is no way in which medieval mortar can be removed from a stone without leaving such traces.

While obviously planted, the inscription appears to be a genuine one belonging to the twelfth century or so. Contrary to the VHP’s claims, it does not tell us that the inscription was set up at the site of the janmabhoomi of Lord Rama, Dr KV Ramesh, former director (epigraphy), Archaeological Survey of India, in his translation submitted to the court by the VHP itself, clearly shows that the janmabhoomi of the inscription is not a place, but the family of the donor; Ramesh rendered the text as follows: "Noble was that very family (of the donor) which was the birth place (janmabhoomi) of honour." It is thus clear that whatever place the inscription was originally installed at was not believed to be the site of Lord Rama’s birth.

What the original place of this inscription was thus remains a mystery; and one naturally begins to look for any known inscription, hitherto unpublished, that could possibly have been acquired for presentation as a "find" from the Babri Masjid. It does, indeed, happen that one such inscription recovered from Ayodhya in the 1880s has remained unpublished.

In Archaeological Survey Reports, NS, Vol I, actually published as the Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur, by A Fuhrer, edited by Jas Burgess, director general, Archaeological Survey of India, Calcutta, 1889, page 68, the following statement occurs: "Inscription No XLIV is written in twenty incomplete lines on a white sandstone broken off at either end, and split in two parts in the middle. It is dated Samvat 1211, or AD 1184, in the time of Jayachchhandra (sic!) of Kanauj, whose praises it records for erecting a Vaishnava temple, from whence stone was originally brought and appropriated by Aurangzib in building his masjid known as Treta-ki-Thakur(at Ayodhya). The original slab was discovered in the ruins of this masjid, and is now in the Faizabad Local Museum."

Perhaps, because the reference to this inscription lay buried in a volume entitled Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur, the inscription was not noticed in the detailed lists of inscriptions of the Gahadavala dynasty, to which Jayachandra belonged, provided by HC Ray in Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol I, Calcutta, 1931, pages 536-41, and Roma Niyogi, The History of the Gahadavala Dynasty, Calcutta, 1959, pages 245-60. The only author besides Fuhrer to refer to the inscription has been Hans Bakker. In his Ayodhya, Part I, Groringen, 1986, page 52, he notes that the inscription "has never been published" and that "the inscription is now in the possession of the State Museum, Lucknow", giving its number there as Arch. Dep. 53.4. Seeing that Bakker gives no further information about the appearance and contents of the inscription beyond that given by Fuhrer, it is obvious that he himself did not actually see or read it. Dr TP Verma, deposing before the high court, admitted that he had tried to see it at the Lucknow museum but was unable to do so. More recent attempts to trace it at the Lucknow museum have proved unavailing; and unofficially it has been described as "missing."

Could it be that it is the same inscription which miraculously reappeared at the Babri Masjid site on December 6, 1992, as a great find of the VHP?

In appearance, the VHP’s inscription has many points in common with the Lucknow inscription described by Fuhrer. It too is of sandstone (though rather greyish, not fully white). It too is broken into two parts, the slit starting near the middle of the top, then running rather diagonally to the bottom right. Its text, again, is broken at either end, and the individual lines are incomplete in case of all but four owing to the broad slit. All these are features it shares with Lucknow museum inscription. And, above all, like the Lucknow museum inscription it too has just twenty lines.

We now come to the contents. The Lucknow museum inscription is said to relate to the construction of a Vaishnava temple; the VHP inscription mentions that of a Vishnu–Hari temple, which would have been naturally construed as "Vaishnava" by anyone summarising its contents. Fuhrer read "Jayachandra" in the Lucknow museum inscription; the VHP inscription has "Anayachandra". Fuhrer was himself not a Sanskrit epigraphist and his assistant may have made a mistake in a hurried reading of the name. The final matter is the date. No date occurs in the VHP inscription. This is because the last line where it ought normally to have come has had its middle part removed by the stone being chipped off, the impression of the text revealing a further damage to the line extending to quite a distance to the right of the chipping. Has this been a deliberate act of mutilation to remove a date that could have given away the identity of the inscription?

The key to the solution of the question lies in the hands of the Lucknow state museum. If it does not produce the "Jayachandra" inscription out of its store rooms, the suspicion that its vaults have furnished the inscription that was subsequently planted at the Babri Masjid, will only grow and become irrefutable. If it does succeed in tracing the inscription (obtained from some other source), this will not, of course, absolve the VHP of planting the mortar-free inscription in the rubble of the Babri Masjid, but it will have considerable evidential value of its own. How does it refer to the "Vaishnava" temple inscription? Does it have a word like "Janmabhoomi"? How does its orthography compare with that of the VHP’s inscription? And so on.

There is no doubt that either way, the solution of the mystery will greatly aid both the ends of justice and the interests of history.

(The excavations are being monitored by an independent team of archaeologists, coordinated by SAHMAT, New Delhi. Senior historian Irfan Habib is personally supervising the monitoring every day).

 


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