The ASI report
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL Survey of India's report of its
excavation of the Babri Masjid site has important failings which
render it suspect. Both in what it includes, and in what it
excludes, the report does not address the task to which the High
Court directed it, namely to determine whether a mosque and/or a Ram
temple existed at that site. The ASI has said that it has discovered
the bases of pillars which originally supported the roof of a temple
at a layer below the mosque. It adduces the discovery of terracotta
figurines at the site to strengthen this claim. And it claims to
have discovered a "circular shrine" which it conjectures contained a
Sivalinga, which it would have us believe fortifies the claim to a
Ram temple at the site. However, in fact the evidence does not
indicate that a Ram temple existed at this site. On the contrary,
important evidence which the ASI has not properly examined or
accounted for includes animal bones and glazed ware, both foreign to
a Hindu Ram temple of medieval times.
Pillar bases: About the scatters of bricks
which the ASI claims are the bases of pillars which supported a
temple, the report says: "(the) present excavation has set aside the
controversy by exposing the original form of the bases... and their
arrangement in rows including their association with the top floor
of the structure existing prior to the disputed structure." But
these scatters of bricks are not in a row, and they are set in
different strata, so pillars emanating from them could not have
supported the same roof. So these alleged `pillar bases' could well
just be cavities which were filled up with brick-bats and debris.
The ASI goes to great lengths with hypothetical reconstructions, but
from these same base plans, architects could well reconstruct other
architectural forms — such as a mosque.
What the ASI now declares was a temple lies
immediately below what it terms the stratum of the mosque. But after
reaching the alleged temple, the ASI kept digging, going more than
two metres deep in some trenches. Why? Was it still looking for
better evidence of a `temple' and, failing to find it, did it then
label whatever it had found a `temple'? In fact what it has found
could as well be part of the mosque, or the remains of an earlier
Idgah. A Twelfth century construction, if it existed on the same
site and pre-dated the mosque, could have been either a secular
structure or a Muslim religious site which re-used earlier material.
The fact that blocks are re-used in the masjid does not mean that
the temple was destroyed to build it. Yet there is not a single
specifically religious artefact found at this site. The ASI report
talks of a "divine couple." But there is no indication of divinity —
only a fragment of two waists. Most importantly, if this were such a
sacred place, the birthplace of Ram, then why was there no temple
according to the ASI claim, till the Sultanate period, XII-XVI
century AD? Why was it a site of continuous human habitation till
then? The Archaeological Survey does not address this question.
Circular shrine: The ASI says it found a
round brick shrine with a water channel — a small Sivalinga
installation, dated to the Seventh to Tenth century AD. "Now viewing
in totality and taking into account the ... circular shrine, having
pranala water chute in the north... are indicative of remains which
are distinctive features found associated with the temples of north
India." "Viewing in totality" means taking the Siva shrine into
account. But how does that help? Ram is meant to be an incarnation
of Vishnu, not Siva, so this is clearly not part of the Ram temple.
And the ASI says that what it calls a Ram temple was built
subsequently and over the Siva shrine. How then can the shrine be
presented as evidence of "remains" which indicate "whether there was
any temple/structure which was demolished and mosque was constructed
on the disputed site"? The Siva shrine does not prove the existence
of a Ram Mandir.
Terracotta: The ASI has discovered some
terracotta figurines but these may not be significant, as they are
not confined to the so-called "temple" layer. They occur, in fact,
even in the mosque levels! Therefore there is a big mix; and the
findings of terracotta cannot date the "temple."
Animal bones: If what the ASI has chosen to
mention is important though misleading, what it has left out is
equally significant. The presence of both animal bones and glazed
ware at different levels of this site causes awkward problems for
the claim of a Ram temple here. The ASI report has had to
acknowledge that animal bones were found because of the insistence
of observers appointed by the Court that they be recorded. But it
refuses to identify them by the stratum they were found, and hence
the period (of time) to which they belonged. "Animal bones have been
recovered from various levels of different periods." But which
levels, which periods? The report says: "samples of plaster, floors,
bones, charcoal, palaeo-botanical remains were also collected for
scientific studies and analysis." What scientific studies and
analysis were done on the bones? Why are such animal bones not
identified by stratum? These bones are material evidence; yet they
were not photographed, perhaps to minimise their importance. The
significant question which the ASI report avoids dealing with is:
have they appeared at a stratum below the mosque? If so, the temple
theory collapses.
Glazed ware: Glazed ware was unknown in
India before the coming of Islam. So it would not be found in a
pre-Islamic site such as a Ram temple at Ayodhya. It is significant
that any identification of the glazed ware found at the site, by the
specific layers in which it has been found, and therefore the
period, has been omitted. The ASI claims there is not much
difference between the Mughal glazed ware and that of the "temple"
period. Would a temple in use since the 12th century for 400 years,
and a mosque in use thereafter have similar pottery? Even in a
medieval temple, contemporaneous with Islam in India, glazed ware
would not be used. Specific vessels of specified materials are used
in Hindu prayer, offering and ritual. Surely if the temple was built
in the medieval Sultanate period, and functioned as one for several
centuries, we should be able to find in it some distinctive remains
of pottery which would be appropriate to a Hindu sacred structure?
Instead, the fact that the pottery from even the so-called "temple"
phase is glazed and otherwise similar to Mughal pottery indicates
that this may well have been a Muslim sacred or secular site. One
reason they may have clubbed the pottery together is that they first
thought both the mosque and so-called "temple" layers belonged to
the same Mughal building, the Babri Masjid. Only later, under
pressure, did they decide to interpret one layer separately as being
that of a temple.
In sum
What are claimed to be the bases of pillars which
held up the temple turn out not to be pillar bases at all. The Siva
shrine at a lower level adds no strength to the claim of a Ram
temple. The terracotta from different levels has been so jumbled up
that it can be linked to no particular stratum and period. And the
presence of animal bones and glazed ware makes it difficult to claim
that a Ram temple existed on this site between the XII and XVI
centuries. And, finally, the ASI report accepts the existence of a
mosque. If there was a mosque since 1530 AD, where is the sense in
prolonging the title suit?
KANNAN SRINIVASAN
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