Home  | All Evidences | Debate

The Ayodhya debate: Focus on the 'no temple' evidence

Two sides to the story

1.In references to the question whether there really was a Hindu temple at the Ayodhya site later covered by the Babri Masjid, the focus is invariably on the case made by the Hindu side, viz. that there was a temple, and that different types of evidence confirm this.

The standard question is: is this evidence for the temple demolition scenario valid? Have they succeeded in proving the existence of the temple? By contrast, the opponents of the temple hypothesis are but very rarely asked to put their evidence on the table.

Let us now look at the anti-temple argumentation (with due attention to the several non-archaeological types of evidence) and in particular to its offer of positive evidence that the allegedly demolished Hindu temple never existed. Of course, some might argue that it is impossible to prove the non- existence of something, and that it is therefore unreasonable to demand such proof. But this argument is not valid: if there was no temple and no temple destruction, then there must have been something else at the site, some other history preceding the building of the mosque, which is exactly as capable of leaving some written or archaeological testimony as a demolished temple would. There is no need to prove the temple's non- existence, it will do to prove the existence of something else at the site.

The disputed site is an elevated site near the centre of a city, quite well- known to a whole city population, so it is perfectly reasonable to expect the existence of testimonies of any alternative history of the site. Thus, the site may have been covered with a forest and the city records mention its felling to make way for a mosque; or the owner of some secular building standing at the site sold his real estate to the builder of the projected mosque at a fair price, vide the written sales contract. As much as the temple party is expected to provide evidence for the temple, the non-temple party must provide evidence for the alternative to the temple.

Now, a close scrutiny of the argumentation by the non-temple party, whether by the Babri Masjid Action Committee, by the scholars representing it during the government-sponsored scholars' debate of December-January 1990- 91 (at least its last two meetings) , or by independent scholars such as those of Jawaharlal Nehru University) shows that none of them even formulates an alternative hypothesis. Not one of the numerous scholars who took up arms against the temple party has thought it necessary to explicitly state even in the vaguest terms what exactly happened before a mosque was built at the site. Much less does any of them provide any kind of evidence for such an alternative scenario, even though positive proof for a non-temple scenario would be the best possible refutation of the temple scenario.

2. Vanquishing a straw man

The non-temple argumentation is confined to two types of evidence: Arguments from silence, and attempts to find fault with pieces of evidence offered by the temple party.

Criticism of the pro-temple argument is usually directed against a straw man, not against the actual argumentation as presented by pro-temple scholars. A number of much-acclaimed anti-temple publications bravely announce in the introduction or on the cover that they will demolish every argument given (or "concocted" and "maliciously propagated") by the temple party, but then fail to address or even mention the main statements of the pro-temple party. Thus, Asghar Ali Engineer has published two anthologies of articles on this controversy , but carefully leaves out the official as well as the competent non-official formulations of the pro-temple position; instead he includes only a few clumsy ones to create a semblance of even- handedness.

The most powerful non-official books by pro-temple scholars are simply never mentioned, let alone discussed. Even the official argumentation offered by the scholars mandated by the Vishva Hindu Parishad during the government-sponsored debate is generally ignored. Gyanendra Pandey manages to leave all this argumentation by professional historians totally unmentioned in three successive publications purporting to deal with the Hindu way of doing history during the Ayodhya controversy, focusing instead on some Hindi pamphlets by local religious personnel totally unacquainted with scholarly historiography.

The same ignoring of the very argumentation which is purportedly refuted is found in the successive editions of S. Gopal's Anatomy of a Confrontation, for most foreign scholars the only accessible source about the Ayodhya conflict. Even the fact that a government- sponsored debate between historians mandated by both sides took place is obscured in most publications, and when it is at all mentioned, it is mostly to denounce the fact that the government had "collaborated with the communal forces" by giving them a hearing at all.

3. Case study of a straw man

The single most important book in the whole Ayodhya controversy is Sita Ram Goel's two-volume book Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them. Its first volume contains a number of presentations of specific cases of temple demolitions, a brief presentation of the Islamic theology of iconoclasm, and most of all a list of nearly 2,000 mosques standing on sites of temples demolished by Islamic iconoclasm. Everybody whispered that within the Ayodhya movement, a list of "3,000" demolished temples was circulating.

The normal thing to do for serious historians would have been, to analyze this list inside out, and to try to refute it. After all, far from basing itself on "myth", Goel's argument consists of two thousand precise and falsifiable claims, as a scientific theory should. It turns out that none of the anti-temple historians has taken up the challenge of refuting even one of those claims, viz. by proving objectively that one of the mosques in the list had definitely not been built in forcible replacement of a temple. The list has never been discussed and figures in practically no bibliography.

Even more important is the second volume, The Islamic Evidence. It is the key to the whole Ayodhya controversy, no less. Its main parts are a 174- page compilation (emphatically not claiming completeness, merely the discovery of a "tip of the iceberg") of Muslim literary and epigraphic evidence for the demolition of Hindu temples, and a 138-page presentation of the Islamic theology of iconoclasm.

Goel's comment on the compilation open thus: "Starting with Al-Biladhuri who wrote in Arabic in the second half of the ninth century, and coming down to Bashiruddin Ahmad who wrote in Urdu in the second decade of the twentieth, we have cited from seventy histories spanning a period of more than a thousand years. Our citations mention fifty kings, six military commanders and three sufis who destroyed Hindu temples in one hundred and seven localities..."

The importance of the book is that it provides the historical and ideological context of the temple demolitions: it demonstrates that the Ayodhya dispute is not a freak case but on the contrary an entirely representative case of a widespread and centuries-long phenomenon, viz. Islamic iconoclasm. It shows that the iconoclastic demolition of Hindu temples was practiced in practically all Indian regions which were under Muslim rule at one time. Historians, particularly modern historians with their emphasis on "context", ought to welcome it and study it closely. Instead, it has been completely obscured and kept out of the picture in the whole controversy.

It may have achieved mention in a footnote here or there. The longest discussion of it which I am aware of, is by political scientist Chetan Bhatt (who does not try to hide his ignorance about medieval history), who devotes fifteen lines to it: two separate lines in his text, and a 13-line footnote. He accuses Goel of "a highly selective obsession with archaeology and to some extent anthropology" , of marshalling "the most selective archaeological and historical facts" , and of this: "Goel's text uses Islamic sources to 'prove' that Mughals were only interested in religious domination of Hindus and nothing more. The historical method used is based almost entirely on highly selective non- contextual quotations from these sources."

It is of course very convenient to allege that embarrassing quotations are "selective" and "pulled out of context", especially when you don't say what that context is, nor how it changes the meaning of the quotation. But here we are dealing with hundreds of quotations, requiring no less than an equal number of contexts to redeem them, to turn a testimony of fanatical vandalism into a testimony of tolerance.

Moreover, it is normal for quotations to be selective (those in Bhatt's own book, culled from writings by Hindu nationalist ideologues to put them in a bad light, certainly are); at any rate, quoting from primary sources is a decent form of scholarship. Incidentally, that the "Mughals" (meaning the Islamic invaders in general) were "only" interested in religious domination is a caricature misrepresenting Mr. Goel's stated views; his point merely is that the religious motive provides an exhaustive and well- attested explanation for the observed fact of Islamic temple- demolishing campaigns.

Bhatt also claims that Goel "provides 'evidence' that the Black Stone in the Ka'ba at Mecca (the most sacred site for Muslims) was originally a shrine to the Hindu God Shiva". In reality, Goel explicitly denies just that claim. He discusses a long-standing Hindu tradition to this effect, as well as testimonies of the mutual visits to each other's temples by Pagan- Arab and Hindu traders and of the (well-founded) Muslim belief in a connection between Arab and Hindu polytheism, to the extent that the first Muslim invaders took great risks to reach and demolish the Somnath temple (Gujarat), in which they believed the Arab deities had taken refuge after the islamization of Arabia.

At any rate, the presiding deity of the Ka'ba, Hubal, was a male moon-god just like Shiva, and polytheists have always identified their own gods with roughly corresponding deities in other pantheons. Goel explains how he always "dismissed" this belief as an invention of crank historians, until he ran into some new evidence, and even then he reserves his judgment: "But in the course of the present study this author has run into some facts which force him to revise his judgment. He is not prepared to say that the Ka'ba was a Shiva temple. He, however, cannot resist the conclusion that it was a hallowed place of Hindu pilgrimage."

Bhatt describes Goel's book as "a fairly typical RSS-Hindu-nationalist text". I challenge him to produce a similar text by a declared RSS man. Anyone familiar with the Hindu nationalist movement knows that (and knows why) the RSS scrupulously avoids this type of critical study of Islam as a doctrine. Since at least the Emergency (1975-77, when RSS activists were jailed and developed friendly relations with jailed activists of the Jamaat- i-Islami), the RSS is wooing the Muslim community; its political ally, the BJP, is courting the Muslim voters and showing off its fast-increasing number of Muslim election candidates. Even when criticizing specified Muslim politicians or Islamic militants, the RSS and its allies firmly refuse to turn this into a criticism of Islam as such; rather, they will denounce their Muslim target as "straying from the true message of Islam, which is a religion of peace and tolerance".

In the very book which Bhatt claims to be criticizing, Goel has taken the RSS-BJP leaders to task for precisely this pro-Islamic attitude: "Hindu leaders have endorsed the Muslim propagandists in proclaiming that Islam does not permit the construction of mosques at sites occupied earlier by other people's places of worship.

One wonders whether this kowtowing to Islam is prompted by ignorance, or cowardice, or calculation, or a combination of them all. The Islam of which Hindu leaders are talking exists neither in the Quran nor in the Sunnah of the prophet." On other occasions as well, Goel has sternly criticized the RSS and BJP for their policy of eschewing all serious discussion of Islamic doctrine. His book Time for Stock-Taking is the single most incisive critique of the RSS available; unlike the stereotyped and sloganeering tirades by Marxists like Chetan Bhatt, it is based on first-hand knowledge, including the testimonies by a number of disappointed RSS volunteers. In spite of this, political "scientists" like Bhatt can disregard all the evidence and label Goel as an RSS man.

"Disregarding the evidence" is indeed the name of the game. Critics of the Hindu historians' case on Ayodhya have so far never looked their opponents in the eye, smugly settling for a labelling number, excelling in demonizing terminology ad hominem rather than in a factual analysis ad rem. It is historiographical nonsense to discuss the phenomenon of Islamic iconoclasm, in Ayodhya or elsewhere, without addressing the question of its motivation - always an important aspect in any history of human behaviour. Yet, that is precisely what a whole establishment of Indian historians have done in suppressing the very mention (or in the case of Bhatt, at least the true contents) of Sita Ram Goel's book.

4. The BMAC historians

The only (partial) exception to the solid front of scholarly disregard for the pro-temple argument is the official statement by the scholars mandated by the Babri Masjid Action Committee half-way through the government- sponsored scholars' debate. The story behind this is that the BMAC officials, no historians themselves, had shown up at the first meeting in December 1990, at which bundles of evidence would be exchanged, with nothing but a pile of photocopies of newpaper articles and book excerpts stating opinions on the Ayodhya dispute, but no historical evidence (the only solid material included pertained to the fairly uncontroversial judicial history of the site since 1857).

My reading is that they had been misled into an unwarranted self-confidence by the assurance propagated by certain media-savvy academics that the pro- temple case was completely baseless and fraudulent. To their surprise, they were confronted with a genuine presentation of evidence by the pro-temple party, represented by Prof. Harsh Narain, Prof. B.P. Sinha, Dr. S.P. Gupta, Dr. B.R. Grover, and Mr. A.K. Chatterji (none of them formally associated with the Vishva Hindu Parishad except for Gupta).

In desperation, the BMAC representatives approached Prof. Irfan Habib of the Indian Council of Historical Research asking him to save them. Habib collected a team of genuine historians for them, led by Prof. R.S. Sharma. We will refer to these employees of the BMAC as "the BMAC team", for it is in that capacity that they have participated in the debate, notwithstanding their initial attempt to be recognized as "independent historians" (as the BMAC negotiators have continued to call their own employees). Now that, in spite of minimum coverage in the English-language Indian press, the impression was out that the VHP-mandated team of historians was winning the debate, the BMAC team had little choice but to address the pro-temple argumentation.

On 24 January 1991, when they were expected to present their case, Sharma and his team failed to show up and unilaterally broke off the talks. One could see the unilateral walk-out from the negotiations by the BMAC team as an admission of defeat. But the day before, the four BMAC historians, in their first meeting (chaired by a government representative) with the VHP team, had said that they needed six weeks to study the evidence,-- a remarkable position for people who had led 40 colleagues into signing a public statement on the absolute non-existence of any evidence, just a few days before.

However, it must be admitted that they did make their homework as promised. A few months later they presented an argumentation under the title Historians' Report to the Nation, which remained their central argument when the talks briefly resumed in October 1992. Then too, they broke off the talks, viz. in (arguably justified) protest against the VHP's announcement that, disregarding the ongoing negotiations, it would stage a demonstration in Ayodhya on December 6, the occasion when the Babri Masjid was demolished.

In the BMAC team's Report, the salient point is that the BMAC scholars exclusively attempted to refute (a part of) the pro-temple argumentation but made no attempt whatsoever to present any original evidence of their own. In effect, they pretended to sit in judgment on evidence presented to them by supplicants, when in reality they themselves were one of the contending parties in the arena, expected to present their own evidence. Unfortunately, to keep both parties to the rules of a debate and to evaluate the evidence objectively, a genuinely neutral judge would have been needed, and of course, it seemed that there was no neutral judge available in India.

5. Arguments from silence

The central line of argument in the BMAC team's Report is that until the late 18th century, no literary source mentions a temple or a temple demolition at the site. Arguments from silence are always the weakest type of argument. The absence of testimony in a particular source may simply mean that that the author was unaware of an event even though the event did take place; or it can mean that the author had no intention of providing the kind of information which we are looking for, either deliberately or simply because he had a different project in mind when writing that particular text.

Thus, poet Tulsidas, author of the main devotional work on Rama in Hindi, the Ramcharitmanas, is often cited as remaining silent regarding the alleged temple demolition. But this proves little, when you keep in mind that in his day (ca.1600 AD) the construction of the Babri Masjid at the site (1528 AD according to the inscription on the mosque itself) was a long- accomplished fact, and that the same Tulsidas doesn't mention any of the numerous temple demolitions even in his own Varanasi. As a rewriter of ancient traditions, Tulsidas was just not a reporter on recent events at all; he does not even mention his own most famous contemporary, the enlightened Emperor Akbar.

But in this case, there is an even more decisive argument against reliance on arguments from silence: each argument from silence against the temple is equally valid as an argument from silence against every possible alternative scenario, for none of the texts cited mentions any non-temple entity at the site.

One frequently mentioned argument from silence is simply disingenuous: the absence of any reference to Ayodhya in Babar's memoirs. As Babar himself relates, the pages for the period when he may have stayed in Ayodhya were blown away during a storm. If those missing pages listed Babar's activities day by day and failed to mention his stay in Ayodhya, then that would constitute a serious argument from silence; but since those pages are missing, there is not even an argument from silence in Babar's memoirs.