Contextualizing the Babri Mosque Debate and the recent verdict of the Supreme Court- Sabyasachi Goswami

The Supreme Court has declared its verdict on the Ram Janmabhoomi (Ram’s birthplace) issue. On one hand the majoritarian-sentiment serving  Modi-Shah duo along with a bunch of unruly, religious fanatics are out conducting one shocking activity after another and on the other hand our country keeps getting looted everyday behind the smokescreen of religious fanaticism. Some neo-liberal friends are happy thinking that the mandir-masjid (temple-mosque) debate will finally subside! They think it’s one less issue to worry to about. But in reality this is nothing short of hopeless hope. Now the entire country shall witness the madness around building the Ram temple. Besides, the SanghParivar has already declared ‘Kashi-Mathura bakihain’ (we are yet to raise the issue in Kashi and Mathura). Hence we can see that these Brahminical fascist forces are still holding a lot of communal cards in their hands. In actuality, the Supreme Court’s verdict is ahistorical and is also a reflection of the fact that secularism in India is in grave danger. This is the same country which has had a long history of multiple communities staying together harmoniously. But time and again the overlords have used religion for the sake of gaining power, wealth and consolidating their method of oppression. It is the British imperialists in particular who had sowed the seeds of communalism in this country. Through their conscious efforts at distorting history, communal mentality was born. In later stages we shall find that right from the Congress to the parliamentary Lefts- all have been unable to break free of this communally charged history and have in fact often undertaken the role of its proponent. Through this they have actually strengthened the arms of the SanghParivar that was born out of an unholy union of British imperialism and feudalism. The Babri Masjid verdict has propelled India to move one step ahead towards the Modi-Shah dream of a Hindu rashtra; secularism, tolerance are slowly turning into empty words; there can be no doubt left about this.

Earlier, history-graduate Ranjan Gogoi had already pushed Assam towards a state of dismay by declaring the “historic” verdict on NRC. Many lives have already been lost since then. The SanghParivar which is adept at controlling the masses by creating an atmosphere of terror, has found the perfect weapon required to create an atmosphere of terror all across the country. Now they are using this weapon to unleash a country-wide state of terror. This is the same RanjanGogoi who himself was the judge in the very case where a molestation complaint was filed against him, and (un)funnily enough he went ahead and gave the verdict that he was innocent. The verdict given by constitutional  bench under his leadership, is shameful to say the least. What does the verdict say?  What the 1035 page long shameful verdict says are roughly the following:

1. ‘2.77 acres of the disputed land in Ayodhya will go in the hands of the Hindus. And on that land the Ram temple will be built.’ Funnily enough, the constitutional bench has affirmed that they have found no proof of the earlier existence of a Ram temple in that spot. But so what? Non-Islamic architectural structures have been found beneath the mosque and that enough has been considered to be enough to hand over the land to the Hindus. Adding to that is the argument of ‘religious sentiment’ of the majority. However historians like Ramsharan Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib have pointed out that back when the mosque was built, it was a common practice to use material from old and abandoned architectural structures. Examples can be found in many temples and mosques around the country. In this case too something similar must have happened.
2. The centre will commence the process of building the temple within 3 months. A trust and a board of trustees shall be formed to look after the process of building the temple. Question is, why should aofficially secular government undertake the duty of building a temple for a particular religion? The supposed guardian of the constitution, i.e. the Supreme Court itself has violated the constitutional decree of maintaining secularism!
3. ‘ The area both inside and outside of Babri mosque shall be under the trust.’ Therefore the entire disputed land is going in the hands of the Hindus. Whatever little grants the Muslims received via the Allahabad High Court has been entirely stripped off by this highest court of ‘justice’!
4. Following the 1993 controversy, the Centre had made land acquisition of 67 acres in excess. The Centre can even hand over this plot to the trust for building the temple, if it so wishes.
5. 5 acres of alternative land shall be allotted for building a mosque in Ayodhya itself. The central or state government shall allot a suitable plot.
6. Muslims haven’t been able to prove that the area inside Babri mosque belonged to them exclusively. The area outside was completely under Hindu control.
7. Reports of existence of an old structure beneath Babri mosque that have been made by archaeologists cannot be discarded or be considered mere ‘assumption’. But at the same time the verdict also accepts that there is no guarantee that the structure below was a temple. Questions have also been raised regarding the report of the Archaeological Survey of India. One report from ‘The Wire’, published on 8 November 2019, states,

*Two archaeologists, SupriyaVarma and Jaya Menon, had observed the ASI’s excavations on behalf of the Sunni Waqf Board. In 2010, the wrote a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly detailing why they had objected to the ASI’s results, and the subsequent Allahabad high court judgment in September 2010. According to the article, the duo had objected to various practices the ASI was following during its dig, which made “it clear that there was already a preconceived idea in the minds of ASI archaeologists”.
The authors argued that the ASI’s report had gone largely unchallenged because of the power it holds over researchers in the country. “Any archaeologist in India or from outside who wants to explore or excavate sites has to obtain a licence from the ASI. So no field archaeologist is willing to speak out against it or its outdated methods.”*

Challenging the three proofs provided by the archaeological body, SupriyaVerma wrote in Huffington Post:

*a. A western wall: “The western wall is a feature of a mosque. It is a wall in front of which you    say namaaz. It is not the feature of a temple. Temple has a very different plan.”

1. Fifty pillar bases: “These are completely fabricated and we filed many complaints to the court about it. Our argument is that if you look at what they are claiming to be pillar bases, these are pieces of broken bricks and they have mud inside them.”
2. Architectural fragments: “Of these 12 [most important architectural fragments], none of these were found during the excavation. These were recovered from the debris lying above the lime floor of the masjid. … A temple, a stone temple – supposedly this is a stone temple – has much more sculptured material than what they have found.” *
3. Nirmohi Akhra’s claims to exclusive priesthood rights have been nullified. But the Centre may take this Akhra in the Trust. Incidentally this is the same NirmohiAkhra on which the SanghParivar (read: Modi-Shahs) have little control.
4. The case regarding existence of ‘Ramlala’ is a rightful one. Ramlala has been legally recognized as a ‘person’. But the place of his birth is not a legally recognized ‘person’.

The funny thing is that this very constitutional bench has accepted that breaking the Babri mosque on 6 December, 1992 was ‘a grave violation of law’. On the night of 22 December,1949, when they entered the main dome of the mosque to install the statue of Ram and destroyed the sanctity of the place whilst forcefully evacuating the Muslims, they were not following law. Muslims have been wrongfully been denied what has been a place of worship for over 450 years. As if for compensation, they have been allotted 5acres of land in a different area.  And the ones who broke the law, the ones who entered the disputed land with explosives and destroyed a historical monument, the outcome of whose fanaticism was the loss of lives of over 2000 people of the minority community, managed to get not only that piece of land that they were after but also 67 acres of government-occupied land in excess. Is this the definition of justice! If the highest court of justice is in such a state then who will the common people go to in order to seek protection from goons?

Now let us unearth some truth.  The specific place in Ayodhya that the Sangh Parivar claims to be the birthplace of Ram and has even received the legal backing from the highest court of justice has no real historical or scientific basis. Historians have proved that going by the various editions of Ramayana, the possible place of birth of this fictitious character, Ram could be in 6 places – and contrary to descriptions presented by RSS and the SanghParivar, none of these is located where Babri Masjid is in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya. Most historians believe that the Ayodhya mentioned in Ramayana is located in modern Afghanistan. According to Buddhist Ramayana, DasharathJatak, Ram was not born in Ayodhya but Varanasi. Only once source has claimed that modern Ayodhya is Ram’s birthplace, but they too point to an area which is 3km away from the disputed land. Therefore there is no historical source that proves that the disputed area is the birthplace of Ram.

Secondly, one can find multiple places in this country where people claim that ‘Lord Ram’ was born. So, even if we consider religious sentiments, there is no evidence of a singular Hindu sentiment that is the driving force behind the controversy. Thirdly, expert historians have pointed out that the place which is being claimed to be the birthplace of Ram was practically uninhabitable back when the Ramayana was composed. Fourthly, When Babar arrived in India,Tulsidas was hardly two years old. Therefore if indeed there was destruction of Ram temples in Babar’s time, a Ram devotee like Tulsidas must have mentioned it in at least some of his writings. Such stories are absent not only in Tulsidas’s writings, but also in all accounts of writers from the Mughal period. In this regard, the Hindutva forces of the SanghParivar have a strange logic; they say that some pages are missing from ‘Babarnama’ and it is only in those pages where description of the destruction of the temple can be found. The obvious question that arises is how does one ascertain the contents of a missing document? They have no clear answer to this. Besides, religious sentiments can always be used to bury all rational thought. And the Bhakts are doing precisely this to our country every day. Not only are they killing rationalists, but even slaughtering all rational thought. Fifthly, they claim that the said temple was built 1500years ago during Vikramaditya’s time. But history points to the fact that the practice of worshipping Ram started merely 600-700 years ago. 1500 years ago there was no existence of Ramayana or Ram. During Vikramaditya’s time the worship of Lord Ram was simply absent. Sixthly, it is claimed that Ram was born in the Tretayug (era). The timeline mentioned by them dates back to a time when humans didn’t exist, but only their ancestors did, who again happen to also be the predecessors of apes. If one follows Darwin’s theory then there is no way that the can accept the existence of Ram. Perhaps that’s why Darwin’s theory is also under attack today. Seventhly, there is no historical evidence that the mosque was built by Babar. Because: 1>Babarnama does not mention construction of any such mosque. 2> British Governor General Marquitas Hamilton Buchanan conducted a survey and after that it was found out that the mosque was built by Hussain Shah, 16 years prior to Babar’s birth.

So how did this story come about? Primarily this exists because behind this too lay a larger British imperialist conspiracy. After the Great Revolt of 1857, ‘divide and rule’ became an intrinsic part of the British policy and merely 4 years after the Revolt, in 1861, we find stories of ‘temples being destroyed to build mosques’ in the writings of British author Carnegie. Before this, English scholar Lyden while translating Babar’s autobiography lamented that “Babar had probably visited Ayodhya”.

Carnegie followed Lyden’s hypothesis (which had no historical evidence attached to it) and took it a step forward by coming up with the theory that the temple had been destroyed to build a mosque. In 1861 Lady Liverage while translating Babarnama added this theory of ‘destruction of temple to build mosque’ to her work.

On 30^th January 1948,NathuramGodse’s assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi made RSS highly unpopular among the masses and it is in this setting that they made a desperate attempt to revive their erstwhile dead mass support. On 22 December 1949 they secretly entered Babri Mosque at midnight and installed a statue of Ram. Archaeologists suggest that this statue is hardly a hundred years old- yet to hide the blood of one murder RSS created an ambience of even more violence within no time. The incidents that followed are of course known to us. It is the duty of every democracy loving citizen to take active part in bringing the real history to the fore. History must be saved from religious sentiments. The scientific truth behind history must be established.

The false idea that Muslims destroyed and looted many Hindu temples is often propagated amongst the majority community. This is nothing but prejudice. Behind this too lies communal history composed and propagated by the British. Right from childhood such one-sided history is taught to breed viciousness. In reality, all the feudal kings, irrespective of whether they were Hindus or Muslims, used to attack religious sites whenever there was shortage of money in the royal exchequer. Communal intensions were seldom present. Thirst for wealth was primary. Sultan Mamud is infamous for looting Somnath Temple. But what is erased from the pages of history is the fact that in his own capital, Hindus used to raise funds and conduct Durga Puja without any qualms. Hindu king Dahir unleashed terrible repression on Buddhists in the Sindh region. King of MarwarKumbha was known for oppressing the Muslim population. In 1791 Maratha troops attacked Sringeri Math. They of course were Hindu. The commandant of this operation was RaghunathRaoPattawardhan. The target of the Maratha troops was the massive wealth of the Math. Naturally, the Sringeri Math was totally destroyed in the blink of an eye. Multiple Brahmins were killed in the hands of the Marathas. The head of the Math, Shankaracharya was forced to flee. The idol of Saradadevi was felled. Later on the king who came forward to rebuild the Math was Tipu Sultan. For the reconstruction of the temple, he did not stop at providing money and food grains. In addition to that he sent clothing for the new idol and a pair of shawls for the head of the Math. To protect the head of the Math, Shankaracharya from the Maratha bandits, he also appointed armed bodyguards for him. These facts have been unearthed the letters exchanged between Tipu Sultan and Shankaracharya. Actually the main motive of the rulers was to loot and reduce powers of the religious centres. This is something that communal historians skip. They even skip facts like Tipu Sultan’s economic contribution  to build Srikantenswar temple or his endowment of 10 thousand gold coins for building the Kanchi temple. Besides, he resolved disputes between two rival gangs of priests in Melkot temple and sent lots of gifts to Lakshmikanto temple. Not just Hindu temples, he also built the first church in Mysore.

Tipu hailed from a family that followed Sufi ideology of the Chisti/ Bande Nawaz gharana and was undoubtedlt a secular, liberal king who was philanthropic towards his subjects. In southern India he has assisted at least 156 temples in various forms throughout his life. The Sriranganath Swami temple which is located near his Srirangapattanam fort received his special attention. But even that doesn’t stop the SanghParivar from propagating distorted history about Tipu Sultan. Kalhan’s ancient novel ‘Rajtarangini’ mentions how Hindu king Harsh appointed a group of royal servants called ‘Debotpatnayak’ whose task was to loot temples. History makes it clear that Mourya kings used to do this whenever there was a crisis regarding the royal exchequer. They looted bronze and brass utensils in particular. Shivaji is showcased as an emblem of an ideal Hindu king. But they don’t showcase the fact that Shivaji had built mosques in his kingdom. For bringing this fact to light, GovindPansare was killed by Hindutva goons. The Muslim rulers from medieval times are shown as communal, religious dogmatists who hated Hindu religion. But the real history is quite different from this narrative. We must remember that it was during the Mughal era that beef eating was restricted keeping the religious sentiments of Hindu Brahmins, Jains and Buddhists in mind. Aurangzeb is painted as an intolerant king, but the examples of religious tolerance that he created are quietly brushed under the carpet by Hindutva historians. After going through the archives of various Hindu temples in northern India, various decrees of Aurangzeb and deeds and documents of those temples were found by historian BN Pandey who authored a book called ‘Islam and Indian Civilization.’  He showed how Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar temple, Chitrakut’sBalaji temple, Guwahati’s Umanand temple, Shatrunjayee’s Jain temple along with various other gurudwaras received grants and land allotments from Aurangzeb. Many people don’t know that the land upon which the Tarakeshwar temple had been built in West Bengal is also an endowment from Aurangzeb. It is true that he used to collect ‘jizya’ tax from Hindus, but it is also true that Hindus had been giving this tax for over 400 years before the rise if Aurangzeb. During his rule Muslims too had to pay a tax called ‘zakat’ for pilgrimage. He exempted Hindu women, children and old people from paying the ‘jizya’. Actually from Aurangzeb to Tipu Sultan – all are victims of historians who represent British colonial interests, and their close allies, the Hindutva historians who attempt to saffronize history. Their proper evaluation has never been done by the history book motivated by imperialist interests and we are still continuing that form of colonial education system. Historians like RomilaThapar have pointed out that there was no case of religious intolerance when Aurangzeb attacked the Kashi temple. Actually he had to carry out that mission on the insistence of Hindu kings.  Aurangzeb had built a camp in Kashi according to the pressing demands of Hindu kings when he started inspection of his territory. Soon after, pandas of the Kashi temple raped the queen of Kuchh when she went in to pray. After several search missions she was found in a secret chamber of the temple and this is when the Hindu kings pressurized Aurangzeb to carry out a military expedition. After this the authority of the temple claimed that the sanctity of  the temple had been lost and so Aurangzeb allotted a large piece of land right next to that area where a new temple was built and even today it remains a place of worship. Instead of shedding light on this whole story if one only says that Aurangzeb attacked the Kashi temple, then it is nothing short of distortion of history. But this is a strange time. All around us lies and hatred are being bred. Religious tonic and the tonic of ultra nationalismis being fed to inebriate the youth, while poverty keeps on increasing. Divisive forces are on the rise. Discrimination too is increasing. Organisations under the state are being privatized one after the other. Coal, iron, all kinds of mineral wealth and forest resources are being completely captured by multinational companies and their agents. The Prime Minister is shamelessly approaching investors by saying that cheap labour can be found in this country. To complement this, taking full advantage of their numerical strength, one bill after the other is being passed by the parliament to repudiate the rights of workers-peasants and the working masses. For this to go on, a more frenzied atmosphere is required. Frenzy created in the name of religion and ultra-nationalism successfully takes all eyes away from the fact that the entire country is being sold away. Given these circumstances we must leave no gaps in our effort to unite the working masses across the country.