Ayodhya dispute
political, historical and socio-religious debate in India, centred on land in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh
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The Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical and socio-religious debate in India, centred on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, located in Faizabad district, Uttar Pradesh. The main issues revolve around access to a site traditionally regarded among Hindus to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama, the history and location of the Babri Mosque at the site, and whether a previous Hindu temple was demolished or modified to create the mosque.
Quotes
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- It has become a fashion in some elite Indian circles to bash Hinduism or issues related to it. It has also been taboo in these same intellectual circles to discuss what I think is a very reasonable request — we should have a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Elites, particularly in the English media, have bullied almost all voices that desire a temple at the sacred site into silence. Hence, just to be clear I would like to state this: peacefully, but definitely, I support the construction of a beautiful Ram temple in Ayodhya. It is frankly ridiculous that we have to beg to restore a temple at one of Hinduism’s greatest sites.
- Chetan Bhagat. Why we need a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Times Of India. 2017. [1] [2]
- I say that the Muslims do not have the slightest right to complain about the desecration of one mosque. From 1000 A.D., every Hindu temple from Kathiawar to Bihar from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas, has been sacked and ruined. Not one temple was left standing all over northern India… Temples escaped destruction only where Muslim power did not gain access to them for reasons such as dense forests. Otherwise it was a continuous spell of vandalism. No nation, with any self-respect, will forgive this. They took over our women. And they imposed the Jaziya, the tax. Why should we forget and forgive all that? What happened in Ayodhya would not have happened, had the Muslims acknowledged this historical argument even once. Then we could have said : All right, let the past remain in the past and let us see how best we can solve this problem…
- Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri , Sunday Times of India, August 8, 1993; in an interview to its Editor Dileep Padgaonkar [3]
- There is no state today, certainly not in India, to protect Hindu interest in the international arena, to raise voice for the Hindus .... In December 1992, no less than 600 Hindu temples were destroyed in Bangladesh, thousands of Hindu homes were burnt down, hundreds of Hindu women were paraded naked on the streets of Bhola town, a number of Hindus were killed, Hindu shops were looted, Hindu deities were desecrated, Hindu girls were dishonoured. But the Government of India remained silent. In Pakistan, 300 temples were destroyed. In Lahore a Minister of Pakistan personally supervised the pulling down of a temple with the help of bulldozers, and several Hindus were murdered. But the Government of India remained silent. No matter how much tyranny, how much injustice is heaped on Hindus anywhere in the world, the State of India is not bothered - this is the essence of Secularism in India.
- A. Chatterjee: Hindu nation, quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 518-519
- On the very same day the first brick of the Ram Shila foundation was being laid at Ayodhya, the Berliners were removing bricks from the Berlin Wall. While a temple was going up in Ayodhya, a communist temple was being demolished five thousand miles away in Europe. If this is not history, I do not know what is. (...) The post-Nehru era began at Ayodhya on November 9, and it will gather momentum in the years to come, just as the post-communist era in Europe and elsewhere.
- The Muslims, in my opinion, should show magnanimity and [make] a noble gesture of gifting away the mosque.
- The British concoction hypothesis is not only untenable. It is so far off the mark, so totally out of tune with the known historical and cultural context, so totally unsuggested by any relevant document, that no unbiased historian would ever have come up with it. It warrants a suspicion against the pretended objectivity and scientific temper of the secularist participants in this debate... When you analyze and explicate all the implications of the secularist historians' version of the Babri Masjid story, you find that they in fact postulate a great many unusual entities. And they create them purely in the air.... This postulating of very improbable theoretical possibilities without any coherence is not really the scholarly defense of an alternative Ayodhya scenario, it is just a diversionary tactic made up to put the pro- Mandir people on the defensive. As the historian Sita Ram Goel has said, it is a typical strategy of unscrupled lawyers.... Of course, lawyers are paid by clients to try such un- truthful tactics, so we may perhaps forgive them. In the case of historians, or even for politicians claiming high ideals, this is unacceptable. ... As Lenin, Goebbels and other masters of lies knew, it is sufficient to repeat a big lie often enough, to make it pass as truth. So, the truly outstanding feature of the Leftists' and Muslim fanatics' campaign of distortion has been its shameless persistence. No matter what hard evidence they got confronted with, the Romila Thapars and R.S. Sharmas just kept on lambasting the Hindu side for distorting history and concocting evidence and for merely bluffing in the face of "incontrovertible evidence that no Ram temple ever stood on the site". While they had not given any such evidence nor replied to the pro-Mandir evidence ..., they kept up the offensive and absurdly accused the other side of not facing the evidence. The way the anti-Mandir falsehoods have been given wide currency in 1989-91 will make an interesting case study for future scholars. A classic in propaganda.
In fact, this conclusion is merely a restatement of what was a matter of consensus until a few years ago. This time it is supported by a bundle of evidence, but it had been known all along. It is only recently that politically motivated academics have manufactured doubts concerning this coherent and well-attested tradition. And it is not on the strength of arguments, but exclusively through their grip on the media, that they temporarily managed to create the impression that the Hindu case was built on myth and concoction.- Elst, K. Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
- The pogroms in Pakistan and Bangladesh after the demolition of the Babri Masjid left 50,000 Hindus homeless in Bangladesh and triggered another wave of refugees from both countries towards India. In Pakistan, 245 Hindu temples were demolished, in Bangladesh a similar number was attacked, and even in England some temples were set on fire by Muslim mobs.
The Ayodhya conflict offers a good examples of the absurd standards applied by reporters. A Hindu sacred site, back in use as a Hindu temple (since 1949 with, since 1986 without restrictions) after centuries of Muslim occupation, is claimed by Muslim leaders, who also insist on continuing the occupation of two other sacred sites in Mathura and Kashi (and numerous other sites which the Hindu leaders are not even claiming back). Claiming the right to occupy other communities' sacred sites: if this is not fanatical, I don't know what is. Yet, the whole world press is one the side of the Muslims, and decries a Hindu plan to build proper temple architecture on the Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya as fanatical. These are not just double standards, but inverted standards.
Whatever the mistakes committed by the Hindu Ayodhya movement on the ground, at the intellectual level it is a struggle for truth and honesty, against attempts (some petty, some high-handed) to falsify history. On the other hand, the stand taken by leading negationist historians in this debate wil be studied in the future as a classic in latter-day Marxist history falsification.- Elst K. Negationism in India, (1992)
- Without exaggeration, the BJP's Ayodhya campaign was the single biggest public relations disaster in world history.
- Elst, Koenraad. (1997) BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence
- The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. How else should we call the practice of seemingly learned publications advertising themselves as "objective" studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties? ... The VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents (removing relevant old books from libraries, adding words on an old map). ... Future books on the affair will certainly include a chapter on "the Ayodhya scandal": the unscrupled use of academic and media power positions by the secularists to suppress relevant evidence, and the gullibility of foreign scholars relying on hearsay from Indian colleagues whose bona fides is open to question. (...) Future scholars of political and communications science will study the reporting on the Ayodhya affair as an absolute classic of brilliantly successful disinformation. ...
The more books and articles on Ayodhya and on "communalism" I look into, the more I feel confirmed in my assessment that the Hindu presentation of their own case regarding Ayodhya is the single worst public relations job in world history.- K. Elst : The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation, in India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries.
- Future historians will include the no-temple argument of the 1990s as a remarkable case study in their surveys of academic fraud and politicized scholarship. With academic, institutional and media power, a new academic-journalistic consensus has been manufactured denying the well-established history of temple demolition by Islamic iconoclasm to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi site; at least among people with prestige and influence but no firsthand knowledge of the issue. But the facts will remain the facts, and their ongoing suppression is bound to give way as new generations of scholars take a fresh look at the data. ... The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. That, at least, seems to be a fair description of learned publications advertising themselves as “objective” studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties. .... The aim of the pro-Babri Masjid historians was never to settle any historical questions. If it had been, then they would not have opposed the VHP’s request to organize systematic excavations at the site; nor would they have concealed the pro-temple evidence in their publications. Their aim was merely to distract public attention from the obvious and extremely simple solution of this controversy. The fact that this solution would be in favour of the Hindu claims was apparently unbearable to them because of their seething hatred of their ancestral religion. .... One of the contenders in the Ayodhya history debate, the “hypothesis” that the Babri Masjid had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, had been a matter of universal consensus until a few years ago. Even the Muslim participants in court cases in the British period had not challenged it; on the contrary, Muslim authors expressed pride in this monument of Islamic victory over infidelity. It is only years after the Hindu take-over of the structure in 1949 that denials started to be voiced. And it is only in 1989 that a large-scale press campaign was launched to deny what had earlier been a universally accepted fact. .... Tellingly, they do not mention the outcome of the debate, but reiterate the ludicrous demand they made while attending the debate as BMAC advocates, viz. that they be considered “independent historians” qualified to pronounce scientific judgment in a debate between their employers and their enemies... Of course, the government representative dismissed this demand as ridiculous. Yet, the BMAC has continued to call them “the independent historians”, and they themselves have continued to demand that the VHP submit its case to “independent arbitration”, i.e. by their own kind. These two telling details of the Ayodhya debate story have, of course, been withheld from the reader in the booklet published by the BMAC team, and in all subsequent publications by the anti-temple party. ... Future books on the affair will include a chapter on “the Ayodhya scandal”: the unscrupled use of academic and media power positions by India’s secularists to suppress relevant evidence, and the gullibility of foreign scholars relying on hearsay from Indian colleagues whose bonafides is open to question. ... If any proof is needed that the BMAC has been defeated in this debate, it is this: no one sympathetic to the Babri Masjid cause has made any reference to the outcome of this debate all through the subsequent years... Politicians have made a show of their “secularism” and their opposition to “religious fanaticism” by organizing “fact-finding missions” to Ayodhya and issuing statements on the dispute, but they have not made any reference to the outcome of the scholars’ debate at all. When reading about the subsequent course of the Ayodhya controversy, one might get the impression that the scholars’ debate never took place.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- The VHP-mandated scholars have, in their argumentation, pointed out no less than four attempts where scholars belonging to the anti-temple party have tried to conceal or destroy documentary evidence. Those are of course cases where the attempt failed because it was noticed in time, but the question must be asked how many similar attempts have succeeded.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- It is not reassuring to watch the ease with which foreign scholars have absorbed or adopted the non-temple thesis from their Indian colleagues (whom they assume to be neutral observers) even without being shown any positive evidence. In academic circles in the West, my own restating the status quaestionis in terms of actual evidence has only earned me hateful labels and laughter, and this from big professors at big universities whose prestige is based on the widespread belief that scholarship goes by hard evidence, not politically fashionable opinions. Never has any of them offered hard evidence for the newly dominant view, or even just shown a little familiarity with the contents of the debate.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- The above are cases where the attempts to suppress evidence have failed. It is quite probable that other attempts have succeeded. There may well be documents containing pertinent information, particularly about the site’s history during the Sultanate period (1206-1525), which have escaped the notice of Prof. Harsh Narain (the only scholar of Persian and Arabic in the VHP team) because they had been removed in time from the places where they could normally be found. Such documents would mostly be in Persian and available only in the libraries of Muslim institutions. In some of these, Prof. Harsh Narain has effectively been denied access as soon as his involvement in the Ayodhya argument became known. How many pieces of pertinent material have been concealed, removed, destroyed or altered is anybody’s guess.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- Given the widely acknowledged importance of the Ayodhya conflict, one would have expected at least some of the well-funded Western academics to embark on their own investigation of the issue rather than parroting the slogans emanating from Delhi’s Jama Masjid and JNU. Their behaviour in the Ayodhya debate provides an interesting case study in the tendency of establishment institutions and settled academics to genuflect before ideological authorities overruling proper scholarly procedure in favour of the political fashion of the day.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- The existence of the medieval temple had long been firmly established. There was testimony upon testimony of Hindus bewailing and Muslims boasting of the replacement of the temple with a mosque; and of Hindus under Muslim rule coming as close as possible to the site in order to celebrate Rama’s birthday every year in April, in continuation of the practice at the time when the temple stood. None of the written sources, whether Hindu, Muslim or European, contradicted the pre-existence of a Rama temple at the site. ... During the scholars’ debate in 1990-91, the VHP-mandated team had discovered no less than 4 documents on which references to the “birthplace temple” had been altered or removed, or which had been removed from public access (and those were only the ones where the foul play was discovered; who knows how many times the tampering succeeded?). ... Given that Prof. Harsh Narain, Dr. Arun Shourie and others have discovered attempts to conceal or alter Muslim documents confirming the temple tradition, we cannot exclude that in some cases, similar attempts at concealment of highly informative documents have succeeded and remained undiscovered.
- Koenraad Elst, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- This was reckless, for ... the eventual discovery of such a temple would justify a contrario the replacement of the mosque with a restored temple. At least in theory, but the Marxists were confident that their opponents would never get the chance to press this point. Under the prevailing power equation, they expected to get away with a plain denial of history... Ever since, the secularist historians have been bluffing their way through the controversy.
- Elst K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- The existence of that temple had been a matter of consensus among Muslims, Europeans and Hindus, both nationalist and anti-nationalist, until the JNU professors issued their fatwa to disregard the evidence and deny history.
- Elst K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- The poison issued from the secularist intellectuals who raised a media storm against the historical consensus, the one factual certainty underlying all the political confusion...The irresponsible and downright evil campaign of history denial by the secularist opinion-makers has prolonged the Ayodhya dispute by at least a decade. Denouncing all pragmatic deals, these secular fundamentalists insisted on having it their way for the full 100%, meaning the total humiliation of the Hindus. They exercised verbal terror against Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and all politicians suspected of wanting to compromise with the Hindu movement, making them postpone the needed steps towards the solution.... For them, it was a holy war, a jihad, just as it was for their Islamist pupils and paymasters. ...
So, the blood of all the people killed in Ayodhya-related riots from 1989 onwards is at least partly on their heads. The spate of violence in Gujarat in 2002, the “genocide” about which they can’t stop talking, and which was triggered by the Godhra massacre of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, may well have been a late result of their slanderous effort to identify Ayodhya with deceitful Hindu fanaticism. Those holier-than-thou secularists are not so innocent...
But now, the historical evidence has definitively been verified. After every single historical and archaeological investigation had confirmed the old consensus, the secularists have now been defeated in the final test. The deceit turns out to be their own. Their lies stand exposed and recorded for all to see. Their strategy to sabotage peace and justice in Ayodhya was based on history falsification. With all the blood on their hands, they have disgraced the fair name of secularism... Ideas have consequences, and so do lies.- Elst K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- We are foregoing consideration of the more fundamental question as to which is more fanatical: to demand back the sacred places which are those of your own religion, dedicated to your own gods..., or to wilfully remain sitting on someone else's sacred sites, and knowing fully well that you yourself would not allow anyone to touch your own sacred sites.
- Elst K. The Saffron Swastika (2001), Volume II
- At a time when Native Americans, New Zealand Maoris and Aboriginal Australians were frequently (and often successfully) going to court to reclaim sacred sites and other heritage items, it should not have been too difficult to explain to the international public the reasonableness of Hindus claiming a Hindu sacred site, all the more so because the contentious building with mosque architecture was already in use as a Hindu temple since 1949... Yet, the net result was the exact opposite... It is not really exaggeration to say that the BJP's Ayodhya campaign was the public relations disaster of the century.
- The sudden denial of this history by a circle of Marxist historians was not based on any new evidence but purely on political compulsions. It seems that their long enjoyment of a hegemonic power position in academe had gone to their heads, so they thought they could get away with crude history falsification.
- Elst K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
- Nonetheless, the Marxist historians had their way. In their shrill manifestoes, these secular fundamentalists slandered the genuine historians who stood by the facts, and they denounced the Hindus' perfectly reasonable expectation that a Hindu sacred site be left in the exclusive care of the Hindus. They did this with such titanic vehemence that the pragmatists were thrown on the defensive.
- Elst K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
- In a normal course of events, i.e. without the interference of secularist shrieks and howls, this would have set the stage for the peaceful construction of a new temple in the 1990s...
- Elst K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
- What is nowadays rubbished as "the VHP claim" was in fact the consensus view. Thus, in court proceedings in the 1880s, the Muslim claimants and the British rulers agreed with the Hindu claimants on the historical fact of the temple demolition, but since it had happened centuries earlier, they decided that time had sanctioned the Muslim usurpation and nullified the Hindus' legal claim. Further, numerous documents and several archaeological excavations confirmed the history of the temple demolition (with the court-ordered excavations of spring 2003 removing the last possible doubts). The sudden denial of this history by a circle of Marxist historians was not based on any new evidence but purely on political compulsions. It seems that their long enjoyment of a hegemonic power position in academe had gone to their heads, so they thought they could get away with crude history falsification...
Nonetheless, the Marxist historians had their way. In their shrill manifestoes, these secular fundamentalists slandered the genuine historians who stood by the facts, and they denounced the Hindus' perfectly reasonable expectation that a Hindu sacred site be left in the exclusive care of the Hindus. They did this with such titanic vehemence that the pragmatists were thrown on the defensive.- Elst K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
- A shameful example of the total reliance of Western scholars on outright partisan secondary Indian sources while passing judgment on a Hindu nationalist position was the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute... Until the late 1980s, there was a complete consensus among all Hindu, Muslim and Western sources about the fact that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a temple, a very common occurrence throughout Muslim-conquered territories. This consensus, nowadays mischaracterized as the Hindu nationalist position, was since confirmed by new findings and remained strictly unchallenged by any counter-findings. ... Yet, the dominant Marxist circles decreed that there had never been a temple at the site and lambasted Western scholars who had earlier confirmed the consensus as handmaidens of Hindu fundamentalism,-- enough to send these scholars into prudent retirement from the Ayodhya debate. ... for more than a decade, their leaden dogma has stifled the history debate, viz. that the temple demolition was merely a "Hindu chauvinist fabrication". Those who stuck to the old consensus view, the one confirmed by the evidence, have had tons of mud thrown at them not just by Indian Marxists but by their Western dupes as well. Not one of the latter ever took issue with the actual evidence, behaving instead as obedient soldiers carrying out and amplifying the Indian Marxist ukase.
- Elst K . Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)
- One was the shrill and intimidating campaign of history denial by a section of partisan academics and journalists, with most Western India-watchers in their pocket. Screaming “secularism in danger!” and raising the stakes beyond all proportion, they continued to dominate public discourse until at least 30 September 2010. They managed to turn the old consensus into a mere ”claim” by “Hindu extremists”. But Rajiv Gandhi tried to call their bluff.
- Elst, K. The argumentative Hindu (2012)
- The crime is not that a usurper structure was demolished, but that the government (egged on by the English media, the CPM, the JNU historians and similar usual suspects) had been thwarting the restoration of a Hindu sacred site to its pilgrim constituency, the Hindus. The right policy would have been to acknowledge and act upon the self-evident principle that a Hindu sacred site should be in Hindu custody and adorned with Hindu architecture. Will the secularists insist on the imposition of a Rama temple on the Kaaba site in Mecca, or on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem? Of course not, and for the same reason there should not be a mosque on a hill that for centuries has been the main site dedicated to Rama.
- Elst, K. The argumentative Hindu (2012)
- But in 1989-92, that option was thwarted by the offensive of Babri ultras, and by this I don’t mean the warriors for Islam but the conformistic intellectuals shrieking and howling that the contentious building was the last bastion of “secularism”, a matter of high principle, of life and death. Under their fierce calls for “hard secularism”, no administrator dared to reduce the controversy to its true and manageable proportions anymore. Not the Congress, not the various left-populist parties, and not the BJP either. They were all paralysed and consequently bought time all while taking sides against the weaker party, the pro-temple movement with its vacillating and politically incompetent leadership. (259)
- Elst, K. The argumentative Hindu (2012)
- In normal circumstances, it is not a court's business to pronounce on matters of history, but then whom else could you trust to give a fair opinion when the professional historians were being so brazenly partisan?... Today, I feel sorry for the eminent historians. They have identified very publicly with the denial of the Ayodhya evidence. While politically expedient, and while going unchallenged in the academically most consequential forums for twenty years, that position has now been officially declared false. It suddenly dawns on them that they have tied their names to an entreprise unlikely to earn them glory in the long run. We may now expect frantic attempts to intimidate the Supreme Court into annulling the Allahabad verdict, starting with the ongoing signature campaign against the learned Judges’ finding; and possibly it will succeed. But it is unlikely that future generations, unburdened with the presently prevailing power equation that made this history denial profitable, will play along and keep on disregarding the massive body of historical evidence. (277-83)
- Elst, K. The argumentative Hindu (2012)
- The secular intelligentsia… could reasonably have taken the position that a temple was indeed demolished to make way for a mosque but that we should let bygones be bygones. Instead, they went out of their way to deny facts of history. Rajiv Gandhi thought he could settle this dispute with some Congressite horse-trading: give the Hindus their toy in Ayodhya and the Muslims some other goodies, that will keep everyone happy. But this solution became unfeasible when many academics construed this contention as a holy war for a frontline symbol of secularism.
- Elst K. On Modi Time (2015)
- Moreover, the Hindu case for the Rama temple (or rather, the scholarly case) has survived a 20-year-long storm of ridicule and denunciation, only to be proven right in the end. The world media and the professional India-watchers in Western universities had all the while parroted their Indian secularist contacts and ridiculed the Hindu position.
- Elst K. On Modi Time (2015) chapter 9
- The negationist stand against the pre-existence of the Ayodhya temple was an extreme example of how the Humanities often serve to provide a scholarly veneer to theses that arise purely from political motives.
- Elst K. On Modi Time (2015) chapter 19
- That is when a group of "eminent historians" started raising the stakes and turning this local communal deal into a clash of civilizations, a life-and-death matter on which the survival of the greatest treasure in the universe depended, viz. secularism. Secure in (or drunk with) their hegemonic position, they didn't limit themselves to denying to the Hindus the right of rebuilding their demolished temple, say: "A medieval demolition doesn't justify a counter-demolition today." Instead, they went so far as to deny the well-established fact that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple.
Most spectacularly, they managed to get the entire international media and the vast majority of India-related academics who ever voiced an opinion on the matter, into toeing their line. These dimly-informed India-watchers too started intoning the no-temple mantra and slandering the dissidents, to their faces or behind their backs, as "liars", "BJP prostitutes", and what not. In Western academe, dozens chose to toe this party-line of disregarding the evidence and denying the obvious, viz. that the Babri Masjid (along with the Kaaba in Mecca, the Mezquita in Cordoba, the Ummayad mosque in Damascus, the Aya Sophia in Istambul, the Quwwatu'l-Islam in Delhi, etc.) was one of the numerous ancient mosques built on, or with materials from, purposely desecrated or demolished non-Muslim places of worship.
But it is unlikely that future generations, unburdened with the presently prevailing power equation that made this history denial profitable, will play along and keep on disregarding the massive body of historical evidence.- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 1. Eminent Historians Displeased with the Ayodhya Verdict
- It is in the Ayodhya debate that I have learned the power of historical scholarship. After the 1989 statement by the JNU historians, starring Romila Thapar, the historical position, though having been a matter of consensus between all the parties involved, was suddenly tabooed. There had already been partial archaeological excavations confirming that there had been a temple on the site where the Babri Masjid was built. Even if you decided to doubt the consensus, the balance of evidence was already clearly on the side of the temple. Yet, the whole mediatic and political class, and all the foreign India-watchers, suddenly had to pretend that the historical position was but a ridiculous Hindutva concoction. Well, through all this commotion, the historical facts remained what they were, and they were amply confirmed by the excavations of 2003. There are still a few Leftists maintaining that there had never been a temple at the site, but most people concerned just look the other way, embarrassed at having been led by the nose so badly. And with such a death toll as a result. .... But no, the “eminent historians” preferred lies and bloodshed (and apparently also the rise of the BJP). It is not often in history that the intervention of intellectuals has had so much effect at the mass level.
- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 9. Interview about Romila Thapar’s Viewpoint
- After the historians’ interference, the Indian mainstream politicians did not dare to go against the judgment of these authorities. The international media and India-watchers were also taken in and shared their hatred of these ugly Hindu history-falsifiers. Only, the Court-ordered excavations of 2003 have fully vindicated the old consensus: temple remains were found underneath the mosque. Moreover, the eminences asked to witness in Court had to confess their incompetence one after another (as documented by Meenakshi Jain: Rama and Ayodhya, 2013): one had never been to the site, the next one had never studied any archaeology, a third had only fallen in line with some hearsay, etc.
Abroad this news has hardly been reported, and experts who know it make sure that no conclusions are drawn from it. After the false and disproven narrative of the eminent historians has reigned supreme for two decades, no one has yet bothered to demythologize their undeserved authority.- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 10. Ayodhya: The Guilt of the ‘Eminent Historians’ and in The guilt of the "eminent historians" (published in The Pioneer, 26 Jan. 2016)
- The media had allotted an enormous weight to the Ayodhya affair: "Secularism in danger", "India on the brink" and similar headlines were daily fare. When the Babri Masjid was demolished by impatient Hindu youngsters on 6 December 1992, the Times of India titled its editorial: "A requiem for norms", no less. Given all the drama and moralistic bombast with which they used to surround this controversy, one would have expected their eagerness to report KK Muhammad's eyewitness account. But no, they were extremely sparing in their coverage, reluctant to face an unpleasant fact: the guilt of their heroes, the "eminent historians". These people outsourced the dirty work to Hindu and Muslim streetfighters and to Islamic terrorists, but in fact it is they who have blood on their hands.
- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 10. Ayodhya: The Guilt of the ‘Eminent Historians’ and in The guilt of the "eminent historians" (published in The Pioneer, 26 Jan. 2016)
- But the secularist historians publicly intervened and put everyone on notice that the misplaced Babri Masjid which Muslims had imposed on the site centuries ago was the last bulwark of secularism.
Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi thought he could handle this challenge, but the initiative was wrested from his hands by the secularist historians. With their shrill statements about “secularism in danger”, they raised the stakes enormously. The rest is history.- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 13. Epitaph for the Ayodhya Affair
- And yet, their sound and fury was nothing but smoking mirrors, a grand tamasha of fake moralism and non-existent facts. They claimed that the science of history could not allow the restoration of a temple that had never existed. In reality, they could not muster even a single discovery that would have questioned the old pro-temple consensus. The debate that ensued was totally asymmetrical: they demanded evidence from the pro-temple site, which was duly produced, both existing proofs and extra new discoveries; while they themselves never came up with anything. Later they were summoned to Court to divulge their expert opinions, but (as documented by Prof. Meenakshi Jain in her comprehensive book on the Ayodhya evidence, Rama’s Ayodhya, 2013) one after another, they confessed to their lack of competence in the matter. So, even though the media have kept the lid on this information, the pro-temple side has won the history debate fair and square. Of course there had been a temple, and for those who still feigned to doubt it, the temple foundations were fully excavated in 2003.
- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International chapter 16. The Ayodhya conflict solved
- So, the actual Ayodhya debate, about the history of the site, was starkly avoided. In the past, the Indologists all meekly parroted India’s Eminent Historians that there never was a temple there, that it was merely a Hindutva concoction. It would be in the scholarly fitness of things if they were to face their mistake, acknowledge that they had made a false allegation of a “concoction” and that the evidence has robustly confirmed the demolished temple scenario. But they haven’t done that on any forum whatsoever.
The judicial aspects were safer ground for the Eminent Historians and their foreign allies: the insiders among them know of their hilarious defeat in the scholarly debate, so they avoid or muzzle any mention of it. Their ostentatious position of around 1990 was proven wrong and is now all the more embarrassing in proportion to how high-profile it was back then. So, their loyalists in the US likewise tiptoe around the issue.
Even many of their followers abroad have gone remarkably silent on the Ayodhya history: they still do obligatory instalments on what they call “Hindu history manipulation”, but whereas the Ayodhya debate used to be their crowning example, now it has gone down the memory hole, though in fact it was the one case that was fought out in the public square and came to a clear verdict both scholarly and judicial, viz. to the complete detriment of the anti-Hindu camp.
Otherwise, the no-temple claim has been buried even by India’s anti-Hindu forces, and though this news has clearly not reached all their loyalists, their American friends have clearly come to toe their line.
“The Ayodhya evidence debate has presented the hilarious sight of an entire academic and mediatic establishment in India and abroad denying what had been a matter of consensus till the mid-1980s, and this on the strength of strictly no evidence at all. In all these years, documentary and archaeological evidence for the demolished temple has been accumulating, and some has kept on coming to light even after the debate had ended. This to the extent that the judges simply couldn't push a verdict going against this wealth of evidence. Now that the Ayodhya dispute is over, the question remains when all these academics are going to climb down from the denial of history on which they had staked their august reputations. The present power equation, which has allowed them to get away with this historical negationism in years past, and to keep the lid on their defeat now, is not going to last forever.”- Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International Chapter 21. What the West’s Academy Has to Say on Ayodhya
- Our party is for the building of the temple to Lord Ram, and we should, if possible, work towards an amicable settlement which, while upholding the principles of secularism, enables the construction of the temple to start, with the approval and support of all concerned. ... The key issue appears to be whether or not there was a temple erected to Lord Ram at the site where the Babri Masjid stands today. This question of historical fact would appear to hold the key to a resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of all reasonable, secular-minded persons of all communities.
- Rajiv Gandhi 1990, [cit. Indian Express, 2 Dec. 1990, repr. Aggarwal & Chowdhry 1991:123]. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2012). The argumentative Hindu. New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan. Chapter: Ayodhya’s three history debates.
- [The Ayodhya movement for the liberation of Rama's supposed birthplace was] the largest mass movement in India since Independence. At its height, more people were detained by the police than during the course of the Salt March and the Quit India movement combined.
- Several thousands of karsevaks brutally demolished the Babri Masjid, refusing to listen to RSS cadres, who were acting as the last ramparts of the paternalist perspectives. Numerous comments showed clearly that for the academic and establishment commentators, the most insupportable thing was that uneducated youngsters, without any letters of introduction or written authorisations, had intervened to change the course of things. ... “the way in which the RSS was overwhelmed by a thousand determined youngsters on 6 December 1992 is telling. The sect is worthless in street combat... its manifestations remind us more of the boy scouts than of mass politics.”
- Gérard Heuzé: Où va l’Inde moderne? L’Harmattan, Paris 1993, Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2002). Ayodhya: The case against the temple.
- It is indisputable that the Ramjanmabhumi/Babri Masjid debate has bee dominated by a handful of historians from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi University and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), with stray participation of one or two other universities. The historians involved have been of Marxist orientation, some admittedly even card-holding members of the two Communist parties, the CPI and CPM. Their writings on the issue have appeared in the official publications of these parties--New Age and People's Democracy respectively, and also been published by Left-sponsored publishing groups like People's Publishing House, Sahmat and Tulika Books. Perhaps that could explain why their stance has often seemed more driven by ideology than academic deliberation. Yet, some of these academics, who even appeared as BMAC (Babri Masjid Action Committee) experts during negotiations between the VHP, BMAC and the Government in 1990-1991, claimed to be "independent historians", and demanded that they be recognized as such. A perusal of their writings and statements reveals an unswerving resolve to deny any possibility of a temple beneath the Masjid and, thus, fixity of purpose. So they initially pronounced Rama to be a mythic figure; questioned the identification of present day Ayodhya with Valmiki's Ayodhya; touted little remembered variants of the Rama story to counter Valmiki's version; declared Ayodhya was better known as a sacred city of the Buddhists and Jains; and even ruled out the existence of a Rama cult at Ayodhya prior to the eighteenth century. The belief in a Janmabhumi temple being destroyed by Babar they attributed to British machinations in the nineteenth century. For long, Marxist historians insisted that the Babri Masjid was built on virgin land.
- Jain, Meenakshi. Rama and Ayodhya (2013, pp. 154-155)
- “So why has the matter dragged on for so long? Can a handful of historians be held accountable for stalling resolution of what is essentially a settled matter? Their voluble assertions on Babri Masjid have all been found to be erroneous, yet there has been no public retraction. Are they liable for vitiating social harmony over the issue? If the nation has to move on, honest answers must be found to these questions.”
- Meenakshi Jain, The Battle for Rama: Case of the Temple at Ayodhya (2017)(p.145)
- In its presentation of evidence in the Government sponsored scholars’ debate in December 1990, the VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents, attempts by BMAC sympathizers to conceal, obliterate or change evidence: removing relevant old books from libraries, adding words on an old map. Recent editions of Urdu books (by Maulvi Abdul Karim and by Shaikh Md. Azamat Ali Nami) have suppressed chapters or passages relating the temple destruction on Ramkot hill which were present in earlier editions or in the manuscript. In an English translation of a book by Maulana Hakim Saiyid Abdul Hai, the relevant passages present in the Urdu original had been censored out, and an effort was discovered to remove all the copies of the Urdu original from the libraries... On maps included in the Settlement Record of 1861, which describe the disputed area as Janamsthan, “birthplace”, someone had added “Babari Masjid”; the interpolation was obvious after comparison with a copy of the document kept in another office.... In my opinion, these petty and clumsy attempts to tamper with the corpus of evidence, are child’s play compared with the concealment of evidence by professional scholars sympathetic to the Babri Masjid cause. In their publications on this dispute, A.A. Engineer and Prof. S. Gopal have simply kept all the inconvenient (mainly pre-British) testimonies out of the picture, and just acted as if these did not exist. In his reply to the anti-Janmabhoomi statement The Political Abuse of History by 25 historians of JNU, Prof. A.R. Khan shows grounds to accuse the eminent JNU historians of “not only concealment but also distortion of evidence”.
- Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2002). Ayodhya: The case against the temple. quoting Prof. A.R. Khan: “In the name of ‘history’” (originally published in Indian Express, 25-2-1990) and in History vs. Casuistry, app.2, and in S.R. Goel: Hindu Temples, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Voice of India, Delhi 1998), p. 243-263.
- Using the Babari Masjid-Ramajanmabhumi controversy as a pretext, Muslim mobs went on a rampage all over Bangladesh. They attacked and burnt down Hindu houses and business establishments in many places, murdered some Hindus and inflicted injuries on many others. Hindu temples and monasteries invited their special attention everywhere. Starting on October 29, 1989, the mob fury reached its climax on November 9 and 10 after the Shilanyas ceremony at Ayodhya. Many temples were demolished or burnt down or damaged in various ways. Images of deities were broken and thrown out. Temple priests were beaten up.
- Sita Ram Goel: Introduction to the report INCIDENTS OF COMMUNAL REPRESSION IN BANGLADESH Occurred on the Pretext of Babri-Masjid / Ram-Mandir Situation in India (Translated from original in Bengali published by the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian Unity Council, 53, Tejturi Bazar, Dhaka, Bangladesh) Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Volume I. [5]
- [The controversy is] "paving the way for a movement [in India] for an independent and liberated Islamic country within India".
- Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan. Sunday Observer, 25/11/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
- It would thus appear that the four historians who wrote the 'report to the nation' were really experts nominated by All India Babri Masjid Action Committee and were not independent. But they always pretended to be impartial professional historians. In fact, in their 'report to the nation' they criticized the claims of V.H.P. only and made no comments on the documents submitted by A.I.B.M.A.C. Had they really been truly impartial historians, they would have commented on the evidence submitted by both parties and presented their report to the nation or M.H.A. without any bias or prejudice.
- Kunal, K. Ayodhya Revisited (2016, p. xl) (Kunal was the Government official appointed to mediate between the two parties)
- Recent events about Ayodhya are well-known. Long before the structure was pulled down, Muslims in Bangladesh had destroyed more than 200 temples in November 1989 (reacting against the Shilanyas at Ayodhya). In November 1990 another 50 temples were razed or burnt, not to mention about the women raped and men killed. So also was done in Pakistan. The Kashmir Samiti has produced a report titled Riots in Kashmir, listing 85 temples destroyed, and claiming that 550 people had been killed in the Islamic purification campaign in 1990. ... Those who cannot forget 6 December 1992, should also remember another date, 9 April 1669. On this day Aurangzeb issued a general order "to demolish all schools and temples of the infidels and to put down their religious teaching and practice". Much vandalism had preceded this order and reckless destruction of shrines followed.
- Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6
- In India, in the 1990s, the growth of Hindu nationalism brought extraordinary attempts to eliminate parts of India’s heritage and to rewrite Indian history. In 1992, fundamentalists, supported by right-wing Hindu politicians, destroyed a sixteenth-century mosque at Ayodhya in northern India on the grounds that it was built over the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. Encouraged, they declared that they would move on to destroy other Muslim sites, including the Taj Mahal. This was part of a larger drive to peg India’s identity as exclusively Hindu or, in the word used by the Hindu nationalists, Hindutva. India’s history inevitably became a key component of this.
- Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008), pp. 78-79
- The responsibility for what has happened in Pakistan and Bangla Desh is entirely that of the Union and U.P. governments. They have been making so much anti-Hindu propaganda on this issue that those countries are getting all the excuse for this.
- Vijay Kumar Malhotra, BJP national secretary, Times of India, 2/11/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
- "November 9th was the day the Berlin Wall fell and two rival ideologies had united. Today, we saw the opening of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor."... "Ayodhya verdict on this day, therefore, is telling us that the message from the date is to be united in harmony and amity. Anyone holding onto any bitterness, I request that they too give it up.".... "Today, with the decision on Ayodhya, this date of November 9 has also given us a lesson to move forward together. Today's message is to add — to join and to live together."
- Narendra Modi quoted in [6]
- Today is November 9, the day when Berlin wall was brought down. Today the Kartarpur Corridor was also inaugurated. Now the Ayodhya verdict, so this date gives us the message to stay united and move forward.
- Narendra Modi. Quoted in Indian Express, 2019
- The halls of justice have amicably concluded a matter going on for decades. Every side, every point of view was given adequate time and opportunity to express differing points of view. This verdict will further increase people’s faith in judicial processes.
- Narendra Modi, Tweet, quoted in [7]
- A team of Left historians in Jawaharlal Nehru University such as Romila Thapar, Bipin Chanra, and S. Gopal argued that there was no mention of the dismantling of the temple before the nineteenth century and Ayodhya was a Buddhist-Jain centre. Historians such as Irfan Habib, R.S. Sharma, Athar Ali, D.N. Jha, Suraj Bhan, too joined and it became a big grouping. [The Leftist drama] instilled courage and gave false hopes to the BMAC. This resulted in a reversal of the thought process amongst Muslims who had till then, been pondering wholeheartedly about giving back the mosque and setting the matter amicably. They came to a renewed conclusion that the mosque will not be given...
- K. K. Muhammed, Autobiography [Njan E1111a Blrarati y m1 (I an Indian)], Dr. K.K. Muhammad, in Jain, M. (2017). The battle of Rama: Case of the temple at Ayodhya. ch 1
- I had written: "I can reiterate this (the existence of a Hindu temple before it was displaced by the Babri mosque) with greater authority - for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavations in 1976-'77 under Prof BB Lal as a trainee. I have visited the excavation near the Babri site and seen the excavated pillar bases. The JNU historians have highlighted only one part of our findings while suppressing the others..." ... By JNU historians, I meant the Leftist historians such as Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, DN Jha, Bipin Chandra and RS Sharma who do not want to see a solution to the Ayodhya issue. Till the Allahabad High Court judgment came out on September 30, 2010, these historians maintained that there was no temple beneath the Babri mosque.
- K. K. Muhammad, Muslims must return Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi to Hindus, Daily O, 4 February 2016. K. K. Muhammed, former Regional Director of the Archaeological Survey of India
- "It was they who connived with the extremist Muslim groups to derail all attempts to find an amicable solution to the Masjid issue. Some of them even took part in several government-level meetings and supported the Babri Masjid Action Committee," he said.
- K. K. Muhammed, former Regional Director of the Archaeological Survey of India. K. A. Antony, Left historians prevented resolution of Babri Masjid dispute, says KK Mohammed, former ASI regional head, Firstpost, 21 January 2016.
- Mr. Mahadevan's comments were really an objective analysis of the archaeological data. I can reiterate this with greater authority, for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavation in 1976-77 under Professor Lal...I was at the Hanuman Garhi site, but I have visited the excavation near the Babri Masjid and seen the excavated pillar bases. The JNU historians have highlighted only one part of our findings while suppressing the other. ... Ayodhya is as holy to Hindus as Mecca is to Muslims. Muslims should respect the sentiments of their millions of Hindu brethren and voluntarily hand over the structure for constructing the Rama temple.
- The sacred spot in Ayodhya, worshipped by Hindus since time immemorial, (…) has unfortunately been made the subject of a contrived and unnecessary controversy in the last three decades.
- Prof. Saradindu Mukherji, from the Preface in Anuradha Dutt’s book Sri Ram Mandir, published by Shubhi Publications (Gurgaon 2016). Quoted from Elst K.:Chronicle of the Ayodhya controversy, The Pioneer,April 2016.
- There has for some time past been in evidence a sinister move in certain quarters to suppress, conceal or eliminate primary sources in Arabic, Persian and Urdu testifying to the temple demolition. ... The Urdu version is found to have been withdrawn from circulation and even removed from several libraries. There is an English translation also, with which undue liberties have been taken. ... An Urdu translation of the work was published ... at least two more editions came out in 1979 and 1981 respectively... [but] the account ... is conspicuous by its absence in the 1981 edition. ... Dr. Kakorawi rightly laments that 'suppression of any part of any old composition or compilation like this can create difficulties and misunderstandings for future historians and researchers. ... The original edition of Mirza Rajab ... contained a reference to the demolition of the Rama temple. Sayyid Masud Hasan Rizwi Adib omitted the reference altogether in its second edition.... As a matter of fact, black-out of well documented, acutely argued contributions ... continues with renewed vigour. A certain leading library of the country of late instituted an enquiry as to how a particular book came to be utilized by the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
- Harsh Narain The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources (1993)
- It is a pity that thanks to our thoughtless 'secularism' and waning sense of history, such primary sources of medieval history .. are presently in danger of suppression or total extinction. Instead of launching sustained search and research in this behalf, 'secular' historians are going about dismissing relevant data out of hand, imputing unfounded motive to the recorders themselves. The state in general and the universites in particular must do something to protect and retrieve such invaluable documents from unscrupulous hands.
- Harsh Narain The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources (1993)
- I can see how what I said then could be misinterpreted. I was talking about history, I was talking about a historical process that had to come. I think India has lived with one major extended event, that began about 1000 AD, the Muslim invasion. It meant the cracking open and partial wrecking of what was a complete cultural, religious world until that invasion. I don't think the people of India have been able to come to terms with that wrecking. I don't think they understand what really happened. It's too painful. And I think this BJP movement and that masjid business is part of a new sense of history, a new idea of what happened. It might be misguided, it might be wrong to misuse it politically, but I think it is part of a historical process. And to simply abuse it as Fascist is to fail to understand why it finds an answer in so many hearts in India. .... It could become that. And that has to be dealt with. But it can only be dealt with if both sides understand very clearly the history of the country. I don't think Hindus understand what Islam means and I don't think the people of Islam have tried to understand Hinduism. The two enormous groups have lived together in the sub-continent without understanding one another's faiths.
- V.S. Naipaul 'Hindus, Muslims have lived together without understanding each other's faiths', interview by Rahul Singh, The Times of India, Jan 23, 1998. [8]
- For the poor of India to identify something like this, pulling down the first Mughal emperor’s tomb, is a marvellous idea. I think in years to come it will be seen as a great moment.... It would be a historical statement of India striving to regain her soul. What puzzled me and outraged me was the attitude that it was wrong, that one must not undo the [Muslim] conquest. I think it is the attitude of a slave population.
- V.S. Naipaul, Quoted in The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul By Patrick French
- What is happening in India is a new, historical awakening. ... Today, it seems to me that Indians are becoming alive to their history. This has not happened before. ... Now, however, things seem to be changing. What is happening in India is a mighty creative process.... But every other Indian knows precisely what is happening: deep down he knows that a larger response is emerging even if at times this response appears in his eyes to be threatening. ... But the sense of history that the Hindus are now developing is a new thing. Some Indians speak about a synthetic culture: this is what a defeated people always speak about. The synthesis may be culturally true. But to stress it could also be a form of response to intense persecution. ... In Ayodhya the construction of a mosque on a spot regarded as sacred by the conquered population was meant as an insult. It was meant as an insult to an ancient idea, the idea of Ram which was two or three thousand years old. ...One needs to understand the passion that took them on top of the domes. The jeans and the tee-shirts are superficial. The passion alone is real. You can't dismiss it. You have to try to harness it. .... There is a big, historical development going on in India. Wise men should understand it and ensure that it does not remain in the hands of fanatics. Rather they should use it for the intellectual transformation of India.
- It is the duty of every nationalist Indian to protect the birthplace of Lord Rama to save India's honour, prestige and cultural heritage.... Anti-national and communal activities of Muslim fundamentalists are a blot on the entire community... It is the duty of all nationalist Muslims to expose such designs and accept the truth.
- "Many mosques and monuments were erected on sites where temples existed earlier. I also agree with what Muhammed has said about Prof. Irfan. It was during his tenure as chairman of ICHR [that] the democratic functioning of the institution was destroyed. It [was] very difficult to work with him. I have my own bitter experiences. It was he and his team that had branded me an RSS man. It was he and his team that turned Jawaharlal Nehru University and the ICHR into a den of Marxist historians," MGS said.
- Prof. M. G. S. Narayanan, former chairman of the ICHR. In K. A. Antony, Left historians prevented resolution of Babri Masjid dispute, says KK Mohammed, former ASI regional head, Firstpost, 21 January 2016.
- The Hindus have been so much humiliated and insulted since 1947 that sometimes it seems doubtful whether they are living in their own country adding that in Kashmir & Punjab Hindu blood is being shed so much so that even in Ayodhya unarmed Kar Sevaks including the Sadhus were brutally killed.
- From a speech by Sadhvi Ritambhara, which was considered to be actionable, objectionable under 153-A of Indian Penal Code 'on the ground of inciting the Hindus in the context of construction of Shri Ram Temple at Ayodhya and attempting to spread feelings of animosity against the Muslims'. Quoted from ' The Case of Sadhvi Ritambhara', in Goel, Sita Ram (ed.) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. [10]
- Not even a bird shall be able to enter Ayodhya. ... We will crush them.
- Mulayam Singh Yadav, comments against the planned demonstrations by kar sevaks (activists) in Ayodhya. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
- The large-scale arson of December 1992 occurring in Islamic Bangladesh in the wake of the demolition of the Babri structure at Ayodhya was characterised by gangrapes of thousands of Hindu girls, assaults on Hindu temples, and widespread loot and violence. It had all the marks of a full-fledged jihad.
- Majumadāra, S. (2001). Jihād: The Islamic doctrine of permanent war. ch. 10
- Such forgeries, such allegations are the standard technology of this school. Fabricating conspiracy theories is their well-practised weapon. And they have a network… They were the intellectual guides and propagandists of the Babri Masjid Action Committee... These leftist ‘historians’ had attended the initial meetings. They had put together for and on behalf of the Committee ‘documents’. It had been a miscellaneous pile. And it had become immediately evident that this pile was no counter to the mass of archaeological, historical and literary evidence which the VHP had furnished, that in fact the ‘documents’ these guides of the Babri Committee had piled up further substantiated the VHP’s case. These ‘historians’, having undertaken to attend the meeting to consider the evidence presented by the two sides, just did not show up!
It was this withdrawal which aborted the initiative that the government had undertaken of bringing the two sides together, of introducing evidence and discourse into the issue. Nothing but nothing paved the way for the demolition as did this running away by these ‘historians’. It was the last nail: no one could be persuaded thereafter that evidence or reason would be allowed anywhere near the issue. ... His bias is evident in the fact that he totally blacks out the absolutely disgraceful concoctions that the Marxist historians put together for the All Indian Babri Masjid Action Committee – … the shameful way they dodged the archaeological evidence, pretending that they had not examined it, that they had not met the archaeologists concerned – when in fact they had met the principal one just the day before, and how, when it became evident to all that the ‘documentary evidence’ which they had complied for the Babri Action Committee just did not match what was submitted on behalf of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, they just failed to turn up at the final meetings. It was this failure to turn up for the meetings that led to the breakdown of negotiations, and killed all prospects of a negotiated settlement.- Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.
- “On reading the papers the BMAC had filed as ‘evidence’, I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government etc. by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.”
- Arun Shourie: “Take over from the experts”, syndicated column, 27-1-91, included in History vs. Casuistry as appendix 1. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2002). Ayodhya: The case against the temple.
- A case in which the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar, the fourth Rector of one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning in India, listing some of the mosques, including the Babri Masjid, which were built on the sites and foundations of temples, using their stones and structures, is found to have the tell-tale passages censored out; The book is said to have become difficult to get;... Evasion, concealment, have become a national habit. And they have terrible consequences... A curious fact hit me in the face. Many of the persons who one would have normally expected to be knowledgeable about such publications were suddenly reluctant to recall this book. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had been removed, for instance from the Aligarh Muslim University Library. Some even suggested that a determined effort had been made three or four years ago to get back each and every copy of this book... Each reference to each of these mosques having been constructed on the sites of temples with, as in the case of the mosque at Benaras, the stones of the very temple which was demolished for that very purpose have been censored out of the English version of the book! Each one of the passages on each one of the seven mosques! No accident that. .... why would anyone have thought it necessary to remove these passages from the English version-that is the version which was more likely to be read by persons other than the faithful? Why would anyone bowdlerise the book of a major scholar in this way?... Their real significance- and I dare say that they are but the smallest, most innocuous example that one can think of on the mosque-temple business-lies in the evasion and concealment they have spurred. I have it on good authority that the passages have been known for long, and well known to those who have been stoking the Babri Masjid issue. That is the significant thing; they have known them, and their impulse has been to conceal and bury rather than to ascertain the truth....The fate of Maulana Abdul Hai’s passages-and I do, not know whether the Urdu version itself was not a conveniently sanitised version of the original Arabic volume-illustrates the cynical manner in which those who stoke the passions of religion to further their politics are going about the matter. Those who proceed by such cynical calculations sow havoc for all of us, for Muslims, for Hindus, for all. Those who remain silent in the face of such cynicism, such calculations help them sow the havoc. Will we shed our evasions and concealments? Will we at last learn to speak and face the whole truth?
- About the removal of a book from libraries for political reasons. Arun Shourie: Hideaway Communalism (Indian Express, February 5, 1989) Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Volume I.
- In November 1989, Muslims in Bangla Desh destroyed more than 200 Hindu temples, on the pretext of reacting against the Shilanyas in Ayodhya... Moreover, during this anti-Hindu violence, many women were raped, some people killed and many wounded, and many shops looted and burned down. In November 1990, another forty or fifty temples were razed or burnt down in Bangla Desh. Or at least, those are the figures given by the secularist press. The Hindu-Buddha-Christian Oikya Parishad, the Bangla minorities' association, reported that in the a village in Chittagong district more than fifty Hindu women had been raped, two killed, and that hundreds of temples had been damaged or burnt down. ... Both the opposition parties and the Hindu-Buddhist- Christian Unity Council of Bangla Desh have alleged a strong government involvement in the communal violence...: "We directly blame the president for these heinous anti-human incidents... they were staged in a planned way under a blueprint in co-operation with law-enforcing agencies." ... In Pakistan too, Muslims used the Ayodhya news as an occasion for temple-burning, rape, murder, and looting... in Dera Murad Jamali, "the police was unable to control the mob", which ransacked fifteen shops belonging to Hindus and set a temple on fire. Little was said about the large-scale outbursts in sindh. In Latifabad and Hyderabad , at least three temples were destroyed, in neighbouring Siroghat the Rama Pir temple was looted and set on fire, etc. Islamic student organizations also took the occasion to attack a Christian school and church in Peshawar.... In Nepal, the Hindu kingdom, some five Hindu temples were burnt down by Muslim gangs, who had probably come over from Bihar. No official protests from any side have been reported.
- Christian Unity Council of Bangla Desh , Pioneer, 10/11/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
- If the question referred is answered in the affirmative, namely, that a Hindu temple/structure did exist prior to the construction of the BM, then government action will be in support of the wishes of the Hindu community. If in the negative (...) government action will be in support of the wishes of the Muslim community.
- Sollicitor-General, 14 September 1994, [cit. A. G. Noorani 2003:II:259]. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2012). The argumentative Hindu. New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan. Chapter: Ayodhya’s three history debates.
- When Hindus believe that the place of birth of Lord Rama was within the disputed site of the Ayodhya temple, such belief partakes the nature of essential part of religion and is protected under Article 25 of the Constitution (right to profess one’s religion), the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has held. ... Such an essential part of religion is constitutionally protected under Article 25.
- J. Venkatesan, 2 October 2010, quoting the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. The Hindu: “Hindus’ belief about Lord Rama’s birthplace protected under Article 25” [11] Also quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2012). The argumentative Hindu. New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan. Chapter: Ayodhya’s three history debates.
- A Muslim chronicler, drawing from numerous sources, made this statement on the outcome of the confrontation: ―Ultimately, on Zilqadda 1271 AH [July 1855], for the tenth or twelfth time, nearly two or three hundred Muslims gathered at Babri Masjid which is situated inside the Sita ki Rasoi [Sītā‘s kitchen]. ... In short, the turbulence [of 1855] reached such a stage that apart from the mitigated mosque at Hanuman Garhi, the Hindus built a temple in the courtyard of Babri Masjid where Sita ki Rasoi was situated.
- (Rāmpurī 1919: II.570-575, quoted in Vishva Hindu Parishad 1991: 17) Vishva Hindu Parishad. 1991. History versus Casuistry: Evidence of the Ramajanmaghoomi Mandir presented by the Vishva Hindu Parishad to the Government of India in December-January 1990-91. quoted from A Timeline of Ayodhya - Nicole Elfi & Michel Danino, 2014
Dispute in 19th century
edit- What matters if a dozen of their shrines were destroyed and their pollutions adorned with mosques? But the destruction of a mosque was an offence of the deepest hue; from all times it had been punished by mutilation, nay by death.
- Chief Minister, Awadh, to James Outram. N.A.I. Foreign Dept Political, 28 Dec 1855, No 450 & KW Nat Archives India, Bhatnagar 1968: Awadh. p 137. i n Jain, M. (2017). The battle of Rama: Case of the temple at Ayodhya. ch 6
- A large force [of Muslims was] determined to destroy and ruin the Hunuman Ghurrie which is inhabited by Hindoos and is peculiarly sacred in their estimation, his lieutenant called Moulavee Saheb is even still more diabolically inclined and ready for strife.
- About religious riots in 8th Feb 1855. James Outram, in letter to Wajid Ali Shah, Nawab of Awadh. quoted in Jain, M. (2017). The battle of Rama: Case of the temple at Ayodhya. ch 6
- [Mir Rajjab Ali further complained that] when the Moazzin recites Azaan, the opposite party begins to blow conch... [he wanted] the newly constructed Chabootra.. demolished [and that he] will not blow the conch at the time of Azaan.
- Application of Mir Rajib Ali (5.11.1860), in Jain, M. (2013). Rama and Ayodhya., p 126
- The last jihad against the Hindus before the full establishment of British rule was waged by Tipu Sultan at the end of the 18th century. In the rebellion of 1857, the near-defunct Muslim dynasties (Moghuls, Nawabs) tried to curry favour with their Hindu subjects and neighbours, in order to launch a joint effort to re-establish their rule. For instance, the Nawab promised to give the Hindus the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid site back, in an effort to quench their anti-Muslim animosity and redirect their attention towards the new common enemy from Britain. This is the only instance in modern history when Muslims offered concessions to the Hindus; after that, all the concessions made for the sake of communal harmony were a one-way traffic from Hindu to Muslim.
- Elst K. Negationism in India, (1992)
History Versus Casuistry , 1991
edit- The Stalinist clique which advertised itself as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) historians had been carrying on a campaign for quite some time on points that were totally irrelevent to this central issue. What was worse, the clique was ignoring altogether the hard evidence presented by a number of eminent historians and archaeologists. The press by and large, particularly the Times of India group of publications, had been playing up the Stalinist statements as if they were the only ones on the subject. The Indian Express was the only national daily to publish some well-informed articles on what Islamic iconoclasm had done to Hindu places of worship in general and to the Ramajanmabhoomi Mandir at Ayodhya in particular. The government announcement, therefore, did serve the purpose of silencing the Stalinists for some time. They were stunned by the prospect that the other side too was going to get a hearing, and that an amicable settlement of the dispute might be reached.
- On the other hand, the evidence submitted by the AIBMAC was no more than a pile of papers, most of them being newspaper articles written by sundry scribes and prolific in polemics rather than hard facts or rigorous logic. There was no covering note containing the conclusions which could be drawn from the various “documents”. The VHP scholars -who examined the pile, discovered that apart from raising numerous irrelevent issues, the “documents” took contradictory stands even on the non-issues they raised. All sorts of theories advanced by all sorts of cranks and crackpots had been thrown together, without so much as a thread of unity running through them at any point.
- The movement for rebuilding the Ramajanmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya will be a failure if it refuses to raise these questions. The triumph / of history over casuistry in one instance will not mean much if it does not restore the freedom of discussion and dissent for which India’s philosophical tradition has been famous.
Quotes about the scholar's debate
edit- Quotes about the BMAC/VHP scholar's debate in the early 1990s organized by the Government of India
- The next meeting was scheduled for the next day, January 25. But there, the BMAC scholars simply did not show up. The unambiguous result of the debate was this: the BMAC scholars have run away from the arena. They had not presented written evidence worth the name, they had not given a written refutation of the VHP scholars’ arguments, they had wriggled out of a face-to-face discussion on the accumulated evidence, and finally they had just stayed away. Thus ended the first attempt by the Government of India to find an amicable solution on the basis of genuine historical facts.
- Elst, Koenraad Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)
- The BMAC team also put forth the demand that they be recognized as “independent scholars” entitled to sit in judgment on the controversy between their BMAC employers and their VHP opponents. The government representative did not grant this hilarious demand. At the meeting scheduled for 25 January 1991, they simply didn’t show up anymore.
- Elst K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- One such secularist, a modern man ready to deal with the matter pragmatically, was Rajiv Gandhi... He pressured the Chandra Shekhar government, which was dependent on Congress support, into organizing the scholars’ debate about the historical evidence, in the full knowledge that the temple party would win such a debate hands down.
- Elst K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)
- Rajiv Gandhi didn't give up, though. In 1989, he allowed the Shilanyas ceremony, in which the first stone of the planned temple was put in place. In 1990, as opposition leader, he made Chandra Shekhar's minority government organize a scholars' debate on the history of the site, obviously on the assumption that this would confirm the Hindu claim. And so it did, for the anti-temple historians showed up empty-handed when they were asked to provide evidence for an alternative scenario to the temple demolition. In a normal course of events, i.e. without the interference of secularist shrieks and howls, this would have set the stage for the peaceful construction of a new temple in the 1990s, with some compensation for the Muslim community, and the conflict would have been forgotten by now.
- Elst K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
- The VHP-employed team presented the already known documentary and archaeological evidence and dug up quite a few new documents confirming the temple demolition (including four that Muslim institutions had tried to conceal or tamper with). The BMAC-employed team quit the discussions but brought out a booklet later, trumpeted as the final deathblow of the temple demolition “myth”. In fact, it turned out to be limited to an attempt at whittling down the evidential impact of a selected few of the pro-temple documents and holding forth on generalities of politicized history without proving how any of that could neutralize this particular evidence. It contained not a single (even attempted) reference to a piece of actual evidence proving an alternative scenario or positively refuting the established scenario. ...
- Elst, K. The argumentative Hindu (2012) 277-83
- It was perhaps indicative of the relative strengths of the two parties that while the evidence submitted by the VHP was published for the peoples' perusal by July 1991 (History Versus Casuistry), documents submitted by the BMAC are yet to be made public... It seems apparent that if the BMAC documents had then been presented for public scrutiny, much of the fizz would have gone out of the Left campaign.
- Jain, M. (2013). Rama and Ayodhya., p 167-8
- [Irfan Habib's] commitment to the Babri Masjid could be gauged from the fact that under his Chairmanship, ICHR was accused of functioning as a wing of the BMAC. Suraj Bhan admitted in Court that during Professor Habib's tenure, ICHR sanctioned him a grant for "exploration" at Ayodhya.
- Meenakshi Jain, The Battle for Rama: Case of the Temple at Ayodhya (2017) p. 174
- The evidence submitted by the AIBMAC was no more than a pile of papers, most of them being newspaper articles written by sundry scribes and prolific in polemics rather than hard facts... All sorts of theories advanced by all sorts of cranks and crackpots had been thrown together, without so much as a thread of unity running through them at any point... Four of the AIBMAC experts... advanced the strange claim that they were independent scholars and should be heard as such... [Later] the AIBMAC experts failed to turn up. That was the end of the first serious effort made by the Government of India to get the the two sides together for finding an amicable settlement of the Ayodhya dispute.
- S.R. Goel in Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990), p. 214-5
- I was appaled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance they had... I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the All India Babri Masjid Committee and the intelectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks: pages from the book of some chap to the effect that Rama was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt... It was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers—... and it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the All India Babri Masjid Committee but of the VHP! They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1936...
On reading the papers the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to overawe or confuse the government etc. by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.- Arun Shourie, in Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990), p. 230-1
