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COMMENTARY
Ayodhya excavation: Digging
for trouble
By
Praful Bidwai
NEW
DELHI - On Wednesday, the government's Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) began an extraordinary project
with the excavation of the highly-controversial site in
Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state, where a 16th
century mosque was destroyed 10 years ago by Hindus.
That act, which has been compared to the
destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in
Afghanistan, shocked and convulsed Indian society,
setting off sectarian violence that led to the deaths of
thousands of people in several northern Indian states.
India's Hindu chauvinists, represented in the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu Forum), a key ally of
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which leads the
country's ruling coalition, have since the demolition
mounted a strident campaign to build a temple to the
Hindu deity Ram at that precise site.
Their
claim is that a temple to Ram, marking his birthplace,
existed on the site before 1528, and was razed so that
the Babri mosque, named after a Moghul emperor, could be
built. They cite no historical evidence for this. But
they have been agitating to correct history's "wrong" by
building a grand Rama temple.
The issue has lain
in the deep freeze since January 1993, when the
government, shaken by the mosque's razing, took over
about 68 acres of land on which it promised to rebuild
the mosque and construct a Hindu temple. The government
promised to resolve the dispute through mutual
negotiations between the Hindus and Muslims, or through
litigation. India's courts have now revived that thorny
issue by asking the ASI to determine if a temple existed
at Ayodhya before the mosque was built. They want the
ASI to complete the excavation within a month.
This has opened a Pandora's box, pitting
historians and social scientists against the government
and the courts, but also bringing in other contenders
who claim they too were "hurt" by history's "wrongs".
For instance, an organization representing the
Jains, devoted to a non-violent faith, like Buddhism,
says a 6th century Jain temple existed at the site
before any Hindu temple was built. It wants to become a
party to the real estate dispute.
The court's
order mandating the excavation poses a host of problems
and creates a bad precedent. Assuming that the ASI does
find that a structure existed at the site prior to 1528,
would that merit or justify the razing of the mosque or
"getting even with history"? Many monuments were built
in ancient and medieval India on top of demolished
structures. What if the Taj Mahal or some of the
greatest Hindu temples were found to fall into this
category?
Can archaeological excavation provide
conclusive, definite, objective proof of the existence
of old monuments? Is archaeology an exact science, on
the basis of which courts can settle property disputes
and correct historical anomalies? Matters are not helped
by the fact that the VHP blatantly employs double
standards. If the prior existence of a Hindu temple is
confirmed, it will press its demand for being allowed to
build a Rama temple (without a mosque) on the entire
plot. But it refuses to say it will drop its demand if
no such evidence is found.
Reputable
historians and archaeologists say that the court's order
raises "serious concerns" and is fundamentally
misguided. For instance, Irfan Habib and KM Shrimali,
two of India's best-known medieval historians, and Suraj
Bhan, an archaeologist, argue that the court grants
legitimacy to the erroneous view that "a monument can be
destroyed or removed if there are any grounds for
assuming that a religious structure of another community
had previously stood at its site".
This view was
forcefully rejected by the principal organization of
Indian historians, the Indian History Congress, which
voted against it by an overwhelming majority in 1993.
These scholars also hold that the preliminary survey -
done by a non-destructive testing private company (using
earth-penetration radar) - on the basis of which the
Allahabad High Court ordered the ASI to excavate - is
fundamentally biased. The company (Tojo-Vikas) has no
known previous experience of archaeological surveying.
Furthermore, there are additional fundamental
problems. Serious archaeological excavation cannot be
done in a hurry, or throughout the year. M K Dhavalikar,
former director of the Pune-based Deccan College, says,
"An ideal timeframe would be three full seasons of three
to four months per year". According to Bhan, a site like
Ayodhya, which lies in the heart of the Ganges plains,
was probably continuously inhabited for almost 2,000
years and would therefore have seen a lot of disturbance
- movement of layers - marking one period into other
layers, and from one place to another. These
disturbances would have to be properly detected and
explained.
Besides, archaeology is not an exact
science. Archaeological finds are subject to a wide
range of interpretations. The mere discovery of objects,
however, well-preserved or telltale they might seem,
does not count as absolute proof.
Objects and
artifacts are mute and do not speak for themselves.
Their context - stratification, physical relationship to
the surroundings, their place in a certain material
culture - is all-important in permitting the
archaeologist to interpret them. Such interpretation
requires meticulous record-keeping - trench notebooks,
materials notebooks, dig house notebooks and
photographs. These records must be available for
scholarly scrutiny and peer review. But the ASI has in
the past refused to share such records.
Noted
scholars also raise questions about the ASI's competence
to conduct rigorous, scientific and impartial
excavation. For about 10 years, it has lacked a
professional director. Some BJP ministers were involved
in instigating the razing of the Babri mosque in
December 1992, including deputy Prime Minister Lal
Krishna Advani. Say the historians, when such ministers
"themselves stand accused of having participated
directly in the Babri Masjid demolition, no agency under
their complete control can be held to be above
suspicion".
There is bound to be ambiguity about
what constitutes a temple relic. For instance, carved
stone or a brick, dating back to the 13th or 15th
century, which comes from a domestic home, can be easily
confused with a temple relic. These are not matters that
can be decided either by archaeologists or by the
courts. Yet, by embarking on this scientific
misadventure, the ASI seems to be playing straight into
the hands of the Hindu fundamentalists.
(Inter
Press Service)
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