[Reader-list] Babri Masjid and Crisis of Archaeology

[Faizan Ahmed]

Hi all,
         Here is an interesting article by Prof. Irfan Habib that has appeared 
in 'Hindustan Times' addressing the Babri Masjid issue.....Please go through 
it.

Best
Faizan.

Crisis of Archaeology
Prof. Irfan Habib, Historian
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

July 5
Among the twenty issues framed in what is now termed the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri
 Masjid dispute, evidence is being currently taken on the second issue at a
 Special Bench of the Allahabad High Court, at Lucknow.

This is whether there was a Hindu temple at the disputed site before the
 Babri Masjid was built, and “if so, its impact on the case”. While much
 evidence has been taken, as offered by the parties, the Bench decided to
 collect evidence on its own as well — by having the disputed site dug up to
 find whether or not there had actually been a temple below the mosque. To a
 lay person this decision might seem to weaken the force of the order of
 status quo that had been imposed by the Supreme Court. That this possibility
 also partly weighed with the High Court was reflected in its decision to
 obtain a geophysical survey of the site before actually ordering the
 excavation.

The work of the survey was entrusted (at the invitation of the Archaeological
 Survey of India, ASI) to Tojo-Vikas International (Pvt) Limited, a company
 based at Kalkaji, New Delhi, with no previous known experience in
 archaeological work. In its report the conclusion was announced that the
 ‘anomalies’ “could be associated with ancient and contemporaneous structures
 such as pillars, foundation walls, slab flooring, extending over a large
 portion of the site.” The word ‘pillars’ immediately suggested to many the
 existence of temple pillars, and little attention was paid to the fact that
 on page 26 of its report the company expressly cautioned that when it said
 ‘pillars’ there could actually be no pillars underneath, but just debris or
 a boulder of a certain size! In the event not a single pillar has turned up
 in the excavations of the entire site, except for one belonging to the Babri
 Masjid’s own structure, one that had been broken by the karsevaks while
 demolishing the mosque. Subsequently, even the ASI had to note repeatedly
 that structures predicted by Tojo-Vikas through its reported ‘anomalies’,
 did not in most cases match with what was found upon actual digging.

Yet it was the Tojo-Vikas report which became the basis for the High Court’s
 orders on March 5 this year, requiring the ASI to begin excavations
 immediately. Now any archaeological excavation is an act not only of
 exploration, but also of destruction. One has to disturb, remove and
 demolish what lies in the upper layers in order to reach the lower. It has
 therefore, to be weighed  very carefully whether what one is likely to get
 below is worth as much as what one necessarily destroys. At Mohenjo Daro,
 the great site of the Indus Civilization, a ruined Buddhist stupa of no
 artistic merit stands above a crucial part of the Citadel of the earlier
 city. Below it might well lie an important Indus monument. Yet till date no
 proposal to dig through the stupa ruins has been countenanced. This aspect
 was totally ignored in the excavations at Ayodhya. The entire
 surkhi-polished original floor of the Babri Masjid, as laid out in 1528, was
 removed together with most of the remaining lower parts of its walls.
 Whatever the karsevaks had not been able to demolish in December 1992 has
 thus now been destroyed. There can be no justification for such destruction
 under any recognised principle of archaeology.

Such being the case, what we have seen at Ayodhya is just ‘crisis
 archaeology’ (a term used, tongue-in-cheek, for the Ayodhya excavations by
 the US journal Archaeology, May-June 2003). The crisis has been for
 archaeology itself: would the ASI perform in such circumstances as a
 professional body, or simply set its sights at finding what those in power
 wish it to find out: the remains of a temple?

There is good reason to believe that the latter has, indeed, been the case.
 Once the digging began, the ASI team’s object seemingly has been to look
 mainly for stones, bricks or artefacts that could conceivably come from a
 temple and to forget everything else. No use of the flotation technique to
 sieve out seeds, bone fragments and other minute pieces of material has been
 made, so that much of the excavation from an archaeological point of view
 has gone waste. There has been a tendency to ignore medieval ‘Muslim’ glazed
 ware and animal bones; the High Court had especially to direct on March 26
 that such wares and bones be recorded and separately preserved. It will be
 seen from the ASI’s three reports so far submitted to the Court that it has
 still paid scant attention to such finds. One suspects that this is because
 these constitute strong evidence against the existence of a temple at the
 time at the site.

Now that the ASI has excavated the site for over three and a half months, and
 given its ‘progress reports’ to the Court for periods ending April 24, June
 5 and June 19, it has become amply clear that despite practically the entire
 disputed site having been dug up, no structural or sculptural remains
 identifiable with those of a temple have been found. For one thing, lime
 mortar and surkhi, the recognised marks of Muslim construction, are present
 in practically all the excavated walls. The strong inference that the floor
 found below the Babri Masjid’s own floor and the walls connected with it,
 belonged to an earlier mosque has now been confirmed with the find of the
 base of an arched recess (mihrab) and of arched niche (taq) in a connected
 wall. The find of lime -mortar and surkhi down to the lowest layers of
 brickwork at Ramchabutra sets at rest speculation about any pre-Muslim
 construction under it. An inscription which gave some momentary excitement
 has turned out to be in modern Devanagari, of no sacred import.

It is now left to the ASI to make the best of what it called ‘structural
 bases’ in its first ‘progress  report’, but which in the next two reports
 have miraculously turned into ‘pillar bases’. As described in the first
 report these are formed by “squarish or circular 
 blocks of calcrete stone
 over three or four courses of brickbats”. What is astonishing about the
 nomenclature adopted for them by the ASI is that in not a single instance
 are these ‘bases’ associated with any pillar, in fact, as we have noted, no
 pillars (or fragments of them) have been found. There are not even any marks
 of depression on the surface of the stones surmounting the so-called bases.
 In any case how can mere heaps of brickbats, uncemented by mortar, carry any
 kind of weight? To call them ‘pillar bases’ or even ‘structural bases’ is
 absurd. They could just be low seats or, in some cases, markers for shops or
 stalls as in the Lal Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur. The fact that some of these
 ‘bases’ are sealed, while others are not, by the original floor of the Babri
 Masjid, shows that they belong to different times, and most of them are
 demonstrably subsequent to the phases of mosque construction at the site.

These ‘pillar bases’ have another feature: they are easy to assemble. A
 series of complaints have been submitted to the judicial observers appointed
 by the Court on May 21 and subsequently, showing how brickbats that lay
 scattered under lime-surkhi floor of the Masjid, along with sandstone
 blocks, obviously to provide a stable base for the floor, have been
 re-arranged by the ASI excavators to provide evidence for ‘pillar bases’.
 Many of these ‘pillar bases’ are, therefore, likely to be not genuine at
 all.

It is saddening that one should be obliged to speak in this manner of the
 work of the ASI that was once an institution in which the country could take
 justifiable pride. Today, one can only say that if it did not do worse at
 Ayodhya, part of the credit goes to the numerous archaeologists from many
 places in India, who maintained a constant vigil at the excavations. They
 did so only out of a loyalty to their profession and to secular values. When
 one thinks of them, one cannot help feeling sentimental about a country
 which, amidst all its troubles, can still bring forth such men and women.

Sentiment must, however, also nestle with cynicism. Now that the excavations
 have proved such a disappointment one suddenly hears once again the demand
 for ‘compromise’. Both the time and circumstances make the demand most
 suspect. Now that everything has been destroyed and dug up, why not just
 wait for the court verdict and obey the law?

(The writer is one of India's most eminent Historians.)





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