Essay on my views on Ayodhya Verdict..........
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As witnesses to a major part of the excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India at the Ram janmabhoomi-Babri masjid site in Ayodhya in 2003, the authors detail the many irregularities and outdated methods they observed. They also refer to the objections they filed regarding some of the procedures followed by the asi, as well as the objections to its Final Report on the excavations. In several ways, it was obvious that the asi was operating with a preconceived notion of discovering the remains of a temple beneath the demolished mosque, even selectively altering the evidence to suit its hypothesis. The authors stress that there is little doubt that the kind of archaeology practised by the statist asi, where archaeologists see themselves primarily as bureaucrats, suffers from a serious absence of academic engagement and training.
What began primarily as a title suit in the Ram janmabhoomi-Babri masjid case in 1961, with Muslim organisations arguing that their entitlement was the only valid one as the Babri masjid had stood there since 1528, became amplified in 1989. In that year, one of the issues that were framed was whether the Babri masjid had been constructed after demolishing a Hindu temple. It was because of this issue that the disciplines of history and archaeology were brought within the ambit of the legal case.
Our paper will focus on the way that archaeology has been perceived and used to resolve this dispute. There is a common perception that archaeology is an “exact science” and that all that we need to know about the past can be ascertained by simply digging.However, what may be recovered in an excavation are partial remains of walls or floors, artefacts, ceramics, bones, seeds and so forth. It is on the basis of what (artefacts, ceramics or organic materials) are found within walls and on or under floors that archaeologists make inferences about past buildings, activities or events. The fragmented nature of the archaeological material recovered often means that the data by itself is not self-explanatory.Therefore, during excavation itself, care has to be taken to recover and record every bit of data, including the nature of deposits being excavated. It is, thus, of utmost importance that a rigorous analysis of the complete set of data be undertaken. Yet, we often find that archaeologists work with preconceived notions and make their interpretations on the basis of select categories of artefacts.
Given the unfamiliarity of the Muslim parties to the case with the discipline of archaeology, their requirement was that professional archaeologists observe the excavations. Moreover, there was apprehension among them that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which was deputed the task of excavation, was a government body reporting directly to the Ministry of Culture, which was then under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre. There were very few archaeologists who were willing to be associated in a seemingly adversarial position with the ASI. When the excavations began, as archaeologists, we were curious to find out for ourselves, from first-hand observation, what lay beneath the Babri masjid. It so happened that we were at that time approached by the counsels of the Sunni Central Board of Waqfs. We were thus directly involved in the case when the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court ordered excavations at the site in Ayodhya in 2003 and we were present for extended periods1 during the excavations between March and August 2003.