24 March 2003

The past is incidental to the Ayodhya problem. Archaeology could help in discarding the non-issues.

By Swapan Dasgupta

For a nation that is very casual about its history but is obsessed with the past, historians have
suddenly acquired celebrity-hood. The Ayodhya conflict is at different levels a battle over faith,
over politics and even over competing principles of nationhood. Instead, it has been hijacked by a
small group into a pedantic and contrived dispute over history-a course that has prevented a
resolution of the conflict.

When the dispute burst onto the national stage in 1986 the issues were grave but limited. Should the
question be tackled as a property dispute or as a paramount issue of faith? In short, should it be
resolved by judges or legislators? Equally, to what extent should present rights undo past wrongs?

These were contentious issues and centred on two assumptions. First, that many Hindus regarded the
site of the Babri Masjid as the birthplace of Lord Ram. Second, that like in many other places, a
Hindu temple was demolished by a medieval ruler and replaced by a mosque. The uniqueness of Ayodhya,
however, was not the destruction of a temple but the loss of a sacred site. It was a loss that was
deeply felt and which in turn generated acts of both passive and active resistance till the
"reconquest" in 1949.

Till 1989, when Romila Thapar, S. Gopal and others from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
published The Political Abuse of History, historians were not even peripheral to what was
essentially a political and legal dispute. The JNU intervention established new parameters of
debate. "So far no historical evidence has been unearthed to support the claim that the Babri mosque
has been constructed on the land that had earlier been occupied by a temple," the statement claimed.
All contrary assertions were drowned in a wave of media-encouraged condescension. Such was the clout
of the historians that this negationism became conventional wisdom in "respectable" circles.

The historians' stand was calculated. If no temple predated the mosque, the Hindu claim to the site
was illegitimate and bereft of any sanction by way of irrational faith or politics. Such was the
faith in the historians that when the Chandra Shekhar government initiated a dialogue between the
warring sides, some Muslim leaders offered to give up their claims if it was proved a temple had
existed at the site. There was one way the issue could be conclusively resolved: by archaeological
excavation. This would have been impossible before December 6, 1992. Now it is blessed by a high
court.

The full findings may take some time. They will also invariably be subjected to semantic
hair-splitting. However, indications are that the eminent historians who have so far dismissed all
existing evidence as either motivated or fabricated may have to eat crow. Ayodhya may still remain a
burning issue but at least there will be fewer falsehoods to confront.