Found and Lost: the Ayodhya Evidence

[Guest guest]

Found and Lost: the Ayodhya Evidence

Dr. Koenraad Elst (21 July 2003)

 

The North-Indian town of Ayodhya is scene to a controversy over a

Hindu

sacred site, the Rama Janmabhoomi or birthplace of Rama. That is

where a

mosque, the Babri Masjid, was built in forcible replacement of an

earlier

Hindu temple, in 1528 under Moghul emperor Babar at the latest, and

demolished by a Hindu crowd in 1992. The controversy pits Hindu

activists

against a combine of Muslim activists and the so-called secularists,

an

array of Hindu-born Marxists and US-oriented globalists who share a

hatred

of Hindu assertiveness. The matter has been sub-judice at the High

Court

of nearby Allahabad since 1950, when Hindus had taken control of the

mosque by installing statues of the deified hero Rama, his wife Sita

and

his brother Lakshmana. Now, Hindu organisations are preparing to

build a

proper temple at the site. Muslims organisations are reclaiming the

site,

and the judges have endlessly been postponing their intervention.

 

At least until the winter of 2002-2003, for then the court secretly

asked

a specialized firm to scan the underground by radar for traces of the

foundation of a temple predating the mosque. One of the questions on

which

a verdict could arguably be based, was whether there had indeed been a

temple at the site before the mosque was built.

 

A Splendid Consensus

 

Actually, until 1989 there had been no question about the sites

history.

All the written sources, whether Hindu, Muslim or European, were in

agreement about the pre-existence of a Rama temple at the site. Ramas

birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babar

in

1528 on the site of an earlier temple, according to the 1989 edition

of

the Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry Ayodhya. Neither was there any

document contradicting this scenario: no account of a forest chopped

down

to make way for the mosque (already unlikely in the centre of an

ancient

town), no sales contract of real estate to the mosques builder,

nothing of

the kind. By contrast, there was testimony after 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 Ramas birthday every year in April, in

continuation of the practice at the time when the temple stood.

 

And if authors of testimonies may be unreliable, there was also the

archaeological evidence: in the 1970s, a team of the Archaeological

Survey

of India led by Prof. B.B. Lal dug out some trenches just outside the

mosque and found rows of pillar-bases which must have supported a

larger

building predating the mosque. Moreover, in the mosque itself, small

black

pillars with Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional

practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples

to

flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism.

 

The only remaining question about the site was its status in the

period

1192-1528. In 1192 and the subsequent years, practically all the Hindu

temples and Buddhist monasteries in North India were demolished by

Mohammed Ghori and his Turkish invaders. It is impossible that the

medieval temple at the site could have survived until 1528. The most

likely scenario is the one well-attested at another famous temple

site:

the Somnath temple in Gujarat. No less than nine times did Hindus

reclaim

it as a temple, until Muslims retook it and turned it into a mosque

again.

Since Ayodhya was a provincial capital of the Delhi Sultanate,

opportunities for wresting the site from Muslim control were certainly

more limited than in the case of the outlying Somnath temple. Then

again,

the frequent infighting among the Muslim elite may have given

rebellious

Hindus some opportunities too. From peculiarities in the architecture

of

the Babri Masjid, art historians on both sides of the debate (Sushil

Srivastava, R. Nath) have deduced that the main part of the structure

had

been built well before the Moghul invasion, probably in the 14th

century.

In that case, the tradition that it was built by Mir Baqi may be

based on

the following scenario: towards the end of the Sultanate period,

Hindus

may have managed to recapture the site and to turn it into a

functioning

temple, until Babar and his lieutenant Mir Baqi firmly imposed Muslim

control again and gave some finishing touches to the mosque

architecture

in replacement of any Hindu elements that had come to adorn it. But

this

must for now be kept inside speculative brackets. What is certain is

that

a major Hindu temple at the site was demolished by Islamic iconoclasm

and

replaced with a mosque symbolizing the victory of Islam over

Infidelism.

Of that, evidence is plentiful and of many types.

 

The JNU fatwa

 

Yet, in 1989, all this evidence was brushed aside by a group of 25

academics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), mostly declared

Marxists, who issued a statement denying the existence of any

evidence for

the temple: The Political Abuse of History. Not that they offered any

newfound data to support this dramatic reversal of the consensus, all

they

had to show was some totally contrived reinterpretations of a few of

the

existing data plus the worn-out slogans against Hindu communalism.

But the

sympathy of the Indian and international media for their purported

motive

of upholding secularism assured the immediate worldwide adoption of

the

new party-line as Gospel truth: the demolished Rama temple had merely

been

a malicious invention of the ugly Hindu nationalists.

 

Note that they didnt just settle for a political rejection of any

plans to

replace the mosque with a temple. They could sensibly have argued

that the

demolition of the temple happened long ago and could not now be a

reason

for reversing the event. That exactly had been the verdict given by a

British judge in 1886 when ordering a status quo at the site. No,

instead

they went as far as to base their rejection of a new temple

construction

on the claim that no demolition had ever taken place because no

temple had

existed there. This was reckless, for if the political choice for the

preservation of the mosque were based on the historical non-existence

of

the medieval temple at the site, then 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 rather than a mere insistence on divorcing history from

politics.

 

Secular debate-dodgers

 

In December 1990, the short-lived Socialist-dominated government of

Chandra Shekhar invited the two lobby groups involved, the Vishva

Hindu

Parishad and the Babri Masjid Action Committee, to mandate a team of

scholars for discussing the historical truth of the matter. Misled by

the

media into believing that the Hindu claims were pure fantasy, the BMAC

office-bearers arrived ill-prepared, expecting a cakewalk over the

discredited case of the VHP fanatics. They were speechless when the

VHP

team presented dozens of documents supporting their case. The BMAC

then

invited a team of proper historians chaired by Marxist professor R.S.

Sharma, who arrived at the next meeting with the demand that they be

recognized as independent scholars entitled to sit in judgment on the

controversy, i.e. to pass a verdict between their BMAC employers and

their

VHP opponents. The government representative did not grant this

hilarious

demand. At the next meeting, they declared that they hadnt studied the

evidence yet and needed six more weeks, a strange statement from

people

who had just led 42 academics in signing a petition confirming once

and

for all that there was absolutely no evidence at all for a temple. At

the

meeting scheduled for 24 January 1991, they simply didnt show up

anymore.

In July 1992, the state government of Uttar Pradesh, dominated by the

Hindu nationalist BJP (Indian Peoples Party), ordered the levelling

and

cleaning of the terrain around the mosque. Before and during the work,

archaeologists were permitted to search the site. They discovered

dozens

of pieces of temple architecture and Hindu religious sculptures. A cry

went up among the Marxist academics that the sculptures had been

stolen

from museums and planted at the site. The central government

(Congress)

locked the pieces away. The minister in charge, Arjun Singh, was a

militant secularist and eager to embarrass the BJP, yet the academics

never asked him to have the sculptures investigated by an

international

team of experts who could have certified their allegation. Indeed,

their

behaviour was one of strictly ignoring this new body of evidence, as

if

they didnt believe their own claim of a forgery.

In October 1992, the central government of Narasimha Rao (Congress)

tried

to revive the scholars discussion. This time, the BMAC team quite

reasonably protested that there was no point in talking unless the VHP

called off its announced demonstration in Ayodhya scheduled for

December

6. The VHP was adamant that Hindu societys right to the site could

not be

made dependent on mundane factors such as judicial verdicts and

academic

disputes. This was an instance of the Hindu nationalist movements long

tradition of smashing its own windows and of spurning the intellectual

struggle which in this case had been going in its favour. On the plea

that

you dont need arguments to love your mother, meaning Mother India, the

Hindu nationalists had always neglected intellectual and media work

and

favoured a mindless activism. Except for one (S.P. Gupta), all the

scholars who had argued their case at the government-sponsored

discussion

had been outsiders to the movement; the VHP leadership itself, like

its

BMAC counterpart, never took the evidence debate very seriously.

 

The Demolition

 

So, activism replaced argument on December 6, 1992. The official

leadership represented at the demonstration in Ayodhya by L.K. Advani

(who

today is Deputy Prime Minister) had wanted to keep the affair purely

ceremonial, singing some hymns to Rama as a sufficient act of

confirming

the Hindu claim to the site. But an elusive leadership within the

crowd

had other plans. A small group had come well-prepared for a demolition

job, and once they broke ranks from the official ceremony to

methodically

pull down the mosque, much of the crowd joined in. Hindu movement

officials tried to stop them, even when the police withdrew from the

scene, but to no avail. The BJP state government resigned at once,

but the

central government did not physically intervene until the next

morning,

when the activists had cleared the debris and consecrated a little

tent

with the three statues as the provisional new Rama temple. In a

typical

instance of the Congress culture, Narasimha Rao on the one hand

declared

that the mosque should be rebuilt and on the other hand created an

accomplished fact on the ground which practically precluded the

prospect

of rebuilding the mosque.

 

It is an odd but highly significant fact that the Indian media

subsequently refused to open a search for who exactly organised the

demolition. None of them seemed to care for the scoop of the year:

This

man (photograph) organized the demolition. Clearly, they thought it

politically most profitable to pin the blame on the so-called

hardliner

Advani, the one Hindu leader who was most definitely not behind it.

He had

burst into tears upon seeing the fabled discipline of his activists

break

down and had been narrowly dissuaded from resigning as party leader

in his

post-demolition confusion.

 

During the demolition, another load of temple sculptures came to light

from among the debris, including an inscription detailing how it was

part

of a temple to Vishnu, slayer of Bali and of the ten-headed one,

built in

ca. 1140 under king Udai Chand. Rama is considered an incarnation of

Vishnu, and the two enemies he defeated were king Bali and king

Ravana,

usually depicted as ten-headed in recognition of his brilliant mind.

As

the reader will expect by now, this evidence too was locked away and

strictly ignored by the secularists. Until 2003, when Peoples

Democracy,

the paper of the Marxwadi Communist Party, alleged foul play.

 

It seemed that the Lucknow State Museum mentioned in its catalogue a

20-line inscription dedicated to Vishnu and satisfying in every

detail the

description of the piece discovered during the demolition,-- but

which had

gone missing since the late 1980s. So it was alleged that someone had

stolen this inscription from the museum and planted it at the site

shortly

before the demolition. During the initial scholars debate in 1990-91,

the

VHP-mandated team had discovered that no less than 4 documents kept in

Muslim libraries had demonstrably been tampered with in order to

remove

references to the birthplace temple. Here the secularists had their

great

occasion to get back at them and expose them in turn as cheaters who

had

planted a stolen inscription. However, museum director Jitendra Kumar

declared that the piece had never left the museum, even though it had

not

been on display, and he showed it at a press conference for all to see

(Hindustan Times, 8 May 2003). In spite of many similarities, it

differed

from the Ayodhya find in shape, colour and text contents.

 

Meanwhile, in 1993 the central government had approached the Supreme

Court

with a request to evaluate the historical evidence. It is clear that

Narasimha Rao, the most pro-Hindu Prime Minister of independent India

so

far (more so than the wobbly BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee), hoped

to

use a positive verdict as the basis for a settlement favouring the

Hindu

claim. But in October 1994, the Supreme Court turned down the request.

 

Scanning for the underground remains

 

The resumption of the evidence debate took place in late 2002, when

the

Allahabad High Court secretly ordered the scanning of the sites

underground. The Tojo India Vikas International Company carried out a

Ground Penetration Radar survey and found indications of a structure

in

and around the mosque site. Canadian geophysicist Claude Robillard,

invited by Tojo to give his expert reading, couldnt say just what

building

had been there, but: All I know is, there is some structure under the

mosque. (Rediff.com, 19 March 2003)

 

The existence or otherwise of the medieval temple never depended on

the

results of the radar scanning: it had already been proven by a wealth

of

documentary and archaeological evidence, which in any other

circumstance

would have been deemed conclusive. It was only because of the brutal

denial of the evidence by a group of vocal academics and allied

politicians that the Court considered it wiser to come up with a new

and

as yet unchallenged type of evidence.

 

To the Court, the radar findings were sufficient encouragement to

order a

further dig at the site in order to verify that there were

foundations of

a building predating the Babri Masjid. We should be clear in our minds

about what kind of evidence could be expected, as this digging took

place

at the foundations level. This is not where sculptures or furniture

normally reside (though a few objects were found nonetheless) but

where

the unadorned foundations of walls and pillars have quietly survived

the

onslaught that destroyed the overground constructions they supported.

Also, foundations do not by themselves inform us of the type of

building

they supported, whether secular or religious.

 

In the months when the digging took place, the newspapers mentioned

some

new findings once in a while. Thus, an ancient stone inscription in

the

Dev Nagari script and a foundation were discovered in the ongoing

excavation in the acquired land in Ayodhya today, while stone pieces

and a

wall were found in other trenches and a human figure in terracotta,

sand

stone netting, decorated sand stone in three pieces were found in one

trench (The Hindu, 5 May 2003). In this light it is understandable

that a

Babri Masjid supporter, Naved Yar Khan, approached the Supreme Court

with

a petition to prohibit all archaeological digging at the contentious

site;

which was rejected (The Hindu, 10 June 2003). The secularists had

always

opposed archaeological fact-finding at the site; they dont like

science.

 

The great Indian vanishing trick

 

After the ASI had been registering new findings for months, a handful

on

Monday, one on Tuesday, several on Wednesday, the world learned to its

surprise that the final tally somehow amounted to zero. No proof of

structure in Ayodhya: ASI report, according to Rediff.com (11 June

2003)

The article confidently asserts that the report also contradicts the

Ground Penetration Radar survey, but it doesnt quote the ASI report.

It

only quotes Zafaryab Jilani, counsel for the Muslim claimant to the

site,

the Sunni Central Waqf Board, who alleges that the ASI report does not

speak about any such evidence.

 

According to The Asian Age (11 June 2003), The ASI team that conducted

excavations at the disputed site where the demolished Babari masjid

once

stood in Ayodhya has not found any proof of a structure. However,

when you

take the trouble of reading the subsequent fine print, you discover

that

this paper admits that while the radar findings of structural remains

of a

pre-Masjid structure were not confirmed at some indicated spots, they

were

confirmed at others. Yet the title falsely sums this up as: Nothing

found

below Babri site: ASI.

 

The Marxist-controlled Chennai daily The Hindu of 11 June likewise

lets

out the truth indirectly: the ASI is reported to have said in its

progress

report that no structural anomalies suggesting the evidence [sic;

existence?] of any structure under the demolished Babri Masjid had

been

found in 15 of the new trenches dug up at the site,-- but those 15

were

not the only ones investigated. So, at the very end of the article,

there

is an almost laconical addition: Structural anomalies were, however,

detected in 15 other trenches, the report said. But the impression the

paper seeks to convey, is summed up in the title: No evidence of

structures in some trenches. It is as if someone is hit by two

bullets,

one scratching his arm but the other lethally penetrating his heart,

and a

newspaper reports: Man shot at, unharmed by one of the bullets.

 

Likewise, the Times of India of 11 June announced that there was

absolutely definitely no sign whatsoever at all of a pre-Babri

structure:

ASI finds no proof of structure below Babri Masjid: report. Six days

later, it still tried to keep up this version, now citing an unnamed

senior ASI official who admitted finding new archaeological evidence

such

as sculptures and inscriptions but not the type of structural evidence

suggested by the radar scan: But the structural bases so far do not

lend

credence to the mandir theory. Questioned further, he turns out not to

base this belief on the new digging results but on older ones:

According

to him, the theory of a pre-existing temple because of structural

bases

has been demolished convincingly over the years. He points to the

discovery of pillar bases by B.B. Lal in the mid-1970s during his

excavation of Ramayana sites in Ayodhya and says: It has not been

found to

be fit evidence for a temple. (Times of India, 17 June 2003) This when

B.B. Lal himself had confirmed that his findings do support the temple

theory.

 

The Times of India article is titled: Babri pillar bases do not

support

temple theory. So at least it acknowledges the existence of some pre-

Babri

artefacts, viz. the pillar-bases. Now, how can there be foundation

structures such as pillar bases in the ground unless they had been put

there to support a building? The question is logical, but a bit too

logical for the fanciful world of Indian secularism. The unnamed ASI

official explains: The excavated structural bases are neither aligned

nor

belong to a single period. Now this is sensational. What it means is

that

we have discovered a culture where people (Hindus, as it happens)

once in

a while put a pillar base into the ground, and then another one, and

another one, without alignment, without any plan to make them support

a

straight wall or a preconceived building. And then they would leave

it at

that, and a century later some other fellow would add a few more

pillar

bases, again without plan, just for the fun of it. And all this

foundational work would never be crowned with an overground building,

it

would just remain sitting in the ground waiting for the Muslim

invaders to

build a mosque over it. Thats secularist archaeology for you.

 

In disinformation campaigns, the first stage of planting false news

must

be followed up with a second stage of making the false news into a

familiar presence. Once it is repeated in womens magazines, in TV chat

shows, even in jokes, it is becoming part of the collective

consciousness.

That is the ambition of every disinformation operative worth his

salt. In

this case, at least, we have seen secularists grab the ball and run

with

it from day one. In interviews of Hindu or Muslim leaders, questions

were

opened with a reference to the fact that nothing was found underneath

the

Babri Masjid. Some Hindu leaders, such as the Kanchi Shankaracharya

(who

had just led a failed initiative to negotiate an amicable solution),

were

so little informed that they didnt even contradict the claim.

Columnist

Saeed Naqvi, known as a moderate within the spectrum of Muslim

opinion,

spices an otherwise reasonable opinion piece (Muslims must be

generous,

Indian Express, 13 June) with the off-hand statement: The ASI has

found

nothing under the mosque. Clearly, some people are leaving no stone

unturned to make this claim part of the received wisdom.

 

What was found

 

For those who hadnt noticed anything wrong in the reports of 11 June

claiming that nothing had been found, another news item on the same

day

should have alerted them. The party most likely to be elated over the

non-finding of traces of a temple should be the Muslim pro-Masjid

lobby

groups, such as the Sunni Central Waqf Board. And yet: ASI fabricating

evidence in Ayodhya, says Waqf Board (The Hindu, 11 June 2003). Or in

a

full sentence: The Sunni Central Waqf Board, a plaintiff in the

Ramjanmabhoomi Babri Masjid title suit, and some Muslim parties have

accused the ASI team carrying out excavation work at the acquired

land in

Ayodhya of fabricating archaeological evidence there. So, according to

this witness above suspicion, the ASI team clearly did find evidence,

only

it wasnt supportive of pro-mosque and anti-temple claims and

therefore had

to be dismissed as fabricated.

 

All the papers carried this news, citing the Boards counsel, Mr.

Zafaryab

Jilani: ASI fabricating evidence in Ayodhya: Waqf board (Press Trust

of

India, 10 June); ASI fabricating evidence: Waqf Board (Times of

India, 11

June); Foul play alleged at Ayodhya dig (The Pioneer, 11 June). In the

free-for-all of Indian secularism, we neednt fuss over the fact that

this

grim allegation against the integrity of highly qualified scientists

was

levelled without any evidence. The decisive point is that, against the

secularist claims and against their own interest, the Muslim

plaintiffs

admitted that the ASI excavators have not come up from their trenches

empty-handed.

 

Whereas some Indian papers threw themselves headlong into the

mendacious

operation of denying the ASI findings, others did set the record

straight,

or at least gave space to guest authors to do so. As no one in his

journalistic hurry seems to have tried to summarize the whole of the

report, and everyone was satisfied with bits and pieces if at all

they had

seen the report, the numbers of finds differ according to the source.

According to the Press Trust of India (11 June), eight articles were

found

in excavation work in nine trenches on the acquired land around [the]

makeshift temple. Most helpfully, this source adds the communal

detail:

There were 131 labourers including 29 Muslims engaged in the digging

work

today. The internet version of The Hindu, www.hinduonnet.com (22

June),

mentions structural anomalies in 46 trenches of the 84 trenches

investigated, as well as pillar bases and drains in some of the

trenches.

 

In Outlook India (23 June), Sandipan Deb gave a more detailed

overview of

the report: While most papers covering the new ASI report last week

said

that it claims there was no structure under the Babri Masjid, what the

report actually says is that of the 30 recent trenches, the team has

found

man-made structures in eight, and none in 16. In five, they couldnt

decide

due to structural activities in the upper levels (mainly the plinth

of the

Babri Masjid). One trench they did not survey. Among the structures

listed

in the report are several brick walls in east-west orientation,

several in

north-south orientation, decorated coloured floor, several pillar

bases,

and a 1.64-metre high decorated black stone pillar (broken) with

yaksha

figurines on four corners. Now that I am sounding like a running-dog

of

the VHP to the lunatic lefties, let me quickly add that they also

found

Arabic inscription of holy verses on stone. But what many people have

missed out on due to bias or sloth is that these are findings only

from

the period of May 22 to June 6. This is not the full list. If they

read

the earlier reports, they would also find listed several walls, a

staircase, and two black basalt columns bearing fine decorative

carvings

with two cross-legged figures in bas-relief on a bloomed lotus with a

peacock whose feathers are raised upwards.

 

For good measure, we should also quote a Hindu nationalists

observations.

On the website of the National Volunteer Corps or RSS (www.rss.org, 24

June 2003), Chetan Merani writes: The excavations so far give ample

traces

that there was a mammoth pre-existing structure beneath the three-

domed

Babri structure. Ancient perimeters from East to West and North to

South

have been found beneath the Babri fabrication. The bricks used in

these

perimeters predate the time of Babar. Beautiful stone pieces bearing

carved Hindu ornamentations like lotus, kaustubh jewel, alligator

facade,

etc., have been used in these walls. These decorated architectural

pieces

have been anchored with precision at varied places in the walls. A

tiny

portion of a stone slab is sticking out at a place below 20 feet in

one of

the pits. The rest of the slab lies covered in the wall. The

projecting

portion bears a five-letter Dev Nagari inscription that turns out to

be a

Hindu name. The items found below 20 feet should be at least 1,500

years

old. According to archaeologists about a foot of loam layer gathers on

topsoil every hundred years. Primary clay was not found even up to a

depth

of 30 feet. It provides the clue to the existence of some structure

or the

other at that place during the last 2,500 years. More than 30 pillar

bases

have been found at equal spans. The pillar-bases are in two rows and

the

rows are parallel. The pillar-base rows are in North-South direction.

A

wall is superimposed upon another wall. At least three layers of the

floor

are visible. An octagonal holy fireplace (yajna kund) has been found.

These facts prove the enormity of the pre-existing structure. ()

Moulded

bricks of round and other shapes and sizes were neither in vogue

during

the middle ages nor are in use today. It was in vogue only 2,000 years

ago. Many ornate pieces of touchstone (kasauti stone) pillars have

been

found in the excavation. Terracotta idols of divine figurines,

serpent,

elephant, horse-rider, saints, etc., have been found. Even to this day

terracotta idols are used in worship during Diwali celebrations and

then

put by temple sanctums for invoking divine blessings. The Gupta and

the

Kushan period bricks have been found. Brick walls of the Gahadwal

period

(12th Century CE) have been found in excavations. Nothing has been

found

to prove the existence of residential habitation there. The excavation

gives out the picture of a vast compound housing a sole distinguished

and

greatly celebrated structure used for divine purposes ().

 

The world media as amplifier of the secularist version

 

In spite of a very aggressive campaign of lies by a few spearheads of

secularism, the true story was in the public domain for anyone with

the

curiosity to find out. Yet, the international medias reporting on the

matter consisted exclusively in copying the most mendacious version.

The

Reuters despatch for 11 June 2003 is titled: Dig finds no sign of

temple

at Indian holy site. More than 90% of the text rehashes the story of

riots

and other incidents that have punctuated the dispute. What little it

says

about the new findings, is this: A three-month excavation has found no

evidence yet to back nationalist claims of a Hindu temple under the

ruins

of a mosque in northern India () The state-run Archaeological Survey

of

India has submitted an interim report saying digging so far at the

site in

Ayodhya town had not found remains of any structure that remotely

resembles a temple, a source at the Survey said on Wednesday.

 

Note that the actual report is not quoted, merely what a source at

the ASI

has claimed about it. Note also the slanted phrase about nationalist

claims of a Hindu temple, as if there were anything typically

nationalist

about acknowledging historical facts. 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. Note also that no

mention is made of the wealth of evidence extant before the radar

scanning

and the recent diggings: a fine example of how the public is led by

the

nose into seeing only a very small selected part of the matter rather

than

the full perspective which one is entitled to expect from quality

media.

 

And this is BBC News on 11 June 2003: No sign of Ayodhya temple. Here

again, no information from the horses mouth, only from secondary

sources:

There have been widespread reports across the Indian media that the

exacavation of a disputed holy site in India has produced no evidence

of a

Hindu temple, according to archaeologists reports. Again, most of the

article is but a rehashing of stale riot news, and then one sentence:

In

an interim report, the ASI says it has not found any evidence of

ruins of

a Hindu temple. Which is a lie, as well as a misrepresentation of the

stakes of the present round of digging: ruins normally stand on and

above

the ground level, what the archaeologists were digging for was the

foundational structures.

 

As we move deeper into the periphery, from the Times of India via the

BBC

to the local papers in distant countries, we see the last references

to

the actual findings disappear. By now, the report has been transformed

into a morality tale, with the light-bringing secularists exposing the

dark lies of the monstrous Hindu nationalists. In the Flemish tabloid

De

Morgen (12 June 2003), Asia desk editor Catherine Vuylsteke calls the

fact

that a temple had been forcibly replaced by a mosque an evil fairy-

tale.

And this is her version of the news: The temple, it turned out

yesterday,

is a phantom. For three months, experts have dug for traces of it,

all in

vain. By the end of the month their definitive report should follow,

but

for now Ramas home remains unfindable. Bad luck for the

ultranationalists,

who had hoped to base their next election campaign on the fairy-tale.

But

they still might manage to, some fear. Yesterday already, the first

politicians expressed doubts about the archaeologists findings. Other

Hindu leaders said, and this is even more dangerous, that the facts

dont

matter. What counts is what you believe. We now know that Rama didnt

live

in Ayodhya, while Allah did until 1992.

 

This passage is symptomatic for most of what is wrong with India

reporting. It is totally based on a source which makes no secret of

its

partisan involvement, indeed of its unreserved hatred for the Hindu

nationalists. But the most striking aspect of this particular

instance of

distorted reporting is that much of it is purely deductive: from a

small

core of facts, all manner of seemingly logical assumptions are added

to

put flesh on the bones of the poorly understood Indian situation, and

these speculations are presented as fact. Thus, it seems plausible to

assume that the BJP wants to use Ayodhya in its elections campaigns,

which

it did in 1989 and 1991. However, to the frustration of its more

activist

sympathizers, the BJP has effectively disowned the Ayodhya issue

immediately after reaping the benefits in the 1991 elections (when it

became the leading opposition party), and has stayed away from it in

the

campaigns of 1996, 1998 and 1999. Indeed, the demolition was partly an

outcry of the activists against the BJP leadership, whose

participation in

the ceremony they correctly saw as perfunctory and insincere. Once

the BJP

came to power and proved time and again how it was in no mind to

build the

temple, criticism from the hardliners has only increased. Given the

infighting between temple loyalists and pragmatists, the last thing

the

BJP now wants is an election campaign focused on the Ayodhya issue.

Second case in point, the first politicians to express doubts about

the

archaeologists findings have not been the Hindu nationalists but the

Babri

Masjid lobbyists. All through the past 14 years, the secularists have

always opposed archaeological research at the site, saying that this

would

open a Pandoras box of similar initiatives at the literally thousands

of

mosque sites where temples used to stand (and omitting to mention

their

fear that in Ayodhya itself, this digging was sure to prove them

wrong, as

it now has). Yet, because the recent archaeological findings are

falsely

presented as going against the Hindu nationalist position, distant

India-watchers deductively assume that the opposition against the

diggings

must come from the Hindu nationalists.

 

Conclusion

 

Distorted or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive

issues

is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism. There is no

self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of

disinformation. No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or

formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing

Hindu nationalists. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has

become

a habit hard to relinquish.

 

Yet, in the instance under consideration, the brutal distortion of the

facts pertaining to the recent archaeological findings may be a

matter of

more than just a bad habit. Some people learn from their failures, but

these disinformation specialists may also have learned from their

successes. Consider a few earlier instances.

 

After the BJP came to power in 1998, India should have witnessed a

genocide of the minorities, gas chambers and what not. At least if you

believed the predictions made by the secularists in the preceding

years.

Nothing of the kind happened, so in the next two years the secularists

tried to make the most of what few incidents did take place. In

particular, all manner of small incidents within the Christian

community

were at once blamed on the evil hand of Hindu nationalism. Thus, in

the

Central-Indian town of Jhabua, a quarrel among mostly christianized

tribals led to the rape of four nuns. With no Hindu nationalists in

sight,

the media decided nonetheless that this was an act of Hindu

nationalist

cruelty against the poor hapless Christian minority. Though the police

investigation confirmed the total innocence of the Hindu nationalists

in

this affair, their guilt has been consecrated by endless repetition

in the

media. While the media in India couldnt prevent the truth from quietly

making itself known, the international media have never published a

correction, and the story of four nuns in Jhabua raped by Hindu

nationalists now keeps on reappearing as an evergreen of anti-Hindu

hate

propaganda.

 

Likewise, a series of bomb blasts against Christian churches in South

India was automatically blamed on the Hindu nationalists. In that

version,

the story made headlines around the world: Hindu bomb terror against

Christians. Hindu organizations alleged that it was a Pakistani

operation,

which only earned them ridicule and contempt. Yet, when two of the

terrorists blew themselves up by mistake, their getaway car led the

police

to their network, and the whole gang was arrested. It turned out to

be a

Muslim group, Deendar Anjuman, with headquarters in Pakistan. But

this was

not reported on the front-pages in India nor made the topic of flaming

editorials; and in the international media, it was not reported at

all. In

the worldwide perception of Hindu nationalism, the association with

raping

nuns and bombing churches has stuck.

 

So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindu

nationalists, for even if you are found out, most of the public will

never

hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences.

Striking

first is what counts. Any second round in which the truth comes out,

will

hardly be noticed. Indeed, conditioned by the initial lie, many

readers

and viewers will deride the correction as an attempt at denial of the

grim

facts which everybody knows well enough. And the audience abroad will

never even be informed that there has been a correction.

 

In the present case: what are the chances that BBC World will ever

broadcast the real results of the ASI investigation in Ayodhya? If the

issue ever comes up again, chances are that the editor will dismiss

it as

uninteresting: Havent we already done something on those Ayodhya

excavations lately? And even if it gets adequate coverage, it will

never

be able to undo the impression created by the initial story. So, apart

from being the natural implementation of a bad habit, this particular

lie

about the excavations in the secularist Indian media may well be part

of a

deliberate ploy to condition public opinion against the true story if

and

when it ever comes out. For fourteen years, the secularists have

worked so

hard to keep the lid on the Ayodhya evidence that they dont want some

puny

radar scanners or some muddy-handed archaeologists to expose the

facts now