The birth of the Ayodhya dispute is not new. It is not even a post-independence phenomenon.
As per a new book on Uttar Pradesh Politics, titled “In Search of Ram Rajya” and written by journalist and author Manjula Lal, the dispute goes back to the early 19th century.
The book says that there are records that a court official in Faizabad had, as far back as in 1822, admitted that the mosque was built on the birthplace of Lord Rama, a Hindu deity, worshipped as the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
As per quoted evidence, the dispute on the property began sometime in the mid-1850s. The Nirmohis had laid their first claim on the land, claiming the temple on Rama’s birth site had been demolished by Babur.
In the 1870, an opium-loving Khatibi and Waqf trustee, Sayyed Mohammad Asghar had made several petitions claiming land around the mosque, two claims seeking removal of an idol placed in the courtyard of the mosque and also a later claim for rent from a priest for using a platform for rituals and offering prayers to mark religious occasions. Some of these disputes were with Mahant Raghubar Das.
It was during this time that the British allowed a door to be built for Hindus to access the contended birth place of Rama in the mosque premises.
Lal observes that these matters were settled by the courts or the administrations with little interference of politicians, but adds, “In courts, there is no place for anecdotal evidence, oral history, faith in epics or hurt egos.”
This last statement falls in line with what the Chief Justice of India advised the petitioners who now stand before the Supreme Court of India, demanding a resolution to a dispute that has been talked about for nearly 200 years.
Lal has also cited many judgments to support this view that the British-established justice system is not expected to test the rationality of a belief system.
While the book traverses across politics in UP, there are three chapters dedicated to the disputes in UP, centred around Ayodhya and other communal issues.
In her book, Lal argues that Babur “…it would have been out of character for Babur to order demolition of any temple.” She relies on academic research conducted by a number of authors and scholars.
Lal attributes the demolition of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple to Aurangzeb, a successor to the Mughal empire that Babur established in India. For this, she relies on the writings of Niccolo Manucci, an Italian who served at the courts of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb.
Manucci has written that under Aurangzeb’s rule, many temples were destroyed. Though he named Ayodhya as one of the sites, it is not mentioned which temple he had demolished.
Another Jesuit priest, Joseph Tieffentheler is also quoted as having attributed the demolition of the Swarga Dwar temple to Aurangzeb along with the Sita ki Rasoi. The Allahabad HC had handed over the latter to the Nirmohi Akhara.
Besides these scholars, there seems to be some evidence pointing at how Babur was far more liberal than Aurangzeb, whom historians have described as a strict follower of the shariah laws but also a ruler who meandered between spreading Islam at the cost of destroying Hindu religious icons and protecting the supremacy of Brahmins in temples.
There are several other mentions of historians, scholars and Western travellers who have written about the demolition of temples. They have attributed the demolition of the temple at Ayodhya to different people at different times, one even reaching back to the plunderous invasions by Mahmood of Ghazni.
Lal points out that the mosque was once called “Masjid Baburi at Janmasthan, Awadh” — a name similar to other mosques that had supposedly been built over Hindu temples, such as the Atala Devi Masjid in Jaunpur.
This book was launched on the eve of the UP election but its contents have a long shelf life.
