I was right. In the last few weeks I have been called a running dog of the VHP, and a lunatic leftie. One mail on our website even promised that when the Hindu revolution comes, I should vamoose to Bangladesh. In addition, there have been accusations that I never visited the site, that the stone slab I had mentioned in my June 2 article with early Devanagari inscription on it did not exist, that I be hauled up for contempt of court. Let's tackle the stone slab matter first.
On May 29, The Times of India reported: "(Sunni Waqf Board counsel Zafaryab Jilani said that) the inscription has neither been removed nor photographed till date. Even the plaintiffs or defendants have no idea about this particular inscription which is lying upside down." Okay. But on June 12, the same paper quoted unnamed ASI officials as saying that it would take a long time before anyone can say that the fourth letter is the sacred sign swoaham followed by the word 'Ram'. "Our own epigraphist has managed to decipher only one word, that is, 'pala' in the inscription," the official is quoted. The ASI officials' view totally corroborates the copy of the inscription we carried in Outlook. I had written: "The pro-mandir men immediately saw the fourth letter as the Hindu sacred sign swoaham, followed by the word 'Ram'...Non-VHP observers see no swoaham there, neither do they make out Ram." Yet, my article has been accused of being "partisan and inaccurate".
The stone slab is still underground, since trench J3 was flooded. The water is being pumped out now and the slab will perhaps be unearthed in the next few days. As for charges that I was nowhere near the site and fabricated my story, based on the fact that my name is not entered in the visitors' register, did you expect me to visit the disputed area wearing a fluorescent Outlook T-shirt handing out copies of the magazine to the policemen?
Which brings me to the question of bias. 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 couldn't decide due to "structural activities at 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".
The ideology does not matter. A journalist must report the facts. So let me apologise for two errors I made. One is grave: I wrote that the ASI reports to Murli Manohar Joshi; it actually comes under Jagmohan.The other is a technicality: the ASI did not project a photograph of the Devanagari inscription on a screen for the excavation observers to see, they showed a large photographic print.
