The Ayodhya Temple-Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources c3: Preface
The Ayodhya Temple-Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources c3
- Language
- English
Preface
c3.1
This work sums up my search and research for historical sources, particularly Muslim, on the existence and desecration of the Rāma Janmabhūmi temple and its replacement with the Bābarī mosque at Ayodhya. That way it has emerged as a more or less full account of the sources shedding light on the issue. I have also taken due notice of the case sought to be made out against our theses by Muslim and 'secular' Hindu historians and scholars.
c3.2
My research on the subject was occasioned in response to the challenge thrown time and again by Sayyid Shahabuddin for anyone to produce evidence of the alleged existence and demolition of the Rāma temple. In February 1990, I published the result of my research in certain dailies. My article on the subject in the *Indian Express* for February 26, 1990, aroused a controversy.
c3.3
Subsequently, I hunted out more evidence in favour of my theses, the most significant one issuing from the pen of a descendant of Bābar — Aurangzīb's grand-daughter, to be pracise—, which should have clinched the issue for good.
c3.4
The core of the case for Rāma-Janmabhūmi is as under :
c3.5
It is futile to discuss the historicity of Rāma and identity and antiquity of Ayodhya in the context of the present controversy. Let historians fight it out at some other forum. What needs to be clearly understood in the present context is the patent fact that Hindus can no longer view with equanimity the mosque held by them to be standing on the debris of a temple called Rāma Janmabhūmi temple, Rāma temple, or Sītā Rasoī temple destroyed by Bābar.
c3.6
The temple party are supposed to establish that the Bābarī mosque was built after destroying the temple, whereas the mosque party are supposed to establish that the mosque was built on vacant land. The former have marshalled a lot of positive evidence, based on British government and Congress government records; European travelogues; Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu sources; as well as archaeological and art-historical findings. But the mosque party have not yet been able to produce a single positive evidence in its favour. The utmost that is sought to be done by them is to dismiss on one pretext or another in a rather negationistic fashion whatever evidence the temple party brings before them, as also to make much of non-reference to the demolition in Tulasīdāsa etc., knowing full well as historians that negative evidence by itself is seldom a passport to truth.
c3.7
In fact, the mosque party appear to have had no inkling of the relevant Muslim sources brought to light by the temple party, nor have they had any concern for further excavations for more light on the issue. In fact, they have gone to the length of having the temerity of turning down the VHP's proposal for further excavations. Sample their method of negation. When evidence of existence and demolition of the temple was waiting to come to light, the temple party was jeered at for sustaining something without proof. When evidence of British authors was produced, it was rejected as motivated by the policy of divide and rule. When Muslim authors' evidence has been brought to light, it is sought to be rejected as motivated by Muslim bravado. Heaven knows what sort of evidence will satisfy them.
c3.8
The mosque party have prefered no explanation why the mosque was erected at such a high altitude as that of the Ramkot, when there are clear injunctions in the *Sharī'ah* to situate a mosque in, or within easy reach from, the inhabited area for the sake of convenience. Neither do they have any evidence that the mound was inhabited by Muslims during Bābar's time.
c3.9
The mosque party insist that the real Janmabhūmi is either the Janmasthān Sīta Rasoī temple on the other mound to the north-west of the Bābarī mosque, the two mounds being divided by a road built during the British regime, or the Rāma Chabūtarā in the courtyard of the mosque. Even if one is inclinded to grant either of the two hypotheses, no reason is given why the mosque should have been built so as to enclose the Chabūtarā within its compound, when Muslims cannot brook ringing of the temple-bell while offering their prayer. Besides, according to a teaching of the Prophet cited by Shāh Walīullāh, ¹ infidels should be kept at such a distance from Muslims that the former's light falls outside the latter's range of visibility.
c3.10
¹ Shāh Walīullāh, the *Hujjatullāh-i 'l-Balīghah*, II, 'Unwānu'l-Hudūd (50), Karachi, n.d., p. 468
c3.11
In his *Hadīqah-ī Shuhadā* (1956), Mirzā Jān quotes a passage from a work entitled *Sahīfah-ī Chihal Naṣā'ih-i Bahādurshāhī*, a copy of which, made in 1816, was found by him in the library of Mirzā Ḥaydar Shukoh s/o Mirzā Sulaymān Shukoh s/o Prince Dārā Shukoh, which says that the mosque in question has displaced the temple in question. The work he attributes to Aurangzīb's grand-daughter. It seems to have been composed in 1707 circa. Instead of trying to find it out, the pro-mosque historians dismiss it as either spurious or non-existent. But Mirzā Jān is not the only author to refer to it. Mirzā Rajab 'Alī Beg Surūr, author of the *Fasānah-ī 'Ibrat* and a contemporary of Mirzā Jān, refers to it as telling the tale of the temple-demolition and also as a work easily available in his time. Besides, there are about a dozen nineteenth-century records from Muslim pen which contain similar information 'gathered from past records and books of history.' How can they all be belied ? Especially when the information had the potentiality of jeopardizing their case for recovery of the alleged Hanumangadhi mosque pending in the royal court and at any rate by implication bolstering up the Bairagī-s' case for recovery of the Rāma temple. It is indeed significant that prior to the present controversy the fact of the temple-demolition was not called in question even once.
c3.12
It appears that after Bābar the mosque came to be deserted by Muslims and continued to be used by Hindus till, say, the turn of the 17th century. That is why William Finch (1608-11) found neither Muslims nor the mosque but only *Paṇḍā-s* in the Ramkot, where the ‘castle and houses’ connected with Rāma were in ruins; Abu ’l-Faḍl speaks of Ayodhya as the place of Rāma’s incarnation and of the great Rāmanavamī fair held there annually; Sant Lāladāsa, author of the *Avadhavilāsa* (1675), gives details about the birth-place of Rāma without referring to any mosque; Sujān Rāi Bhaṇḍārī, author of the *Khulāṣatu’t-Tawārīkh* (1695-96), mentions the replacement by a mosque of the Keśava Rāi temple at Mathura on the orders of Aurangzīb but is silent about the similar incident at Ayodhya, though he does mention Ayodhya as the birth-place of Rāma and thereby as ‘one of the holiest places’. It appears that the Rāma temple fell a victim soon after to the forces of temple destruction let loose by Aurangzīb, which is why it is as late as circa 1707 that the mosque came to be remembered in the *Ṣaḥīfah-i Chihal Naṣā’ih-i Bahādurshāhī* after a gap of 275 years, without, however, any reference to the name of the destroyer. No wonder that, according to Joseph Tieffenthaler (1710-1785), who toured Avadh during 1766-1771, it was widely acknowledged that the replacement of the temple by the mosque was effected by Bābar or Aurangzīb. Even during Aurangzīb’s time, however, the mosque could not attain the shape of a full-fledged mosque. The map of Ayodhya found in the Kapad-Dwār Collection of the City Palace Musuem, Jaipur, shows that, in 1717, the superstructure of the ‘mosque’ comprised of three *Śikhara-s* (temple-spires) had no domes but only corbelled ceilings originally. The domes owe their existence to someone else than Bābar and Aurangzīb, who came after them.
c3.13
The Rāma Chabūtarā, attributed without any basis to the ingenuity of Akbar, is mentioned first by Tieffenthaler during 1766-1771, and shown and in the Kapad-Dwār map of 1717, and is conspicuous by its absence in the *Ṣaḥīfah-ī Chihal Naṣā’ih-i Bahādurshāhī* (circa 1707). May be, it came into existence during the interval.
c3.14
The so-called tolerance-teaching testament of Bābar to Humāyūṅ has turned out to be a spurious document. The real testament delivered by Bābar to Humāyūṅ orally in the former's death-bed is totally silent about the contents of the written one.
c3.15
Now, what is to be done with the structure of the Bābarī mosque ? The verdict of the *Sharī'ah* is clear : While it is quite lawful, rather a religious duty, to destroy infidels' places of worship in *Jihād*, once they become subjects of a Muslim state and agree to pay the *Jizyah*, they become *Dhimmī*-s (protected ones), whose places of worship are protected by the state, though they cannot be allowed to build new, or sometimes even to repair the old ones. Since under and even before Bābar (under Muslim rule), Hindus were *Dhimmī*-s, Bābar violated the provisions of the *Sharī'ah* in destroying the Rāma temple and building the mosque on its site. Not being based on piety (*taqwā*), this mosque is a mosque of evil (*masjidu 'ḍ - ḍirār*), Qur'ānically speaking, and deserves the same treatment as accorded to the latter, viz. destruction.
c3.16
I enclose the scheme of transliteration followed generally in this book. I have tried to adhere to it in respect of Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu proper names also but have had to deviate a little here and there in respect of modern ones.
c3.17
The scheme contains full lists of Romanized Arabic and Devanāgarī characters. Persian adopts them in full, with an addition of four characters—پ , چ , ژ , and گ. Likewise, Urdu takes over all Arabic and Persian characters including the additions, borrowing in its turn three characters—ٹ , ڈ , and ڑ—from Devanāgarī. We have thought it fit to give the Roman, Devanāgarī, and Arabic alphabets in full, and only additional Persian-Urdu character.
c3.18
A word about the spelling of the name Bābar. The name is spelt as both ‘Bābur’ and ‘Bābar’ but pronounced as ‘Bābar’. Not being acquainted with Turkish, to which the word belongs, I thought it safe to follow the prevalent pronunciation in spelling the word. After seeing the body of the book through the press, I find that E. Denison Rose has discussed the issue in detail while introducing *A Collection of Poems by the Emperor Babur* (Calcutta, 1910), p. i, and come to the conclusion that the name should be distinctly vocalized and spelt as ‘Bābur’ or ‘Bābūr’. But, so far as the present work is concerned, it is rather too late to mend.
c3.19
I am beholden to Dr. Chandrika Prasad Dikshita ‘Lalita’, Director of the Chandadas Sahitya Shodh Samsthan, Banda, for kindly presenting me a copy of the *Avadhavilāsa* by Sant Lāladāsa, which contains a valuable account of the Rāma-Janmabhūmi akin to that contained in the *Ayodhyā-Māhātmya*. As metioned above, the *Indian Express* published my article on Muslim Testimony on February 26, 1990, which aroused some controversy. The article and the controversy find place in Appendix VII. I am indebted to the esteemed daily for this. I take the opportunity of thanking my co-experts on the VHP side in the dialogue with AIBMAC arranged by the Home Ministry, who, too, have helped reinforce the temple case by bringing to light archaeological and other material benefited from by me.
c3.20
I must not forget to express my gratefulness to Mr. J.L. Gupta, who has contributed the Name-Index to it.
c3.21
Lucknow *Harsh Narain* Deepawali, 1992
Cites (1)
- Ayodhyāmāhātmya — Sanskrit