Excavation In Ayodhya-Crisis Of Archaeology

Crisis Of Archaeology

By Irfan Habib

The Hindustan Times (India)
11 July , 2003

Among the twenty issues framed in what is now termed the
Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, evidence is being currently taken on the second issue at a Special Bench of the Allahabad High Court, at Lucknow.

This is whether there was a Hindu temple at the disputed site before the Babri Masjid was built, and "if so, its impact on the case". While much evidence has been taken, as offered by the parties, the Bench decided to collect evidence on its own as well - by having the disputed site dug up to find whether or not there had actually been a temple below the mosque. To a lay person this decision might seem to weaken the force of the order of status quo that had been imposed by the Supreme Court. That this possibility also partly weighed with the High Court was reflected in its decision to obtain a geophysical survey of the site before actually ordering the excavation.

The work of the survey was entrusted (at the invitation of the
Archaeological Survey of India, ASI) to Tojo-Vikas International
(Pvt) Limited, a company based at Kalkaji, New Delhi, with no
previous known experience in archaeological work. In its report the conclusion was announced that the 'anomalies' "could be associated with ancient and contemporaneous structures such as pillars, foundation walls, slab flooring, extending over a large portion of the site." The word 'pillars' immediately suggested to many the existence of temple pillars, and little attention was paid to the fact that on page 26 of its report the company expressly cautioned that when it said 'pillars' there could actually be no pillars underneath, but just debris or a boulder of a certain size! In the event not a single pillar has turned up in the excavations of the
entire site, except for one belonging to the Babri Masjid's own
structure, one that had been broken by the karsevaks while
demolishing the mosque. Subsequently, even the ASI had to note
repeatedly that structures predicted by Tojo-Vikas through its
reported 'anomalies', did not in most cases match with what was found upon actual digging.

Yet it was the Tojo-Vikas report which became the basis for the High Court's orders on March 5 this year, requiring the ASI to begin excavations immediately. Now any archaeological excavation is an act not only of exploration, but also of destruction. One has to disturb, remove and demolish what lies in the upper layers in order to reach the lower. It has therefore, to be weighed very carefully whether what one is likely to get below is worth as much as what one necessarily destroys. At Mohenjo Daro, the great site of the Indus Civilization, a ruined Buddhist stupa of no artistic merit stands above a crucial part of the Citadel of the earlier city. Below it might well lie an important Indus monument. Yet till date no proposal to dig through the stupa ruins has been countenanced. This aspect was totally ignored in the excavations at Ayodhya. The entire surkhi-polished original floor of the Babri Masjid, as laid out in 1528, was removed together with most of the remaining lower parts of its walls. Whatever the karsevaks had not been able to demolish in December 1992 has thus now been destroyed. There can be no justification for such destruction under any recognised principle of archaeology.

Such being the case, what we have seen at Ayodhya is just 'crisis
archaeology' (a term used, tongue-in-cheek, for the Ayodhya
excavations by the US journal Archaeology, May-June 2003). The crisis has been for archaeology itself: would the ASI perform in such circumstances as a professional body, or simply set its sights at finding what those in power wish it to find out: the remains of a temple?

There is good reason to believe that the latter has, indeed, been the case. Once the digging began, the ASI team's object seemingly has been to look mainly for stones, bricks or artefacts that could conceivably come from a temple and to forget everything else. No use of the flotation technique to sieve out seeds, bone fragments and other minute pieces of material has been made, so that much of the excavation from an archaeological point of view has gone waste. There has been a tendency to ignore medieval 'Muslim' glazed ware and
animal bones; the High Court had especially to direct on March 26 that such wares and bones be recorded and separately preserved. It will be seen from the ASI's three reports so far submitted to the Court that it has still paid scant attention to such finds. One suspects that this is because these constitute strong evidence against the existence of a temple at the time at the site.

Now that the ASI has excavated the site for over three and a half
months, and given its 'progress reports' to the Court for periods
ending April 24, June 5 and June 19, it has become amply clear that
despite practically the entire disputed site having been dug up, no
structural or sculptural remains identifiable with those of a temple
have been found. For one thing, lime mortar and surkhi, the
recognised marks of Muslim construction, are present in practically all the excavated walls. The strong inference that the floor found below the Babri Masjid's own floor and the walls connected with it, belonged to an earlier mosque has now been confirmed with the find of the base of an arched recess (mihrab) and of arched niche (taq) in a connected wall. The find of lime -mortar and surkhi down to the lowest layers of brickwork at Ramchabutra sets at rest speculation about any pre-Muslim construction under it. An inscription which gave some momentary excitement has turned out to be in modern Devanagari, of no sacred import.

It is now left to the ASI to make the best of what it called 'structural bases' in its first 'progress report', but which in the next two reports have miraculously turned into 'pillar bases'. As described in the first report these are formed by "squarish or circular S blocks of calcrete stone over three or four courses of brickbats". What is astonishing about the nomenclature adopted for
them by the ASI is that in not a single instance are these 'bases'
associated with any pillar, in fact, as we have noted, no pillars (or
fragments of them) have been found. There are not even any marks of depression on the surface of the stones surmounting the so-called bases. In any case how can mere heaps of brickbats, uncemented by mortar, carry any kind of weight? To call them 'pillar bases' or even 'structural bases' is absurd. They could just be low seats or, in some cases, markers for shops or stalls as in the Lal Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur. The fact that some of these 'bases' are sealed, while others are not, by the original floor of the Babri Masjid, shows that they belong to different times, and most of them are demonstrably subsequent to the phases of mosque construction at the site.

These 'pillar bases' have another feature: they are easy to assemble. A series of complaints have been submitted to the judicial observers appointed by the Court on May 21 and subsequently, showing how brickbats that lay scattered under lime-surkhi floor of the Masjid, along with sandstone blocks, obviously to provide a stable base for the floor, have been re-arranged by the ASI excavators to provide evidence for 'pillar bases'. Many of these 'pillar bases' are, therefore, likely to be not genuine at all.

It is saddening that one should be obliged to speak in this manner of the work of the ASI that was once an institution in which the country could take justifiable pride. Today, one can only say that if it did not do worse at Ayodhya, part of the credit goes to the numerous archaeologists from many places in India, who maintained a constant vigil at the excavations. They did so only out of a loyalty to their profession and to secular values. When one thinks of them, one cannot help feeling sentimental about a country which, amidst all its troubles, can still bring forth such men and women.

Sentiment must, however, also nestle with cynicism. Now that the
excavations have proved such a disappointment one suddenly hears once again the demand for 'compromise'. Both the time and circumstances make the demand most suspect. Now that everything has been destroyed and dug up, why not just wait for the court verdict and obey the law?

(The writer is one of India's most eminent Historians.)