Archaeology of Ayodhya - Controversy of The Archaeological Findings

Controversy of The Archaeological Findings

The ASI findings are hotly disputed.

In fact, two Muslim graves were also recovered in the excavation, as reported in Outlook weekly. While the ASI videographed and photographed the graves on April 22, it did not perform a detailed analysis of them. The skeletons found at the site were not sent for carbon-dating, neither were the graves measured. Anirudha Srivastava, a former ASI archaeologist, said that in some trenches, some graves, terracotta and lime mortar and surkhi were discovered which also indicated Muslim habitation. It was surmised, also, that some mosque existed on the site and that Babri was built on the site of another mosque.

Richard M Eaton, an American historian of medieval India, documented major instances of destruction of Hindu temples between 1192 and 1760. The total adds up to 80. Eaton did not claim that this list is exhaustive. Furthermore, each of these 80 cases represents the destruction of not just one, but of a large number of temples. For example, one of these 80 cases, the “1094: Benares, Ghurid army” case, refers to the Ghurid royal army that “destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations”. This figure of 80 cases doesn't include a Ram temple at Ayodhya.

Following allegations that the Hari-Vishnu inscription corresponded to an inscription dedicated to Vishnu that was supposedly missing in the Lucknow State Museum since the 1980s, the museum director Jitendra Kumar stated that the inscription had never been missing from the museum, although it wasn't on display. He showed the inscription of his museum at a press conference for all to see. It was different in shape, colour and textual content from the Vishnu-Hari inscription.

There were also attempts by Babri Masjid supporters to prohibit all archaeological excavations at the disputed site. Naved Yar Khan's petition at the Supreme Court to prohibit all archaeological excavations at the Mosque site was rejected. Similarly, there were questions raised as to what level the archaeological digging should reach — should they stop when evidence of a Hindu temple was found? Both Buddhists and Jains asked for the digging to continue much further to learn whether they, too, could lay claim to the site.

Pillar bases were first discovered by the ASI's former director-general, B.B. Lal, in 1975. His report gave an enormous boost to the Ram Temple cause. It was however criticised by archaeologist D. Mandal. In the excavation of 2003, fifty of the "pillar bases" were once again unearthed. Although they appear to be aligned, D. Mandal's conclusion by archaeological theory stated that the "pillar bases" belonged to different periods; that is, they had never existed together at any point of time; they were not really in alignment with one another; they were not even pillar bases, but junctions of walls, bases of the load-bearing columns at the intersections of walls.