8.3. Christian understanding of the Hindu position for The Present Book is My Last Contribution to the Literature

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Foreword

The present book is my last contribution to theliterature on what is known in India as ?communalism?, meaning the conflict between thedifferent religions, principally Hinduism and Islam.Some of the authors whose works were published byVoice of India, notably Prof. Harsh Narain and SriSuhas Majumdar, had only started speaking out onthe communal question in the very last years of their lives. We must be grateful to them that they werewilling to sacrifice their years of well-earned rest to adiagnosis of this unpleasant problem. I am veryfortunate in having discovered the problem at anearlier stage of life and being offered a forum where Icould contribute to the research into and reflection onits causes. In terms of my own potential, I feel I haveexhausted the topic and I now intend to move on (or return) to more fundamental subjects of philosophyand religion.My first book in this sphere of interest was

Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid: A Case Study in HinduMuslim Conflict

(1990). I now find it asomewhat clumsy attempt to understand the Ayodhyacontroversy, but at the time it served a good purpose,viz. to break the false impression that the world of scholarship including Western Indologists was unitedin certifying that the Hindu claim to the disputed sitein Ayodhya was historically unfounded. in thesubsequent years, evidence has been piling up infavour of the Hindu claim. Coming full circle, I haveincluded in this book a compilation of papers onvarious aspects of the Ayodhya debate written by me between 1995 and 2002. Its main focus is theargumentation and view of Hindu-Muslim historyoffered by the anti-temple party.My thanks are due to Yamini Liu, Gopi Maliwal,Krishan Bhatnagar and friends, Satinder Trehan,Tushar Ravuri and Vishal Agarwal, and to the Voiceof India publishers.Antwerp, 25 January

2002 KE

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1. The Ayodhya debate: focus onthe ?no temple? evidence

In May 1998, the World Archaeological Congressheld a conference on the island of Brac, Croatia,where a session was devoted to the Ayodhya dispute.I had registered to read a paper, and though Icouldn?t make it to the conference due to unforeseenfamily matters, I had prepared the following text.

1.1.Two sides to the story

In references to the question whether there really wasa Hindu temple at the Ayodhya site later covered bythe Babri Masjid, the focus is invariably on the casemade by the Hindu side, viz. that there was a temple,and that different types of evidence confirm this. Thestandard question is: is this evidence for the templedemolition scenario valid? Have they succeeded in proving the existence of the temple? By contrast, the

opponents

of the temple hypothesis are but veryrarely asked to put their evidence on the table.Let us now look at the anti-temple argumentation(with due attention to the several non-archaeologicaltypes of evidence)

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and in particular to its offer of positive evidence that the allegedly demolishedHindu temple never existed. Of course, some mightargue that it is impossible to prove the non-existenceof something, and that it is therefore unreasonable todemand such proof.

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But this argument is not valid: if there was no temple and no temple destruction, thenthere must have been something else at the site, someother history preceding the building of the mosque,which is exactly as capable of leaving some writtenor archaeological testimony as a demolished templewould. There is no need to prove the temple?s non-existence; it will do to prove the existence of

something else at the site.The disputed site is an elevated site near the centre of a city, quite well-known to a whole city population,so it is perfectly reasonable to expect the existence of testimonies of any alternative history of the site.Thus, the site may have been covered with a forestand the city records mention its felling to make wayfor a mosque; or the owner of some secular buildingstanding at the site sold his real estate to the builder of the projected mosque at a fair price,

vide

thewritten sales contract. As much as the temple party isexpected to provide evidence for the temple, the non-temple party must provide evidence for thealternative to the temple. Now, a close scrutiny of the argumentation by thenontemple party, whether by the Babri Masjid ActionCommittee, by the scholars representing it during theGovernment sponsored scholars? debateof December-January 1990-91 (at least its last twomeetings)

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, or by independent scholars such as thoseof Jawaharlal Nehru University

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shows that none of them even formulates an alternative hypothesis. Notone of the numerous scholars who took up armsagainst the temple party has thought it necessary toexplicitate even in the vaguest terms what exactlyhappened before a mosque was built at the site.Much less does any of them provide any kind of evidence for such an alternative scenario, eventhough positive proof for a non-temple scenariowould be the best possible refutation of the templescenario.

1.2. Vanquishing a straw man

The non-temple argumentation is confined to twotypes of evidence: arguments from silence, andattempts to find fault with pieces of evidence offered by the temple party.Criticism of the pro-temple argument is usuallydirected against a straw man, not against the actualargumentation as presented by pro-temple scholars.A number of much acclaimed anti-temple

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