The History of Ayōdhyā and the

Rāma Janmabhūmī Dispute – II

By Smita Mukerji

Read the previous section of this series here.

Charting the Rāma Janmabhūmī Dispute

Few people are aware that the dispute over Rāma Janmabhūmī is not centred on a
singular structure, but three prominent sites that are considered sacred as per the
legend of Śrī Rāma: Janmasthāna, Svargadwārī and Trētā-kē-Ṭhākur (or Trētānātha).
There are dozens of other sacred spots dotted across the landscape of Ayōdhyā
significant to this ancient tale etched on the hearts of millions, however these three
upon which stand/stood the offending Islamic structures that make up the hornet’s
nest.
The struggle for reclaiming the sites is much older than the present-day hubbub
around it would lead us to believe. As mentioned in the previous section, the era of
the first four nawabs of Awadh saw the Vaiṣñava bairāgīs expand their influence over
Ayōdhyā. By 1766, Shuja-ud-Daulah had shifted lock, stock and barrel from Ayodhya
to Faizābād. The bairāgī sādhus moved in in large numbers and built their mûṭhs and
new temples in the vast chunks of available vacant land. Hanumān Ṭīlā was fortified
and the Nirvāñī Akhāḍā strengthened by Abhayarama Das, and Ramprasad Das had
extended the Baḍāsthān to the heart of Ayōdhyā, not far from one of the mosques at
the disputed site. Carnegy1 wrote that “great astonishment has been expressed at the

1
‘Historical Sketch of Tehsil Fyzabad, Zillah Fyzabad including Parganas Haveli-Oudh and Pachhimrath with the
old capitals Ajudhia and Fyzabad’ (P. Carnegy)
recent vitality of the Hindu religion at Ajudhia” and lists 203 Hindu institutions
established until 1870.
Unopposed, the bairāgīs staked their claim over the sites of previously destroyed
structures and by 1793, the mosque on the converted Svargadwārī site had been
substantially damaged by them.2 The Trētā-kē-Ṭhākur site was taken over in 1784 and
rebuilt3 by the Holkar queen, Ahalyabai, who also constructed its beautiful adjoining
ghāt. The crumbling down of these structures was lamented in the works of Muslim
writers of the 19th century as the ‘signs of bad days of Islam.’ With the nawab freely
inducting the Gosāīṅ sādhus in Awadh’s army, they grew in clout and this became
altogether too alarming for the Shia clergy, who began devising ways to lay claim on
the sites.
The Shia clergy exhibited a virulent hostility towards Hindus4, as well as the Sunnis on
occasions5, and struggled to preserve orthodoxy and communal delineations in the
face of the Awadh government’s largely conciliatory outlook that co-opted rural Hindu
elites and employed Hindus in the bureaucracy, and deferred to the ‘irreligious’ Sunni

2
The mosque lies today in a dilapidated state at this site. There are two available pictures of the Svargadwārī
mosque on the banks of Sarayū, one painted by William Hodges in 1783, and the second by William Daniell in
1789. Comparing the two one finds that several temples had been built around the mosque in the intervening
period of six years. Daniell’s painting also shows that a top portion of one of the minārs was broken indicating
a state of disrepair.

3
This was however not on the ancient Trētā-kē -Ṭhākur site, whereupon still stood the mosque—albeit in
ruins—that had been built after demolishing the earlier structure, but on another piece of land close to the
original location where a temple was said to have been constructed by the Raja of Kullu a couple of centuries
earlier [this timeframe however appears unlikely]. (‘Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, Vol. 1’, Lucknow 1877,
edited by W. C. Bennet)

4
The prominent Shia cleric, Sayyid Dildar 'Ali Nasirbandi, “harbored an almost violent animosity toward
Hindus, arguing that the Awadh government should take stern measures against them. He divided unbelievers
into three kinds, those (harbi) against whom Muslims must make war, those (dhimmi) who have accepted
Muslim rule and pay a poll-tax, and those (musta'min) whom their Muslim rulers have temporarily granted
security of life. He insisted that Imami Shi'ism accepted only Jews and Christians as protected minorities
(dhimmis), and even they could only achieve this status if they observed the ordinances governing it.” He
differed with Sunni schools that considered Hindus a protected minority.
He wrote that Muslims could only grant infidels personal security (aman) in a country they ruled for one year,
lamenting that the government had long treated as grantees of personal security the Hindus of northern India,
who openly followed their idolatrous religion, drinking wine, and sometimes even mating with Sayyid women.
Legally … the lives and property of Hindus could be licitly taken by Muslims. Nasirabadi shared this rather
bloodthirsty attitude with other Muslim clerics, of course. The Sunni Naqshbandi thinker Shah Valiyu'llah
(1703-62) wanted the Mughals to ban Hinduism.
The dependence of Muslim rule upon an alliance with Hindu landholders rendered any such persecution of
the majority community wholly impracticable. [emphasis added]” (John Ricardo I. “Juan” Cole, ‘Roots of
North Indian Shi’ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859’)

5
The majority of Indian Muslims and consequently the qāzis officiating Awadh’s judiciary were Sunnis. “The
Shi‘i ulama sought through professional closure practices to assert control over the monetary resources that
notables poured into religious institutions, no easy task in the traditional, ecumenical setting of India. To
monopolize religious authority and the patronage of the Shi‘i state would require the exclusion of popular Sufi
leaders and institutions. It also implied the displacement of Sunni ulama already occupying official religious
offices.” (Ibid.)
Mughals6. This also brought them in conflict with the popular Sufi leaders and
institutions, who claimed to commune with God7, and whose pantheistic ideas gave
them an appearance closer to Hindu ascetics, owing to which they commanded a large
following not only among Indian Muslims but also Hindus. Nasirbandi’s work ‘Ash-
shihab ath-thaqib’ pronounced anathemas upon the Sufis imputing uncontrolled
passions to them, which became the origin of the defamatory insinuation against the
sufis that their mystical love poetry, ostensibly for God, were actually addressed to
real women or slave-boys, citing Imami oral reports denouncing the Sufis. The Shia
usūli ulama also strove mightily to stop Shia gentry from patronising Hindu holy men.
In reality, Awadh’s touted ‘Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb’ was a kind of loose syncretism
consisting of labyrinthine interactions of these disparate groups, commingling,
including with those outside bounds of social respectability (e.g., courtesans and
eunuchs) that led to hybridisation of religious practices, and ambivalent political
patronage, which did not necessarily imply communal harmony. It was a period of
general moral decadence, paucity of character and vigour exemplified in the
dissoluteness of the Indian nobility8, in particular the nawabs, who, as described in the
words of Henry Lawrence9, “engaged in every species of debauchery, and surrounded
by wretches, English, Eurasian and Native of the lowest description his [Muhammad
Ali Shah, r. 1837-42] reign was one continued satire upon the subsidiary and protected
system.”
Beginning with the reign of the toothless Sa’adat Ali Khan II, the character of the state
turned towards Shia hierocracy. Remissions of monies were made to finance building
of mosques and various religious and public works like canals in Iraq as well as in
Awadh, while the burden on the Indian peasantry was increased as the state’s fortunes
declined. Awadh’s phenomenal treasury was steadily depleted owing to the
impositions of the subsidiary alliance entered with the British, and between 1814 and
1837 it had shrunk drastically from 14 crores to a mere 70 lakhs.
As the Shia clergy gained ascendency, the usūli rationale increasingly formed the
basis of government judicial policy that promoted discrimination on grounds of
religious affiliation. Consequently, the Awadh government often pursued policies

6
They were denounced for not making war against the Hindus, for not forcing them to accept Islam, as was
their religious duty as per Islam. Within 5 years after the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, the despised
Jizyah was revoked in 1713, and the governorship of Awadh passed to Hindus (though Jizyah was re-imposed
in 1717 under pressure from the Muslim orthodoxy and Awadh soon came into the hands of the nawabs in
1722.) Jizyah was abolished finally by Emperor Muhammad Shah in 1720. The persistent efforts of some
champions of orthodoxy and admirers of Aurangzeb to revive it, failed before the rapidly increasing strength of
the Hindus and the section which stood for compromise with them.

7
considered heretical as per Islamic orthodoxy

8
The Hindu nobility tended to emulate the class in power, seldom demonstrating individual character and
conviction born out of adherence to values of their religion.

9
British military officer of the 1857 ‘Siege of Lucknow’ fame, at this time appointed to the Revenue Service of
India
inimical to the interests of Hindus and
Sunnis.10 The governments under
Nasiru'd-Din Haider Shah Jahan (r.
1827-37) and Amjad 'Ali Shah (r.
1842-47) were most anti-Hindu.11 As
the dominant power, the British
residents in Awadh often intervened in
Awadh's communal conflicts, however
not always out of altruistic motives.
These pre-industrial impulses
constitute the beginnings of
communal riots of the nature that
mark much of modern Indian history.12
It is in this background of communal
antagonism that the claims about the
disputed structures of Ayōdhyā must
be viewed, especially in respect of
some mysterious occurrences that
began in this period: the appearance
of sundry inscriptions in a mosque on
a site in an elevated patch in the
western part of Ayōdhyā, known as
‘Rāmkōṭ’. But what mosque was this, Nawab Nasiru’d-Din Haider at dinner with Modaunt
what is the story of this site it stood on, Ricketts, British Resident at Lucknow (1822-30) and his
wife (Source: British Library)

10
“Amjad 'Ali Shah enacted anti-Hindu policies, founding Shi'i shops to drive Hindu merchants out of business,
and rewarding Hindu officials who adopted Imami Shi'ism. The provision of government welfare monies to
only the Shi'i poor encouraged thousands of Hindus to convert to Shi'ism in the 1840s, according to clerical
sources. Awadh’s fiercely usūli governments showed little understanding of their Hindu subjects, allowing
communal resentments to fester, a policy that culminated in a major battle over a religious edifice in
Faizabad.” (Cole, ‘Roots of North Indian Shi’ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859’, pg.
229)

11
In 1829 Nasiru'd-Din Haider forced a Brahmin boy to go through circumcision even after his family changed
their minds about having him convert to Shi'ism. He told the outraged resident that he had a divine right to
dispose of his subjects as he wished. Ricketts angrily retorted that the British Government recognized no such
right. When, three months later, following violence provoked allegedly by Hindus accused of defiling a mosque
in Rikabganj, the king vindictively sent troops into the area, who plundered, ripped nose-rings off the faces of
Hindu women, and destroyed all 47 Hindu temples in that quarter, putting to flight its entire population of
about three thousand. When rioting threatened to spread to other quarters, the British resident intervened
with the king, who reluctantly sent criers through the city warning that he would punish anyone found
molesting a Hindu or insulting his temples. (Ibid.)

12
Violence most often broke out between Shias and Sunnis during the Shia mourning month of Muharram, as
in Jaunpur in 1776 or Lucknow in 1807. (Cole – Khayru'd-Din Muhammad Ilahabadi ‘Tuhfah-'i tazah’, MS 483,
fol. 59a-63b, India Office; Resident to Lt. Colonel Thomas, 8 Mar. 1807, FDPC, 26 Mar. 1807, no. 49; Resident
to Sec. Govt Pol Dept, 13 Mar. 1807, FDPC, 26 Mar 1807, no 48)
Amjad Ali Mirza, as heir apparent played a prominent part in harassing Hindus, and in 1840, when Hindus were
said to have defiled a mosque of a landlord with pig’s blood, he took active part in retaliations that resulted in
the killing of several cows, profaning of temples and Hindu shops being looted. (Ibid. pg. 228)
what was possibly the purpose of the inscriptions being placed inside it, and where
are the inscriptions today?

Rāmkōṭ
“To Oude [Ajodhya] from thence are 50 c.; a citie of ancient
note, and seate of a Potan king, now much ruined; the castle
built foure hundred yeeres agoe. Heere are also the ruines of
Ranichand[s] castle and houses, which the Indians
acknowled[g]e for the great God, saying that he tooke flesh
upon him to see the tamasha of the world. In these ruines
remayne certaine Bramenes, who record the names of all such
Indians as wash themselves in the river running thereby; which
custome, they say, hath continued foure lackes of yeeres (which
is three hundred ninetie foure thousand and five hundred yeeres
before the worlds creation). Some two miles on the further
side of the river is a cave of his with a narrow entrance, but
so spacious and full of turnings that a man may well loose
himself there, if he take not better heed; where it is thought
his ashes were buried. Hither resort many from all parts of
India, which carry from hence in remembrance certaine grains
of rice as blacke as gunpowder, which they say have beene
preserved ever since. Out of the ruines of this castle is yet
much gold tryed.” [Emphasis added]

This description of Ayōdhyā by William Finch (d. 1613), an English merchant in the
service of the British East India Company, who travelled to India in 1608-11, during
the reign of Jahāṅgīr, is one of the earliest references to the mound known as Rāmkōṭ
or the fort of Rāma. He maintained a carefully kept journal that “supplied in substance
with more accurate observations of men, beasts, plants, cities, deserts, castles,
buildings, regions, religions, then almost any other; as also of waies, wares and
warres”13, gleaned by the writer either by his own journeyings or by diligent inquiry
from others.
Rāmkōṭ is
described in
another later
account by the
Flemish
geographer,
Joannes De
Laet (b.1581 –
d. 1649), who
became
Director of the
Dutch East
India Company
in 1625. In his
‘De Imperio
Magni Mogolis

13
Rev. Samuel Purchas (‘Purchas his Pilgrimes’, London, 1625)
Sive India Vera Commentarius’, published 1631 in Latin, De Laet freely avails himself
of the material in Finch’s work, however adds several fascinating details about this
sacred tract of central importance to the Rāma Janmabhūmī dispute. Following is an
excerpt from the English translation of his work by John S. Hoyland (‘The Empire of
the Great Mogol: Description of India and Fragment of Indian History’, published 1927)
“…thence [from Lucknow] to Oudee (an ancient city, once the
seat of Pathan kings, but now almost deserted), 50 cos. Not
far from this city may be seen the ruins of the fort and palace
of Ramchand, whom the Indians regard as God Most High: they
say that he took on him human flesh that he might see the great
tamasha of the world. Amongst these ruins live certain Bramenes
who carefully note down the name of all such pilgrims as duly
perform their ceremonial ablutions in the neighbouring river.
They say that this custom has been kept up for many centuries.
About two miles from these rivers is a cave with a narrow mouth
but so spacious within and with so many ramifications that it
is difficult to find one’s way out again. They believe that
the ashes of the god are hidden here. Pilgrims come to this
place from all parts of India and after worshipping the idol
take away with them some grains of charred rice as proof of
their visit. This rice they believe to have been kept here for
many centuries.” [Emphasis added]

Yet another writing which repeats much of

this information on Rāmkōṭ is the book
‘Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of
Asia and Afrique’ by Thomas Herbert (b.
1602 – d. 1682)14, published 1634.
“At this Oudee or Oujea (a citty
in Bengala & felicitated by
Ganges) are many Antick
Monuments, especially memorable
is the pretty old castle
Ranichand built by a Bannyan
Pagod of that name about 994500
years ago after their accomt,
from which to this the Bannyans
haue repayred to offer here and
to wash away their sinnes in
Ganges, each of which is recorded
by name by the laborious Bramyns
who acquaintes this Pagod with
their good progressions and
charitable offerings.”

So what was it about the nondescript

mound with its ruins that it was significant
enough to find prominent mention in the
accounts of foreign travellers among all the
thriving places of the time in India? It was
because Rāmkōṭ was the site of an ancient

14
However, according to Sir William Foster (‘Early Travels in India: 1583 – 1619), Herbert did not personally
travel much beyond the immediate vicinity of Surat and mostly reproduced the information from De Laet’s
work.
citadel of the same name, the precincts within which was located the natal home of
Rāma, divinity incarnated in the age of Trētā as per the Hindus.
However, what is puzzling in all these accounts of Ayōdhyā is that none of them
speaks of any mosque nor the presence of any religious activity of Muslims in
the area. From all these accounts it is apparent that at least until 1638 (the year a
revised edition of Herbert’s book was brought out) Rāmkōṭ existed in its ancient
situation, it was occupied by Hindu Brahmins and there were several such ‘antique’
structures all over Ayōdhyā. Wherefrom then did the mosque spring in this place and,
most importantly, when?

Our story gets only more ‘curiouser’ from here...

Cover Picture:
Painting of Ayutthaya ca. 1665, by Johannes Vingboons, ordered by the Dutch
East India Company, Amsterdam

Read the next section of this series here.