‘Babri Masjid not built on temple’

Departing from ASI’s ‘‘no structural anomalies found’’ preliminary report submitted to the Allahabad High Court on ...

Departing from ASI’s ‘‘no structural anomalies found’’ preliminary report submitted to the Allahabad High Court on the Ayodhya excavation, a Left-leaning archaeologist serving as observer at the ongoing excavation site is of the opinion that the Babri Masjid was built not on a temple, but on a ‘‘Sultanate mosque’’.

In a hand-written letter to the Sunni Central Waqf Board (one of the key parties to the dispute) counsel Zafaryab Jilani, archaeolgist Suraj Bhan has observed: ‘‘The Babri mosque structure was superimposed on the Sultanate mosque and was constructed of kankar stones and brick bats in the middle. It was plastered with churnam-surkhi mortar which was also used in the floor of the Babri mosque’’. Bhan’s letter, which was the basis of the stand taken by Jilani in court, also states that the site seems to have been largely deserted by late Khushana and Gupta times.

However, in Bhan’s letter the second point seems to be the most explosive: ‘‘There is no temple structure of early medieval period at the site though several sculptured stones and moulded burnt bricks, probably dating back to the sultanate period, were found used there.’’ Admitting that they have found ‘‘two structural periods of the mosques’’, he observes that the lower (or earlier one) belonged to Sultanate period. ‘‘Its burnt brick walls were made of derived early medieval burnt bricks and stones.’’

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The letter further adds that the ‘‘the Babri mosque floor was cut to bury the dead both in the north and south possibly at a later stage (may be 19th century).

Analysing the Ram Chabutara, Bhan writes that a water reservoir was ‘‘filled with stones and converted into a plinth to have a small chabutara at a later stage’’ which ‘‘was superimposed by Ram Chabutara’’.

And the much-debated ‘‘pillar bases’’ found during the excavation, Bhan observes ‘‘is of the same phase as the Chabutara as both were cut into the Babri floor’’. On the controversy over the slab with inscription, Bhan writes: ‘‘The inscribed slab found in J-3 was observed by me lying upside down alongwith some other Kankar stones in a deep filling in the pit.’’ The pit, he says, ‘‘seems to have been filled at the time of renovation of the Babri mosque’’ by the Nawab of Awadh in the 19th Century.