Ayodhya verdict: Judging the judges, part II

I have been going through the Ayodhya judgment in order to make more informed comments on what went on in judges' mind when they gave the most crucial judicial verdict in the history of independent India. I have been reading every reaction to Ayodhya verdict I could lay my hands on the internet, and I have seen only two commentators actually studying the detailed judgment so far – Swapan Dasgupta, and he seems to have read only a small part of it, and a Biswajit Roy who seems to post articles on a site named kafila.org. The former is a Hindu nationalist like us. The latter appears to be a die-hard secularist. The bigwigs in the media can't be bothered to do the hard work of poring over thousands of pages to understand the myriad legal and historical issues involved in the judgment and are content to shoot from the hip, as it were.

Be that as it may, let me provide our readers information on one of the issues that gives most anguish to our armchair commentators from secularist camp – the ASI report which, in their view, was used to pass judgment on whether Babur demolished a Hindu temple to build a mosque. As may be expected, they trash the report, usual excuse being that “experts” dispute it. Of course, none of them can be bothered to specify who the said experts are.

So, to understand if the ASI report was indeed “unscientific”, “full of flaws”, “highly suspect” or “technically unsustainable” as claimed by one Nivedita Menon here, or as claimed here by Dilip Padgaonkar, the man who descends to street language and tries to get a final solution to Kashmir almost in a jiffy, “... incomplete at best and, at worst, misleading. At any rate, experts are divided on the subject.” I went through the relevant parts of the detailed judgment. I really wish I could question these worthies on how they reached the judgment on ASI report cited above. I can bet they can be tied in knots within minutes by anyone who goes through the detailed verdict.

The ASI report part of Sudheer Agrawal's judgment has been treated with characteristic thoroughness. Every aspect of the matter has been considered in detail, every objection by all the historians paraded by the Muslim side has been taken into account. The secularist historians were cross-examined, and as they did when they testified on other issues, on this issue too they came across as biased, shallow and ambiguous. In the end, they could not defend their “objections” and judges decided to accept the ASI report.

To start with, ASI did not carry out the excavation activity by itself, as many perhaps seem to imagine. Every trench excavated at the site was under observation by judges nominees, representatives of the Hindu side and representatives of the Muslim side. Every artifact discovered, every bit of structural remains found in the trenches was videographed, photographed and details mentioned in a daily register, which was signed by all the observers of all sides. Given the detailed process followed by ASI, it can be safely considered that it was impossible for ASI or anyone else to “create” any evidence in favor of either side.

The excavations were preceded by Ground Penetrating Radar survey. The GPR is a non-destructive exercise that reveals what kind of “anomalies” exist under the ground. The “anomaly”, as far as I could understand, means a “discontinuity” that indicates that the underground soil is not smooth and continuous and remains of some significant object are present underneath. The ASI then undertook the excavations and tried to find out what the nature of those so-called anomalies might be.

The results of the excavations were sensational, to say the least. What the ASI found were the remains of a huge structure. ASI discovered pillar bases, long walls and many items, even one oven and cooking platform, all of which indicated the presence of a Hindu religious structure on top of which the Babri mosque was built. Not only that, ASI found at least 3 “levels” of structural activity. The earliest structural activity belonged to the Kushan period. It seemed that a Hindu religious structure existed around the turn of the first millennium. It probably fell in ruins and another structure seemed to have been built in Gupta period. There was yet another structure built some time in 12th century AD on top of which Babri Mosque was built.

The evidence was overwhelming to say that least. No more able to deny that a structure of great significance existed beneath the mosque, the Muslim side, which had earlier pleaded that the mosque was built on virgin land, now wanted to change that plea and tried to submit that Babri mosque was built over the ruins of a mosque or a kanati idgah. However, legal procedure does not permit change of plea in the middle of suit. A pleader either has to stick with what he said in the beginning, or withdraw the plea and file a fresh suit. Needless to say, for Muslims and secularists, discovery of so much evidence of a structure, by all accounts a Hindu religious structure was itself very embarrassing.

However, that still did not stop efforts to prove that Hindu side was still wrong and no temple was demolished to build the mosque. Indeed, archaeology professionals working in good faith would never act like this. They are expected to put the demands of the discipline above their political bias. Not so our secularists. They raised many objections – that pillar bases were “created” to give impression of a massive structure that the “stratiography” of the excavations was faulty and manipulated to give an impression that a large Hindu structure existed beneath the mosque structure and many others.

Justice Agrawal considered every single objection raised by the archaeologists and historians of the Muslim side. Indeed, he seems to have gone so deep into it that he probably turned himself into a historian and archaeologist! He has quoted every single objection, critical points from the testimony and he also quoted ASI's response to it and then arrived at a judgment on ASI report based on evidence.

There is too much material that can produce to support this. However, we have limited space here and we can only look at a few samplers to understand how the “secularist” historians fared against ASI in the court of law.

Here is the statement of one of the “secularist” historians Suvira Jaiswal, on being asked what the basis of her opinion was: “The basis of my disagreement with the opinion expressed by Prof. Lal about the pillars, is the opinion and reports of other archaeologists.”

In other words, if you ask secularist historian A why she believes something, her answer is – because secularist historian B told me so!! You get a good laugh at such statements in many places in the judgments.

Here is judge Agrawal's response to Suvira Jaiswal's statement: “The above extracts of her statement are self speaking. It is really surprising that a witness, claiming to be an Expert Historian, can make such serious statements on historical facts and that too without any study or adequate enquiry into the matter. Newspaper reports or what was told by some others or otherwise cannot be equated with the research work expected from an expert on the subject. She could admit her disagreement with a historian author of a book not after reading it but merely on the basis of some discussion made in her department.”

Justice Agrawal further observes about her and such historians:
“Normally, the Court do not make adverse comments on the deposition of witness and suffice it to consider whether it is credible or not but we find it difficult to resist ourselves in this particular case considering the sensitivity and the nature of dispute and also the reckless and irresponsible kind of statements, and the material got published by the persons claiming to be Expert Historian, Archaeologist etc. without making any proper investigation, research or study in the subject.

This is really startling. It not only surprises us but we are puzzled. Such kind of statements to public at large causes more confusion than clear the things. Instead of helping in making a cordial atmosphere it tend to create more complications, conflict and controversy. Such people should refrain from making such statements or written work. They must be extremely careful and cautious before making any statement in public on such issues.”

One can only thank God for a legal system that considers only hard evidence and not the opinion of the community of self-styled “expert” historians.

On reading the judgment thoroughly – especially volume 15, 16 and 17, one finds numerous such examples of falsifications by “secularist” historians. They appear to have conspired to sabotage and discredit the ASI report. The judge found that on each objection, and he quotes everything at length and shows why those objections are not valid, the secularist historians contradicted each other. He also demonstrated that each aspect of ASI report questioned by one historian from Muslim side was accepted by at least one other historian from the same side!

Justice Agrawal follows same process for every point. He has studied the objections of secularist historians and the ASI report and their replies to the objections and on finding that the secularists were vague, confused and contradictory, he rejected their objections and their “conclusions” as evidence and given that ASI report is produced by an organization or high repute and that they did a professional job and answered all queries satisfactorily, he accepted their report as evidence.

In the end, while the ASI report settled a crucial point – that the Babri mosque was built on top of a temple that was demolished, it did not become much of an input for the final judgment. The final judgment was primarily decided on title and possession and since Hindus had the possession of the mosque structure for most of the time, they were given the most part of the structure and immediate vicinity and Muslim side was relegated to a corner.

Part 1:
http://thenethindu.blogspot.com/2010/10/ayodhya-judgement-evidence-presented-by.html