Babri Mosque was at right place hindus just made a wrong a survey to go against Muslims - Daily Time Pakistan

NEW DELHI: The Allahabad High Court judgment on Ayodhya is a ‘blow’ to India’s secular fabric, a group of eminent historians, artists and activists said on Friday, raising their “serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values” have been treated in the verdict.

Coming together under the umbrella of Sahmat (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), they questioned the court’s premise to base its judgment on the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which had claimed that remains of a temple were found beneath the mosque.

“The judgment delivered by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute raised serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values have been treated in it,” said a joint statement signed by eminent personalities like Romila Thapar, DN Jha, KN Panikkar, Irfan Habib, Zoya Hasan, MK Raina and Madan Gopal Singh.

“The view that the Babri Masjid was built at the site of a Hindu temple, which has been maintained by two of the three judges, takes no account of all the evidence contrary to this fact turned up by the Archaeological Survey of India’s own excavations — the presence of animal bones throughout as well as of the use of ‘surkhi’ and lime mortar (all characteristic of Muslim presence) rule out the possibility of a Hindu temple having been there beneath the mosque,” the statement said. It also alleged that the ASI’s findings were fraudulent.

“The ASI’s controversial report, which claimed otherwise on the basis of ‘pillar bases’ was manifestly fraudulent in its assertions since no pillars were found, and the alleged existence of ‘pillar bases’ has been debated by archaeologists.”

According to the statement, site notebooks, artefacts and other material evidence relating to the ASI’s excavation are made available for scrutiny to scholars, historians and archaeologists.

“Not only is the judgment wrong in accepting the antiquity of this belief, but it is gravely disturbing that such acceptance should then be converted into an argument for deciding property entitlement. This seems to be against all principles of law and equity,” the experts stated.

The names of the eminent historians, artists and activists include Romila Thapar, KM Shrimali, DN Jha, KN Panikkar, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Iqtidar Alam Khan, Shireen Moosvi, Jaya Menon, Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, Kesavan Veluthat, D Mandal, Ramakrishna Chatterjee, Aniruddha Ray, Arun Bandopadhyaya, A Murali, V Ramakrishna, Arjun Dev, RC Thakran, HC Satyarthi, Amar Farooqui, BP Sahu, Biswamoy Pati, Lata Singh, Utsa Patnaik, Zoya Hasan, Prabhat Patnaik, CP Chandrasekhar, Jayati Ghosh, Archana Prasad, Shakti Kak, VM Jha, Prabhat Shukla, Indira Arjun Dev, Mahendra Pratap Singh, Ram Rahman, MK Raina, Sohail Hashmi, Parthiv Shah, Madan Gopal Singh,

Madhu Prasad, Vivan Sundaram, Geeta Kapur, Rajendra Prasad, Anil Chandra, Rahul Verma, Indira Chandrasekhar, Sukumar Muralidharan

Supriya Verma, NK Sharmam SZH Jafri, Farhat Hasan, Shalini Jain, Santosh Rai, Najaf Haider, R Gopinath, RP Bahuguna, GP Sharma, Sitaram Roy, OP Jaiswal and KK Sharma.