Brief history of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Case (Aug 2020)

As the title suggests, the write is more about the case and less about the history of the Ram Janmabhoomi itself. I intend to present the summary of the detail judgement of approximately thousand pages as pronounced by the Hon’ble Supreme Court. Still I would like to urge all the readers to go through the detailed judgement once if they feel like going into it. 
Since the pronouncement of the judgement of the case, one thing which was constantly being repeated by the media channels and print media that the judgement was based on the faith of the Hindus. But the question is, is it so? If the judgement was based on the faith, then it would have meant that the facts do not support the case of the Ram Janmabhoomi. Also, it would have led to opening of the Pandora’s Box, on the basis of which, every single practice in every single religion, no matter how extreme they are, could be defended on the basis of faith because the Supreme Court has itself set a precedent. Therefore, when most of the India will be celebrating the Bhoomi Pooja of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi, it is important that we revisit the history, as mentioned in the Supreme Court judgement. 

When for the first time Police Complaint was filed 

In the historical records of the British surveyors, who surveyed the land for various purposes like inspecting a land for railway station, etc., found a unique practice in Ayodhya. A British surveyor found out that the vast number of people belonging to the Hindu faith circumnavigated a mosque. This perplexed him and when he went into the inquiry of the matter, he found out that the people believed that there existed a temple which was broken by the Islamic invaders and a mosque was built over it. People believed that the temple still exists beneath the structure and therefore they were circumnavigating the place with same kind of devotion to lord Ram. The situation in 1856 to 1858 took a sharp turn. A group of Nihang Sikhs forcefully entered the structure complex, wrote “Jai Shree Ram” on the walls of the structure, sprinkled the ‘ganga jal’, and performed a “Yajna” for the purification of the complex. The situation became tense and a case was filed. Interestingly, the case was named as the “Masjid-I-Janmasthan” case. This evidence strengthens the fact that even those who were on the side of the mosque, indirectly supported the claim that the Mosque was built on the temple.

When the case turned into a movement 

In the late 1980s, the Ram Janmabhoomi case, which was registered as Masjid-I-Janmasthan case in the Faizabad police station became a movement. Organizations belonging to the Hindu faith like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, were spearheading the movement. Soon the case became a political case when the BJP took over it. The government led by the Prime Minister P. V. Narsimha Rao felt the need to find out the facts related to the case. To do so, the government established a special task force of Archaeological Survey of India. One of the most important members of this task force was K. K. Muhammad. The testimony of K. K. Muhammad and findings of the ASI team was rapidly changing the scenario with continuous archaeological facts. 
The ASI team when dig into the structure, they found the existence of the pillars built up as per the Vedic architecture, the assembly of pillars suggested that there was not a small or medium size temple, but it was a large structure in itself. The ASI team found out about the existence of a water channels, which piped out water from a nearby tank to the door of the temple for the devotees to wash their feet. The team also found out that the outlets of pipes were carved in crocodile and tortoise shape, both symbolising the vahana of the Ganga and Yamuna. The water outlet system was the symbol of ganga and Yamuna coming at your feet, therefore, cleanse yourself before you enter the temple. All these findings by the Archaeological team were sufficient to establish the fact that there existed a temple and the structure of mosque was itself based on the temple. 

An attempt got wasted 

Finding out the true nature of the structure, the team of the archaeologists went to the people of Ayodhya to convince them to give up their claim on mosque. 
DISCLAIMER – this whole incident is not mentioned in the judgement of the Supreme Court but is taken from the Autobiography of K. K. Muhammad, which is “I am an Indian”. 
K. K. Muhammad mentioned in his book that the importance of Ayodhya to the Hindu is as much as the Mecca is for the Muslim. Importance of Ayodhya for Muslim is not that much for which they were going to such an extent. According to his autobiography, the Muslim population in Ayodhya was negligible and the mosque served them no purpose. To this most of the people belonging to the Muslim faith agreed and consented that they shall give up their claim on the Mosque once they will be provided with the alternative land to construct another mosque. The government in the state of the Uttar Pradesh agreed to this and offered the same size of land on the opposite side of the river, where there was a greater Muslim population, for the construction of mosque. 

And then, there were eminent historians (Distorians) 

In India, it is alleged that academia, especially related to the history and political sciences is dominated by the Left minded teachers. When they found out that the Muslim population is willing to accept the offer forwarded by K. K. Muhammad and his team, they jumped into the whole matter and asked the Muslim complainants to not to give up their case. As per those historians, which included Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, Ram Saran Sharma and many others, the temple never existed there, and the historians have enough proof that the mosque was always there. The matter which was beginning to get solved complicated further. The matter went into the Allahabad High Court. In the proceedings of the Allahabad High Court, all those eminent historians were invited to give their proof, and none of them even came forward, forget about giving any proof. The Allahabad High Court came to the conclusion that there existed a temple, but to avoid any kind of tension between the communities, the court ordered to divide the land into three parts, two to Hindu parties and one to Babri Masjid Action Committee. Once the High Court agreed over the facts that there existed a temple, it was no more a case of temple v/s mosque, it was now a property case. And as a property case it was challenged in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was very much convinced about the actual nature of the structure and pronounced the judgement in the favour of the Janmabhoomi. 

Question is, why? 

It is an historical fact that the Mir Baki, who was the general of Babur, stormed with his army and had broken many temples. The temple dedicated to Shri Ram was also one among them. On this aspect, in a conference, K. K. Muhammad was asked, why do they need to break the temple on the first place regardless of the whether there was temple dedicated to the Vishnu or to Shiva, why did they need to do so? To this K. K. Muhammad answered, which I will try to put in my words, as I do not remember what the exact words were. He said, there has always been a clash between kings. When the kings of Semitic and anti-Semitic religion came in front of each other and the king from the Semitic religion, he always wanted to impose his culture and belief over the people of other faith. The Semitic religion is the type of religion which believes that there exists only one god and that god is whom they pray. The Islamic invaders were not interested in conquering the lands through brute force, but they also wanted to impose a belief and a culture. Demolition of Somnath temple, construction of Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque after demolishing 100 Jain temples, destruction of Kashi Vishwanath by a cannon on the orders of Aurangzeb, demolishing Martand Ravi temple in Kashmir are just the examples of it. 
However, this should always be kept in the mind, according to K. K. Muhammad, Muslims of today are not responsible for the horrors which the Islamic invaders committed. However, they become responsible for those horrors when they start themselves associating with those invaders and start believing that such kind of destructions were for the just cause. 

Recent comparisons with the Hagia Sophia 

The courts decided that the nature of the disputed site was of the temple and therefore a temple should be built there. Another development on the western frontiers, on the shores of the Mediterranean took place when the Turkish government declared Hagia Sophia a mosque. Quickly and in the most stupid manner, a comparison was drawn between both the cases, despite the facts being almost opposite. 
In the 16th century, the Turkish invaders crossed the Mediterranean Sea and attacked the holy seat of the Christianity, Constantinople, to spread the influence of Islam and to proof that the Turkish were the real champions of the religion. When the Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turkish, several kinds of horrors were committed on the people who preached the Christian faith, such as murder, rapes, looting, forceful conversions, and what not. Today, the name of Constantinople does not exist. Today we call it Istanbul. In that city, the most magnificent structure that was related to the Christian religion, the Hagia Sophia church. Later in the 1923, when Kemal Mustafa Ataturk came to power, seemed to be interested in reversing the horrors and converted the Hagia Sophia into a museum. When Turkish government converts the museum into mosque once again, it is repeating what was done in the 16th century. Therefore, the parallels drawn between the Ram Janmabhoomi and Hagia Sophia are unjust and based on the wrong background. 
In last few months, we saw an uprising in different parts of the USA and UK, where people were throwing away the statues of Columbus, citing that he was a monster and committed horrific torchers on the natives in order to capture their lands. Therefore, erecting his statue is a symbol of slavery which must be done away. If the parallels need to be drawn, then this should be the case. We should consider how many such structures do we have which reminds us that we were enslaved? How many structures do we have which were built on the sole purpose to show us our place? We have a long history of colonization which ended in 1947, the question is when are we going to shed away the intellectual slavery which was forced upon us?