The three judge committee agreed that there existed a temple or a temple structure that pre-dates the mosque. there is no question of it either being a jain/bhddhist monestary as the pillars of temples have hindu deity carvings. and the ASI report clearly states that the structure is similar to north Indian hindu temple architecture. more over the Hari-vishnu inscription found at the site proves that it is a hindu temple of lord rama.
It was examined by Ajay Mitra Shastri,
Chairman of the Epigraphical Society of India. Shastri gave the following summary. What the inscription tells us is of monumental significance to the history of Medieval India.
The inscription is composed in high-flown Sanskrit verse, except for a very small portion in prose, and is engraved in chaste and classical Nagari script of the eleventh-twelfth century AD. It has yet to be fully deciphered, but the portions which have been fully deciphered and read are of great historical significance and value ... [It has since been fully deciphered.] It was evidently put up on the wall of the temple, the construction of which is recorded in the text inscribed on it. Line 15 of this inscription, for example, clearly tells us that a beautiful temple of Vishnu-Hari, built with heaps of stones ... , and beautified with a golden spire ... unparalleled by any other temple built by earlier kings ... This wonderful temple ... was built in the temple-city of Ayodhya situated in Saketamandala. ... Line 19 describes god Vishnu as destroying king Bali ... and the ten headed personage (Dashanana, i.e., Ravana). (op. cit. 119; emphasis mine. Original Sanskrit quotes given by Shastri are left out.)
you can't beat this evidence right ??
As I said and repeated by you, The Judges did agree that there was a temple like structure but never claimed that it was Hindu temple, It was ASI which implied that it resembled North Indian temples. Anyways these are a few quotes for you...
"
In Buddhist and Jain literature, Saketa / Ayodhya appears repeatedly as the centre of Buddhist and Jain religions, not as the nerve centre of a Rama cult. Thereafter one finds Saivite and particularly vaishnava religions, but till the growing influence of the Ramanandi community in the 18thCentury A.D., Ayodhya had no tradition of Ram-worship or any cult of Ram.
In fact Ayodhya was important for other religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism.
The Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zhang [who toured the subcontinent during the Gupta period, around A.D. 630] recorded that there were around 100 Buddhist monasteries and only 10 abodes of devas [brahmanical gods]. Vishnu Smriti also lists 52 pilgrim centres very early in 3rd-4th century A.D. but it does not name Ayodhya."
Indeed one can never beat the evidence....
I quoted you travellers of the time that predate the destruction of babri masjid.. and none of them are from hindu sources. Quote me historians/travellers of the time who disagree with the above findings.. more over the babri issue was not recent people used to celebrate ram navami infront of the mosque even after its destruction. and the first major conflict b/w hindus and muslims took place during 1852, while VHP was established in 1964
Posting some quotes for you and they are self explanatory.
"No contemporary or near contemporary literary source admits such an event as Mir Baki’s “destruction” of a Ram temple and the construction of a mosque on that spot.
Babar’s memoirs are silent on this. It is in the annotation by Beveridge, not in Babar’s own writings, where the claim about the alleged temple destruction is made. Nor do other writings of his or his successor’s period mention either the destruction of a temple. Even Abdul Qadir Badauni, the very orthodox Islamic writer, who strongly disapproved of Akbar’s liberalism, has nothing to say about this act of Babar, which was surely one that, had it really been committed, should have gladdened him as an exemplary performance of duty.
B.B. Lal, when he published his preliminary report on the Ayodhya excavations in the
Indian Archaeological Review in 1976-77, disclosed that in the middle ages, between 11th and 16th Centuries, Ayodhya played no historically significant role. Just under the level of the masjid, that is, in the 13-15th Century layer, no specifically Hindu motifs are available. Rather, this layer had a thick deposit of Muslim Glazed Ware Pottery. The work under the guidance of A.K. Narain (1969-70) came to the same conclusion. As Rajeev Saxena asks,
if there was an actual demolition of a Ram temple, how come the famous poet Tulsidas, who sang the glory of his beloved Ram during the early part of the 17th century, kept silent on this issue. After all,the poet wrote about secular subjects such as massive deaths in Banaras due to epidemic and unemployment, his arthritis problem, Brahmins' attack on him for his "low caste" status and so forth.
It is only in the 19th century that the temple-demolition/ mosque-construction story gets recorded. In 1822, Hafizullah, an official of the Faizabad law court, claimed that "(t)he mosque founded by emperor Babar is situated at the birth-place of Ram" and then the story gets into the records such as P. Carnegy's historical sketch of Faizabad (1870), H. R. Nevill's Faizabad District Gazetteer, and as a footnote in Mrs. A. S. Beveridge's English translation of Babur's Memoirs (1922).
As I said the article you quoted was written in 2003 at the same time when the report was submitted..
'No loopholes in ASI evidence' - The Times of India this judgement was passed by the court on 2010. and yes the judgement was a compromise to part 1/3rd of the land with sunni wakf board.. when the evidence was clear that there existed a hindu temple dating back to atleast 10th century, over which the babri was constructed.
So that goes on to prove that the article holds its point. And as stated earlier there are conflicting reports on the existence of a hindu temple, so the "clear" evidence is not really clear.
Sources:
[Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières] History and the Politics of Hindutva
‘State should rely on historians’
The "Ram temple" drama - The Hindu
Anyways I am sure this discussion is sure to continue and I don't think you and me are going change our stance on this. So I prefer to let the Supreme court of India decide about it instead of wasting my time on things which have been discussed many number of times. (Courtesy:
Demolition of the Babri Mosque)
