Diana Eck presented D. Mandal as a 'historian' on #Ayodhya.
This is what she cited D. Mandal as saying about the evidence of a temple beneath the Babri Masjid— "There is not a single piece of evidence for the existence of a temple of brick, stone, or both."
The Sunni Central Board of Waqf presented D. Mandal as an expert witness for its side.
This is what D. Mandal said under oath:
⊙ I never visited Ayodhya.
⊙ I do not have any specific knowledge of history of Babur's reign.
⊙ I did not get any degree of diploma in archaeology.
⊙ Whatsoever little knowledge I have about Babur is only that Babur was the ruler of the 16th century.
⊙ I have no knowledge that this square place was used as "Vedi" or "Yagyashala" (altar).
⊙ I neither known the meaning of "yagya" nor of "vedi."
Leftist arguments against the Ram Temple were:
⊙ "Ayodhya was a mythical city"
⊙ "Rama worship was an eighteenth-nineteenth century phenomena", and so on.
What Prof. Meenakshi Jain wrote in her groundbreaking book, Rama and Ayodhya, and these are just the literary evidences:
⊙ Kautilya (fourth century BC) knew the central story of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
⊙ In the third century CE, "K'ang-seng-hui rendered the Jataka form of the Ramayana into Chinese."

⊙ Varahamihira, in the 6th century CE, "formulated rules for making images of Rama."
⊙ By the seventh century the Ramayana was popular in Cambodia, as attested by Khmer citations
⊙ by the ninth century a version of the Ramayana had been written in Khotanese, an Iranian dialect.
⊙ There are Tibetan versions of the Ramayana dating back to the 7th-9th centuries.
1️⃣ Babur marked his victory over Ibrahim Lodhi with a mosque in Panipat (Kabuli Bagh mosque - named after one of Babur's wives).
2️⃣ The second mosque associated with Babur to have survived in India is the one in Sambhal - Shahi Jama Masjid - "constructed in 1526
2️⃣ The Shahi Jama Masjid - was "constructed in 1526 by Babur's general, Mir Hindu Beg."
i. It is "located atop a hill, it dominates the landscape for a considerable distance."
ii. The second significance is the choice of Sambhal itself for the mosque, notes Meenakshi Jain:
"According to Hindu tradition known to the Mughals, the last incarnation of Vishnu would appear in Sambhal at the end of the era."
The use of temple material in the mosque at Sambhal "is evident in the internal architecture of the building." The place was known as Hari Mandir
3️⃣ The third mosque Babur constructed was at Ayodhya.
While Babur had initially based his claims to sovereignty on "grounds of his Timurid heritage & Turkishness," after his conquest of India he would refer to Hindus as "kafirs," & "termed the war against Rana Sangha as "jihad."
Temple destruction was the norm, rather than an exception:
⊙ Banaras was "totally devastated in 1194 CE by a Ghurid force led by Qutubuddin Aibak." The Omkara Temple was taken over, and remains strewn with graves and the shrine of a Muslim Saint.
⊙ Aurangzeb had a huge mosque constructed at the site of the Bindu Madhava ghat.
⊙ Aurangzeb had a huge mosque constructed at the site of the Bindu Madhava ghat atop the Panchaganga Ghat.
⊙ Raziya Sultana and had a mosque constructed at the Vishwanath Temple.
⊙ The Vishwanath Temple was then rebuilt at another location, where too it was ravaged.
⊙ Brahmins hid the jyotirlinga in the jnanavyapi in CE 1194 on Aibak's attack.
⊙ Aurangzeb's troops had to fight a pitched battle with the ascetics of the Dashanami order at the jnanavyapi.
Now coming to Prof. Irfan Habib and the Treta ka Thakur inscription.
⊙ Irfan Habib, then chairman of the ICHR, argued that "the existence of pillars in Babri Masjid did not imply that it stood on the site of a temple."
From the debris, a stone slab measuring approximately 5 feet by 2.25 feet was discovered. The Allahabad High Court directed Dr. K.V. Ramesh, "renowned epigraphist and former Director of Epigraphy, ASI" to decipher the inscription and provide a translation.
Dr Ramesh dated the slab, based on paleographical evidence and from the evidence provided by the historical evidence provided by the inscription itself, to the mid-twelfth century.
Irfan Habibwrote in 2002 that the inscription had been "brought from somewhere else."
He then elaborated his lie by saying the stone must have come "from some private collection."
In 2006, he expanded on his lie.
He claimed the slab had been at the Treta ka Thakur temple. From there it had been taken to the Faizabad Museum, & then to the Lucknow Museum, and from where it had been "surreptitiously removed from the Lucknow Museum and paraded off as a find from the Babri Masjid."
Kishore Kunal, OSD (Ayodhya) under PMs VP Singh & Chandra Shekhar, & a former student of RS Sharma and DN Jha, published, "a photograph of the Treta Ka Thakur inscription" at the Lucknow Museum. The inscription matched exactly the description as recorded in 1950-54.
Testimonies of some more eminent historians to the Allahabad High Court:
Suvira Jaiswal, former professor of JNU & who claimed to be a "specialist in Ancient History":
⊙ "I have not read Baburnama."
⊙ "Whatever knowledge I gained with respect to disputed site, was on the basis of newspaper or what what the others told.
⊙ I have read nothing about Babri mosque. I did not study thoroughly, therefore, I cannot say as to when Babri mosque came into existence."
Suraj Bhan, retired Professor in Ancient Indian Archaeological Department, Kurukshetra University:
⊙ "I am an M.A. in Sanskrit language.
⊙ I cannot speak Sanskrit
⊙ I face difficulty in reading as also in following it
Suraj Bhan, expert witness:
⊙ I cannot tell when Indus Valley (civilization) was discovered.
⊙ I did not read what features a mosque may not have.
⊙ I am not a specialist in epigraphy and numismatics.
⊙ I am not a student of History.
Suraj Bhan, expert witness:
⊙ I am not a specialist in architecture.
⊙ I am not a specialist in sculpture.
⊙ Epigraphy too, is not my field.
⊙ I have no academic qualification in architectural science
⊙ I had formed my opinion prior to submission of ASI's report."
This, and more, from my 2016 and 2017 reviews of Prof. Meenakshi Jain's books, "Rama and Ayodhya", and "The Battle for Rama".
blog.abhinavagarwal.net/2017/04/rama-a…
Prof. Diana Eck's 'expertise' is laid bare in this review I wrote in in 2016: blog.abhinavagarwal.net/2016/01/india-…

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More from @AbhinavAgarwal

Oct 21
😀😀
"Vandhiyathevan, watching the altercation, felt an overwhelming desire to wrench the staff from the excitable Nambi and deal him a few well-placed, sacred blows upon his revered person, himself."
"Ponniyin Selvan…" by Kalki R Krishnamurthy amzn.in/3ChoFBJ Image
"She gurgled over rocks, flowed through forests, tumbled off hills and gushed through vales; her eagerness to reach her destination growing each moment. As she poured over the plains, it occurred to her that she was closer than ever to her loved one. Her heart trembled..."
"One had the radiance of a full moon; the other, the translucent beauty of the same moon at dawn. One looked stately, like a peacock; the other was a mild nightingale... One was the royal River Ganga, a vegavahini in her grace and majesty; the other, the gentler, bashful Kaveri."
Read 4 tweets
Aug 27
Playbook 101

⊙ If you speak up, "Why are you 24x7 in crib mode?"
⊙ If you don't, "Be constructive; don't do RR all the time!"
⊙ If you support the ruling party, "Look at the other good work they are doing!"
⊙ If the opposition, "So you want those thieves to come, eh?"
1/3
⊙ If you are rich, "Entitled brats like you always want everything for nothing!"
⊙ If you are poor, "Stop whining like some rich dude! Be thankful for what you have."
⊙ If you are an IT professional, "People like you have f**ed up this city; so just STFU!"
2/3
⊙ If you are not in IT, "Who told you to stay in Bangalore? Can't afford it, leave!"
⊙ If you are a local, "I didn't hear you crib when your house value went up!"
⊙ If you are not a local, "First outsiders like you screw up the city, and then you complain!"
3/3
You're welcome.
Read 4 tweets
Aug 21
Why do I get the feeling this fishing expedition/proposal to eventually tax UPI transactions is yet another win for the international credit card duopoly, aided by the natural proclivities of the government to tax everything in sight, and often tax them out of existence?
1. The current annual cost of UPI transactions is ~₹ 500 hundred crores.

2. The central government spent ₹4,33,108 crores on subsidies in FY 2021-22.

3. Therefore, the total UPI subsidy burden is ~0.115%, what the govt spends in 10 hours on subsidies.
The way governments & taxation work, UPI charges will be cloaked in the usual rhetroric of 'pro-poor'/'vikaas' sloganeering.
A possible route may be by imposing a "cess", "surcharge", only on those earning more than, say, ₹10 lakhs a year.
Shiver through the spine?🙂
Read 4 tweets
Jun 8
Really?
I mean, really??

"India is likely to introduce human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) this year in the country's immunisation programme"
economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healt…
Parliamentary Panel's report in 2013:
⨀ Out of 100 consent forms for AP Project taken
for study, it was found that signatures of witnesses were missing in 69 forms.
⨀ In many forms there were no dates while in others the signature of just one person appeared in seven forms.
"the ICMR representative on the Project Advisory Committee not only opposed DCGI but also argued that the nature of the project does not require them to follow the clinical trial rules, including reporting of serious adverse effects within a specific time-frame."
#HPV
Read 11 tweets
May 22
Thread from my book review.
"Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked & plundered Mathura in 1071. Al-Utbi recorded the destruction,describing a beautiful temple that would take “200 years” & “hundred thousand red dinars” to replicate,& which had 5 idols made of red gold, each five yards high."
"Ghaznavi had all the temples burnt and levelled to the ground. Alberuni, an Iranian chronicler in the eleventh century, wrote that Mathura was venerated “because Vasudeva was there born”."
"A temple built at Katra by Jajja (a vassal in charge of Mathura) in 1150 CE was destroyed by Qutubuddin Aibak, general of Muhammad Ghori."
From "Vasudeva Krishna and Mathura", by Prof. Meenakshi Jain
@AryanBooksInt
Read 25 tweets
Mar 15
1/
My wife and I watched #TheKashmirFiles today.
Brief thoughts.
@vivekagnihotri has made a movie that is brilliant.
It stands with the best of them.
It holds its own.
It holds you & does not let you let you look away.
Acting, cinematography, editing, music, dialogs—outstanding.
2/
If #TheKashmirFiles had been only a collage of the horrors perpetrated on Kashmiri Pandits, it would have been out of theaters by now.

It is brutal, truthful, and a very well made movie.
It is also why the 'system' is finding it so difficult to dismiss the movie.
3/
Every single slogan you hear in the movie reverberated in the Valley in 1989 and 1990.

The horrors depicted are factual.
The participation, willful or not, of the commoner in the ethnic cleansing that took place—factual.
#TheKashmirFiles
Read 10 tweets

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