Thread by @AbhinavAgarwal

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-…