International Conference On Indian History

[Guest]

PART FIVE

A news item appeared in the Times of India on April 5, under the misleading title, “Did Akbar build Fathepur Sikri over a temple?” The article reported about an “illustrated talk” that had been presented in Delhi a few days earlier by D.V. Sharma. The journalist wrote that:
“Sharma showed slides of the remains of a temple under Bir Chhabili Tila, a mound near the monument along with the existence of a water palace under the Anup Talao, within the premises of the monument. [….] Matching the dramatic tenor of the ASI excavations was the reaction that followed the talk. Satish Grover, Professor School of Architecture and Planning wanted to know if the ASI had any policy on ‘ripping apart’ ancient monuments which were part of the national heritage. ‘We all know that India is a rich and ancient country, built on layers and layers of civilisation. There could be a temple beneath the Taj Mahal too. Will the ASI dig that up too?’ he queried.”

Whether by “accident or design”, both Satish Grover and Harbans Mukhia conflated the excavation of the chamber underneath the pond inside the walls of the monument, with the excavations going on outside, where the desecrated Jain temple had been discovered. These two separate sites were also confused in media reports. In the Times of India article, D. V. Sharma, speaking at the lecture, is reported to have defended the ASI’s Anup Talao excavation, insisting that,
“The effort was not to destroy the present heritage but only to find out the truth. ‘We are here to correct the interpretation of palaces and monuments, not to rip apart monuments’.”

The article by Harbans Mukhia had already appeared in The Hindustan Times several weeks earlier, as well as the rebuttal written by Meenakshi Jain, so the controversy and the media debate were already in full swing prior to D.V. Sharma’s slide presentation. Because the excavations had received such wide coverage, and had already been politicized, there was an attempt, during the lecture to refute Mukhia’s allegations.

Shortly after the publication of Mukhia’s op-ed piece, archaeologists D.V. Sharma and S.P. Gupta had both written letters to The Hindustan Times to criticize his critique. When I visited S. P. Gupta at his office in New Delhi, he gave me a copy of both of these letters. He informed me that the newspaper did not publish his rebuttal for over three weeks though he called them several times to inquire why they had not. When it had appeared, it was in a significantly truncated form. This letter written in response to Mukhia’s hypothesis was the paper that S. P. Gupta had circulated at the talk by D.V. Sharma, mentioned below in the Times of India article. An abbreviated version of the lengthy rebuttal written by D. V. Sharma was published in The Hindustan Times a few weeks after Mukhia’s controversial piece had appeared.54 The news report in the April 4th edition of the Times of India went on to say:

“But the fact that the matter had already become politicised was evident, when the Chairman of the Indian Archaeological Society, S. P. Gupta, circulated a paper on the excavations which concludes: ‘There is ample proof of (a) the destruction of the Jain temple, (b) the sculptures being vandalised without exception. There is no evidence of Hindu vandalism at the site. What is the other language of this destruction if not ‘demolishing temples’ by the Muslims.”

Both S. P. Gupta and D.V. Sharma reacted strongly not only to Mukhia's proposition that Brahmins had desecrated the Jain temple, but to the politicized approach that he had taken in his newspaper critique of the ASI. Both archaeologists countered Mukhia’s claims with vehemence, addressing the points he had made, they highlighted the errors in his hypotheses, while also bringing his political orientation into question, as he had done theirs.

In his rejoinder sent to the Hindustan Times, “Beyond All Logic: Prof. Mukia Derailed at Sikri”, which, as mentioned, was not published for several weeks, S.P. Gupta wrote:
“[Mukhia’s] peculiar and self-contradictory statement is also seen further when he makes the observation [regarding] the location of the most beautiful image of a Jain Sarasvati found lying about two meters from the surface. ‘It had been as if placed there with reverence, all others bear several marks of deliberate or indeliberate vandalism’. But this is not true, it was treated like all other sculptures.”

Gupta takes on a few of Mukhia’s observations, such as the claim that the area was not known to be a “Jain stronghold”. Gupta sates that “Mathura-Sikri was certainly a stronghold of the Jains right from 2nd century B.C.” giving an example of a Jain temple excavated in Mathura. Gupta then writes, responding to Mukhia’s preliminary politicization of the issue,

Curiously, a historian is trying to interpret this archaeological evidence in the framework of his Marxist ideology. ‘Is it feasible to consider the possibility of Brahmanical intolerance’ which spared the one goddess with clear Brahmanical association but others which were, as it were, on the other side of the fence, that is Jainism’. The poor professor does not seem to know that Sarasvati was not exclusively Brahmanical, it was equally worshipped by the Jains, just see the 12th century inscribed statue of a Jain Saraswati from the Jain temple at Pallu in the National Museum, New Delhi. Further, even the Saraswati image is found broken at Sikri, which has also been admitted by Mukhia but the funny suggestion is that ‘although’ this was also ‘dumped’ in this ‘dumping ground’ it was shown some respect because Saraswati was a Brahmanical goddess, an observation which is based upon totally wrong assumptions.

Gupta’s letter of less than a page and a half, continues, in defiance of Mukhia’s pet theory that Hindus destroyed temples:
“In his write-up, Prof. Mukhia has tried to suggest Hindu-Jain conflict as the probable cause for the vandalism of the Jain temple and sculptures at Sikri without citing a single example from history or archaeology of Delhi-Agra region. On the contrary, it is well known that as many as 27 Jain and Brahmanical temples were destroyed near Qutab Minar site by the Muslim Sultan of Delhi named Qutbuddin Aibak in an inscription which he himself got engraved.”

Gupta, undoubtedly provoked by Mukhia’s politicized side-swipe, returns an equally politicized retort, “This is the kind of history that the Left historians are trying to write, fact or no fact, they must plead on behalf of their Muslim clients”.

Shortly after Mukhia’s now infamous article about Hindu iconoclasm against Jains appeared in the newspaper, D.V. Sharma sent The Hindustan Times a seven page, very detailed letter, objecting to Mukhia’s interpretation and also Mukhia’s biased attitude. He engaged the issues raised by Mukhia, and criticized him for his lack of knowledge not only about archaeology, but linguistics, geography, psychology, ethnography, history both textual and oral, and his amateurish attempts to incorrectly and selectively take partial knowledge and from that deficient position, to extrapolate, what Sharma considered to be an archaeologically preposterous and unscientific theory. More than that, Sharma objected to Mukhia’s politicization of this excavation site: Mukhia’s statement that it was part of the BJP government’s efforts to advance a particular “version of Indian history”.

Sharma begins by describing the yearlong process of surveying a 25 km radius, and checking “epigraphical evidences” through which they determined there might be a temple under the Bir Chhabili mound, considered to be similar to the “five temple-sites [known] to exist at Sikri village”. He explained that before carrying out the excavation, they had done “hard and tough fieldwork in situ” (original emphasis).

Beginning on the second page of the seven-page letter, in a long paragraph, this archaeologist from the ASI takes up the topic of Mukhia’s assertion that Hindus desecrated Buddhist viharas. I reproduce this paragraph in full because it is indicative of the voluminous data from which archaeologists can draw to discredit this standard claim of leftist historians, but, as well, it captures the sheer astonishment that many scholars experience when analyzing what they consider to be a convoluted version of medieval India history.

Sharma wrote:

“Some historians have assiduously compiled A FEW instances of the demolition of Buddhist viharas by the Hindu rulers, which they cite, more often than not, and zealously, to dilute the vehemence and vastness of medieval iconoclasm. The fact stands out that these few exceptions cannot make the rule and, generally, there was religious toleration in ancient India. Even when Buddhism was dying out (8th century onwards), there were Buddhist monasteries and viharas spread throughout northern India--from Begram to Bengal. Who destroyed them? Does the learned Professor want us to believe that the Hindus destroyed them? He must have heard the name of Iktiyaruddin Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji who demolished a large number of these Buddhist viharas, burnt laks of precious manuscripts preserved in them, and butchered thousand of bhikshus living in them, on his way from Delhi to Bengal (c. 12th century A.D.).

“The question is of ‘iconoclasm’ let loose by a Mahmud Ghaznavi (1001-1025), a Friuz Tughluq (1351-1387), a Sikandar Lodi (1488-1517), and, above all, an Aurangzeb (1658-1701) vis-à-vis the Hindu and Jaina temples? The learned Professor of History of such a high citadel of learning as the Jawaharlal Nehru University, must surely have read the Black Decree of Aurangzeb issued on 8th April 1669, ordering the governors of all provinces to destroy schools and temples of the non-believers, and report compliance. And he must also have read the “detailed compliance” recorded in Saqi Must’an Khan’s Ma’athir-I-’Alamgiri. Why does he want us to forget or ignore these established facts of history, when we have excavated a site where remains of a temple and desecrated images, in large numbers, are unearthed? Who destroyed the temple and the sculptures? Did the Hindus do it?

“The learned Professor is not aware that at least the Hindus and the Jainas (who also inter-marry) lived in total amity and built their religious shrines together, at the same place, as at Ellora, Khajuraho, Osain and scores of other places. There is not a single instance where the Hindus could have demolished a Jaina temple and such a concealed suggestion in the learned Professor’s writing is absurd. Here, at Fatehpur Sikri, we have excavated a temple and mutilated Jaina images, with conchoidal fracture marks, and we are concerned with the historical fact of medieval iconoclasm, all that scholarly acrobatics so laboriously made by the learned Professor, in the first few paragraphs of his article is absolutely irrelevant and wide off the mark and the very title of his learned epistle is as misleading as it is misconceived.”

Sharma then spends five typed pages taking up each of Mukhia’s points, one by one. First he describes the pit, and explains the ancient method of disposing of damaged statues, in a “visarjana (sacred disposal)”. Sharma writes,

A pit made carefully of stone slabs has been excavated by us and most of the Jaina images (about 30) have been recovered from this pit. [….] It was not a ‘dumping ground’. The learned Professor does not know that even broken images were not ‘dumped’ like garbage, they were reverentially buried. When he called it a ‘dumping’, he deprives it of the element of adoration with which such ‘visarjana’ was made. The pit is still existing in situ in the section of a quadrant. Perhaps, bias blurs the vision more than anything else. [….] [B]efore attributing the site as ‘dumping ground’ […] one wishes […] the learned Professor could have acquired a little basic knowledge of archaeology.

In his article that opened the floodgates to this debate, Prof. Mukhia did mention that when he visited the site, he had spoken to two junior excavators of the ASI with whom he had discussed the dig. As mentioned, they told him that the “excavations had yet yielded no definitive data and pointed to no certain conclusions.” Mukhia, asserts from his two hour visit to the site that “The parts of the walls still in tact do not suggest any particular structure: either a temple or a house or any other”. D.V. Sharma takes him to task for making conclusions without knowing the details of the site. Sharma wrote:
“Prof. Mukhia has stated to have discussed the result of excavation with Assistant Archaeologists of ASI. [….] It is surprising that he never cared to discuss the findings and results of the excavation with me, the Director of the excavation before writing in the newspaper. He is a non-technical person and he is not conversant with plans, elevations, sections and co-relations of structures, in an archaeological excavation, which is why he could not see the temple plan, which is clearly visible at the site.”
Sharma goes on to describe the size of the entire temple, which was over 33 meters by 20 meters and had two terraces. Mukhia had asserted that the site did not necessarily resemble a temple, whereas in fact, the walls of the temple were over a meter in thickness, filled with “rubble masonry with mud mortar”. The temple floors and walls were made from ”huge stone slabs” that measured “6’ x 3’ x 1’” Sharma admonishes Mukhia, saying, “all this is there and one wonders why he failed to see the temple plan in-situ, if he was at all interested to know this fact”.

Mukhia had written, concerning the etymology of the word “Bir Chhabili”:
“The mound that is under excavation is known in the village around as Bir Chhabili’s mound. Clearly it has no religious association (emphasis added).57 Bir Chhabili also does not seem to be a proper name, but more like a pet name, or one which expresses the lady’s attributes and points to a young woman who was perhaps both romantic and audacious. Little else is known about the site in popular lore.”

Mukhia’s use of the word, “audacious” certainly is an attempt to de-religify the meaning of the name, to which D.V. Sharma takes Mukhia to task for his uninformed speculative assertions,

The learned Professor is also advised to study ethno-archaeology of Fatehpur Sikri carefully, and traditions, and customs of the region. The site is highly venerated among the Sikarwar Rajput clan of this region and they definitely came to this place for … ceremony of their newborn children. […] Bir Chhabali is a corrupt form of the probable name attributed to their Goddess (Devi). The sculpture of Sarasvati has an inscription at the base of its pedestal in nagari script and Sanskrit language. Not being an epigraphist, perhaps he could not understand the inscription. This is also the reason why he could not understand the cult and importance of Sarasvati in Jain art and tradition. The image is unique in the world when compared with the images of Sarasvati so far discovered. […] The word Bir and Birbani in Rajasthani, Haryinavi, Gujarati, Marathi and local dialects in UP means young lady of extremely beautiful appearance. Prof. Mukhia also does not seem to be well versed in linguistics which is why he could not co-relate traditions and customs, folk sruti-lores58, language of the region and art and he proceeded to comment in the newspaper without knowing the subject viz., archaeology, epigraphy, art and linguistics.

In his op-ed piece, Mukhia had observed that:
“At the excavated site, the legs of Mahavira in a meditative lotus position are still embedded in a part of the wall and there is no clear purpose of its location. […] There are also several torsos of Mahavira, clearly identifiable because of the flower motif on his chest…”

Sharma contests Mukhia’s statements about the icons with a long technical paragraph about the history of Jain iconography, the lineage of the Jain tirankaras as well as the manner in which the damaged statues were situated, then he wrote:
“The learned Professor has absolutely no knowledge of Jaina iconography, how else could have he identified the sculpture of a tirtankara embedded in the wall … as Mahavira? It is not of Mahavira and I would like to bring to his kind notice that not a single sculpture of Mahavira has been discovered so far from the excavation from Bir Chhabili Tila.”

Sharma then discusses the iconography of the Jain Sarasvati statue, criticizing Mukhia’s evaluation. Mukhia had written that “the Jaina Saraswati [was] in a seductive posture, with the face strongly resembling that of Mahavira”. Sharma pointed out details of the statue’s iconography, requesting : “Prof. Mukhia to study carefully the iconography of Jain Sarasvati and brahmanical Sarasvati. [….] Obviously, he has commented upon this wonderful sculpture without being conversant at all with iconography or epigraphy.”

Sharma turns his attention to the dig under the pond within the Fatehpur Sikri monument itself. He took particular exception to the comment made by Mukhia that the ASI was already claiming, “that it too hides a temple underneath”. Sharma responded, “The ASI has never claimed existence of a temple beneath Anup Talao and [Mukhia’s] statement is false and misleading”. Sharma advises Mukhia “to go through the … Ain-I-Ahbari… and other contemporary references [that] clearly state that His Majesty Emperor Akbar ordered construction of an underground water palace at Fatehpur Sikri”. Sharma explains that: “The excavation at Sikri was undertaken under Anup Talao to reveal and corroborate the reference of Ain-I-Akbari and not to trace an alleged temple which seems to be a fairy tale coined by some mischief mongers better know to Prof. Mukhia.”

As Sharma winds up his letter, he charges Mukhia with dragging politics into what should have been a scholarly discussion. About this topic, Sharma writes at length, with no holds barred:

“It is widely known that some historians of Delhi, who were hitherto monopolizing the state (read: Court) patronage, have been displaced from their ‘Imperial’ pedestals and have been reduced to their actual size. Their maxim, that they could fool all the people, all the time, has been disproved. Naturally, they are aggrieved and they are making the best of every trifle to embarrass the government on cooked-up charges of saffronization of the institutions, which had been woefully stagnating and needed to be revived. Is it a sin to let in new ideas to replace their fossilized thought? They feel outraged that their intellectual hegemony--carefully fabricated and scaffolded over the years--has been demolished. But Fatehpur Sikri excavation is purely an academic matter and cannot be used as a stick to beat the government. They must settle their scores with the government somewhere else. Prof. Mukhia has dragged the names of Dr. M. M. Joshi and Shri Arun Shourie to politicize this matter, which is as unfair and unjust as it is unfortunate. We never expected a University Professor to stoop so low as to indulge in this type of derogatory exercise. Professional ethics demanded that, before writing to the press, he should studies the site, the temple-remains, and sculptures carefully, without prejudice, and on merit.”

This archaeological excavation in Fatehpur Sikri cycled through the op-ed pages for the next few months. The analytical piece in The Hindu, “Tales from Fatehpur Sikri”, appeared July 22, almost five months after the initial spate of articles. The author stated that D.V. Sharma, did not use the words "definitive view" or "final judgment" when he responded to Mukhia’s charges. Additionally, as can be seen from the materials presented, he did not grossly misread Mukhia’s intentions because Mukhia had made no veiled reference to the fact that he felt the Archaeological Survey of India was the handmaiden of the BJP.

Although his suspicion about Hindu on Jain temple demolition was speculative and tentative, without any corroborating evidence, can it be said that Mukhia innocently forwarded this theory, as if he did not know it would generate vociferous rebuttals? More than the provocative words he used, his over all tone was anything but dispassionate and tentative. Mukhia had written strong words, “clearly the mound has no religious significance” and he got strong rebuttals, as could only have been expected.

However, the article in The Hindu that summarized the media hoopla concerning this ignoring all the pleas of tentativeness that had been advanced … accused Mukhia of offering a "definitive view" and a "final judgment" on the basis of incomplete knowledge. And plunging ahead recklessly from this gross misreading, Sharma went on to ascribe motives of a particularly sectarian kind at this archaeological site. The Hindu recounted what the author considered to be Mukhia’s sophisticated analysis against the ASI’s communal archaeologists, “Mukhia's plea for an attentive reading that would be alive to the complexities of sectarian strife in the medieval period was not received well in certain quarters”.

The author comments with alarm, “Most observers thought it curious that Mukhia's plea for caution should have provoked this outpouring of intolerance from a professional archaeologist”. Yet he fails to mention that it had been Mukhia whose initial article had politicized the issue. The writer for The Hindu charged that this response from “certain quarters” was: “a definitive sign of a recurrence of the Ayodhya syndrome which afflicted the archaeological profession rather badly in the 1990s--of discoveries of the past being burdened by predilections and cultural biases of the present.”

In the July 4, 2000 edition of The Hindustan Times, Professor K. M. Shrimali wrote an article titled “The Rediscovery or India: Why does Fatehpur Sikri hog the lime light when the Khajuraho diggings go unnoticed?”. In his book, ‘Eminent Historians,’ Arun Shourie devotes several pages to K. M. Shrimali, with whom he publicly debated these issues on a popular television talk show. Shourie points out what he considers to be lapses of scholarship, and stresses the politicization of Shrimali’s positioning, citing, among other observations that he had appeared, along with numerous “Marxist colleagues”, as a witness “in the pleadings filed by the Suni Waqf Board in the courts … considering the Ayodhya matter”.

In his article in The Hindustan Times, Shrimali wrote a resounding critique of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), saying the controversy about the dig near Fatehpur Sikri had brought the ASI “under scrutiny”. He explained it simplistically, in terms of the Ram Janma Bhumi/ Babri Masjid divide, lamenting that ASI’s “reticence at the time of the karsevak-type62 archaeology at Ayodhya and also during and after the demolition of the 450-year old Babri Masjid, is too recent to forget”.

Shrimali’s association with the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee (AIBMAC) was very vocal and public, and as was pointed out by Arun Shourie, he was one of the scholars most intimately involved with the hearings, news conferences, and pamphlets before and after the demolition of the contested religious site. It did seem at that time, that this group of historians in Delhi were lined up against the archaeologists--a divide that continues. Shrimali’s observations about archaeological data from the disputed site must be seen in context of the polarized politicized standoff that it has become, rather than simply accepting the verdict of this well respected historian.

Implicating India’s premier archaeological institution as ideologically driven, a veritable arm of the RSS, Shrimali explains: “Indian archaeologists have, in the last 50 years, assiduously worked along a single track. The loss of the fabulous and gigantic sites such as Mohenjodaro and Harappa to Pakistan had to be compensated and the antiquity of the Indian culture pushed back.”

Having concluded that since independence the ASI has been myopic and motivated by jealousy of Indus Valley sites, he then makes the absurd statement, which he sees as ironic, but in context of Pakistani historiography, is nonsensical: “It is ironical that the theocratic Pakistan’s archaeologists dealing with the cultural phase of comparable antiquity are refraining from establishing any religious identity but their counterparts in secular India are consciously working in that direction.”

Professor Shrimali should have known that in Pakistan the official historical narrative does not reach back to the hoary past, but just to the seventh century, beginning with the birth of the Prophet Muhammad and less than a century later, in 712 CE with the “triumphant arrival of Islam in the Subcontinent”. The iconographic relics recovered from Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) sites, such as the horned figure sitting in yogic posture, would in all likelihood not inspire connections with the religious identity of Pakistani archaeologists and historians--these scholars are 99% Muslims.

However, in Sindh, home to Mohenjo-Daro and numerous IVC sites, many people have passionately established a personal connection with a “cultural phase of comparable antiquity”. The sufistic Sindhi people take great pride in the cultural connections that link them to the ancient civilization that flourished on the Indus River five thousand years ago. In Pakistan there are also history wars, though not as free and vocal, since textbooks and the curriculum are closely dictated by the central government, and dangerously, any discussion of the pre-Islamic period can lead to charges of blasphemy. Several Pakistani scholars are still languishing in prison, awaiting a death sentence for saying such things as Muhammad’s parents were not Muslims since Islam did not exist until after their death. The desire to have a tangible, documented stake, to own one’s own national or ethnic identity, is common to most groups of people and plays out in many political and cultural arenas.

For decades Sindhis have objected to the dismissive treatment used in Pakistani textbooks and official narratives about the nation, of the IVC, from whence Sindhis claim their cultural roots. To punish them for the connections to a pre-Islamic past that many Sindhis feel, most Pakistanis look down on Sindhis. There are even Sindhi nationalists who agree with the “out of India” theory for the Aryans, claiming, as do the “saffron archaeologists” implicated by Prof. Shrimali, that there was no Aryan invasion, but that Vedic culture arose from the Indus Valley Civilization.

In his op-ed piece, Professor Shrimali launches into a prolonged attack on B.B. Lal, a famous and well-published archaeologist. He states that: “B.B. Lal, the famous excavator of Ayodhya in the 1970’s, emphasized: ‘Site was again occupied around the 11th century AD… but the entire late period was devoid of any special interest.”

When I discussed this with B. B. Lal in December 2001, he explained that these statements in his report were continually taken out of context, about the layer, being “devoid of any special interest”. In Lal’s Ayodhya excavations during the 1970’s, he had been looking at ancient levels to determine dates of prehistoric occupancy. In that search, he found the pillars of an 11th century temple just below and adjacent to the Babri Masjid structure. In the context of his paleo-historical investigation, he had made the above extracted statement in the report. This excerpt is often quoted by leftist scholars, without the sentences before or after it. It is excerpted to prove that B.B. Lal had suddenly changed his position on the Ram Janma Bhumi temple, because he was swayed by the politics of Hindu Nationalism in the 1980’s and 90’s.

When B.B. Lal wrote that the “site was again occupied around the 11th century AD”, what Shrimali leaves out, between his ellipses, is Lal’s archaeological data describing the numerous pillars of a large temple dated circa that era. However, specific to that particular report, since the 11th century was not the era under investigation, “the entire late period was devoid of any special interest’ as far as the current study of ancient sites was concerned. Such partial readings of documents seems to be characteristic of India’s school of elitist historians when they critique research that differs from theirs. Discoveries and documentation are dismissed, because they are written by, as Prof. Thapar says, “fools who do not understand the rules of good scholarship,” fools we are lead to presume, like Professor B.B. Lal?

Shrimali’s op-ed appraisal of Indian archaeologists continues with a disparaging discussion of B.B. Lal’s work, a condemnation of his excavations, which had been authorized under the Nehru government:
“[Lal’s] zealous plea for text-aided archaeology going back to the 1950’s has remained confined to seek archaeological corroboration of ‘Aryan literature’ and has never been extended to any ‘medieval’ text.”