Makhdum Shah Juran Ghori, He was the younger brother of Muhammad Ghori. He invaded Ayodhyā with a large army and destroyed the famous Jain Adinath te… - Acharya Kishore Kunal

Now, after such a detailed discussion it is clear that there is a world of unimpeachable evidences which testify to the fact that there existed a definite birth-site of Rāma. It was located in the disputed shrine which was constructed after demoli-shing a temple of Rāma. Despite all these testimonies, if any historian clings to his old stand that there is no evidence showing the existence of any birthplace of Rāma at the disputed site, then one is reminded of the famous line of Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

The background of my meeting with Prof. B.B. Lal is very interesting. Long back when I was Senior Superintendent of Police, Patna in 1983-84, I had an occasion to travel along with Dr. Kumar Suresh Singh, an I.A.S. officer who edited the monumental work ‘People of India’ published by ‘Anthropological Survey of India’. In the course of talk he told me that Prof. B.B. Lal had once told him that in the course of excavation at Ayodhyā he (Prof. Lal) had found the remains of a temple beneath the Baburi Mosque. When he informed the authorities concerned including Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, it was decided after due deliberation that the excavation should be abandoned, lest it should create a serious contentious issue. Thereafter the excavation was stopped. Our talk ended there. In 1990 when I was appointed Officer on Special Duty on Ayodhyā during the premiership of Shri Vishwanath Pratap Singh, I called on Prof. Lal and asked him about the excavation and its abandonment in consequence of finding a temple’s remains. He confirmed it and showed me many slides to prove how the remains of a temple were found at the site. He told me that since the 14 Kasauti pillars existed in situ, they were parts of a temple which existed earlier at the site. (Preface)

It appears that this worship in the Baburi mosque started in 1720 A.D. when Girdhar Bahadur was the all-powerful Governor of Oudh at Ayodhyā. Thus, the worship of the Hindus in the disputed shrine started 13 years after the death of Aurangzeb and sixty years after the demolition of the temple and the construction of the mosque and both the puja and Namaz continued until the proclamation of the British rule in August 1858. The take-over of the shrine by the Sikhs from the Punjab in November 1858 was the expression of the prevailing Hindu resentment.