"It was they who connived with the extremist Muslim groups to derail all attempts to find an amicable solution to the Masjid issue. Some of them even… - KK Muhammed

I had written: "I can reiterate this (the existence of a Hindu temple before it was displaced by the Babri mosque) with greater authority - for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavations in 1976-'77 under Prof BB Lal as a trainee. I have visited the excavation near the Babri site and seen the excavated pillar bases. The JNU historians have highlighted only one part of our findings while suppressing the others..." ... By JNU historians, I meant the Leftist historians such as Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, DN Jha, Bipin Chandra and RS Sharma who do not want to see a solution to the Ayodhya issue. Till the Allahabad High Court judgment came out on September 30, 2010, these historians maintained that there was no temple beneath the Babri mosque.

A team of Left historians in Jawaharlal Nehru University such as Romila Thapar, Bipin Chanra, and S. Gopal argued that there was no mention of the dismantling of the temple before the nineteenth century and Ayodhya was a Buddhist-Jain centre. Historians such as Irfan Habib, R.S. Sharma, Athar Ali, D.N. Jha, Suraj Bhan, too joined and it became a big grouping. [The Leftist drama] instilled courage and gave false hopes to the BMAC. This resulted in a reversal of the thought process amongst Muslims who had till then, been pondering wholeheartedly about giving back the mosque and setting the matter amicably. They came to a renewed conclusion that the mosque will not be given...

At the site where we got 12 pillars, they found 50 with the base and in 17 rows, indicating the presence of a huge temple. They also found ‘amalaka’ (a notched stone disk that sits on top of Hindu Temple ‘shikhara’) and ‘pranala’ (discharge outlet attached to the wall of a Hindu temple sanctum) and that too ‘magar pranala’ (crocodile-faced), which must be in a temple and not anywhere else. He also found over 263 terracotta idols. Do you expect this in a mosque? Then there was an inscription which clearly says that this temple is dedicated to Mahavishnu who killed Bali and Ravan. Also, in my work, I was the only Muslim… but in Mani’s excavation one fourth of the labourers engaged in earthwork were Muslims deputed to ensure that there was no bias or manipulation. Everything was videographed in the presence of an expert committee comprising independent people like lawyers and magistrates. The truth came out and proved some historians just wanted to complicate the issue. Muslims were ready (to find an amicable solution) and wanted to settle the issue without bloodshed. But a group of historians would not allow that.