The scholarly Professor Panikkar should go through the text thoroughly before making such comments or stop misleading readers deliberately. - Acharya Kishore Kunal

We are of the view that at Ayodhyā at least three temples existed till 1660 A.D. Fuhrer had found an inscription in the debris of Tretā Kā Thākura mosque which had been built by the order of Aurangzeb after demolishing a temple built earlier by Jayachandra in the V.S. 1241, i.e. 1184 A.D. The magnificent Svargadvāra temple, too, was demolished and an impressive mosque was built there by the order of Aurangzeb. There are many sources to confirm this fact.

When Prof. Ali knows that these valiant Rajputs had sacrificed all these assignments and were ready to die, then such calumny against a valiant race is a gross injustice to them and a daunting distortion of historical facts.

The demolition of temples was taking place since the beginning of Aurangzeb’s reign, nay, from his Viceroy’s days, when he had demolished the Somanâtha and Chintâmani temples in Gujarat. In 1661 when the King of Kuch Bihar was defeated by Mir Jumla, Aurangzeb’s Governor of Bengal, the principal temple of the capital of Kuch Bihar was demolished and a mosque was built thereon. The name of the capital was changed to Alamgir-nagar. In 1661-62 A.D. Abdun Nabi Khan, Aurangzeb’s Faujdar at Mathura, built a Jama Masjid in the heart of the city on the site of a mandir which was different from the famous Keshav Rai’s temple. It seems that after the execution of Dara Shukoh on 30th August, 1659 there was a jubilation in the conservative Muslim camp because he was executed for apostasy by the victorious Emperor Aurangzeb. Once Aurangzeb was in the saddle, his foster brother Fedai Khan, who was the Governor of Ayodhyâ, demolished all temples there at the Emperor’s command and built mosques at those places as marks of the triumph of the ‘true faith’ over the infidelity.