NEW DELHI, Aug 28: According to a story ascribed to Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri, an admirer once claimed to have discovered the presence of electricity in ancient India after he found a copper wire at the bottom of the foundation of his proposed house.

“That’s strange,” retorted Firaq, a Hindu and a confirmed rationalist. “When I was digging the foundations for my house, I didn’t find any wire at all. It makes me wonder if indeed there was wireless too in ancient India.”

Prof Irfan Habib, India’s top-ranking historian, shows similar scorn for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), whose findings this week of an alleged Hindu structure beneath the razed Babri mosque in Ayodhya is beginning to help re-fuel a raging political row.

Thousands of people have been killed in periodic flare-ups related to the row and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government exists largely because his Bharatiya Janata Party has been campaigning for a temple at the site where its supporters tore down the Babri mosque in Dec 1992.

“There is nothing in the ASI report for historians to discern or divine. It’s a pure fabrication with no historical merit,” Prof Habib told Dawn on the phone from Aligarh, where he has taught history for four decades. “Everything in the report points to a Muslim structure and Islamic motifs but its conclusions are just the opposite of the evidence.”

Prof Habib gave three key reasons to support his criticism of the ASI report. It has mentioned, but deliberately not explained, the presence of countless animal carcasses, some with cut throats associated with Muslim sacrificial rituals found at each level of the excavation ordered by the Uttar Pradesh High Court from March until mid-August this year.

“Also, there is no explanation for the glazed tiles found at various levels of the digging,” Prof Habib said. These tiles are essentially a pointer to the post-Sultanate, chiefly the Mughal, period. Even more significantly, each level of excavation has shown construction with lime and mortar, a definite indication of architectural techniques that came to India with Muslims.

Prof Habib’s arguments could be misconstrued because he is seen as a Muslim, even if he is a Marxist historian. But Prof R.C. Thakran of Delhi University, who was among the few professional historians to have camped in Ayodhya during the entire excavation process, supports him.

“The ASI has misrepresented the findings in Ayodhya,” said Prof Thakran. There was nothing in the several interim reports of the ASI to suggest a massive structure it now claims to have unearthed under the Babri Masjid, he revealed. “It is a lot of poor fabrication.”

While this has been the liberal, professional view on the Ayodhya dispute, the ASI revelations have also spurred the rightwing Muslim and Hindu groups into action, one campaigning for reconstruction of the demolished mosque, the other seeking a temple there.

The Uttar Pradesh High Court, also known as the Allahabad High Court, has given six weeks to the two sides to study the ASI report and give their responses to the findings which essentially claim that there was indeed evidence of an earlier temple built beneath a 16th century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu activists in the northern city in 1992.

Rightwing Hindus welcomed the findings while rightwing Muslims rejected the report. But although the study is expected to have far-reaching implications in moves to solve who holds claim over the site, most lawyers say it cannot be taken as a conclusive evidence.

“As far as the legal case in concerned, it is a title suit about the ownership of the land between Hindus and Muslims,” lawyer Rajiv Dhawan argued. “The Archaeological Survey of India report cannot be taken to be conclusive. This is only part of the evidence. The report will be analysed, its authors will be cross- examined to find out whether they are right or wrong. It will be a long, drawn-out process.”

Mr Dhawan said the legal case was not about whether a temple existed on the site or not. Whether or not a temple existed became part of rightwing Hindu rabble rousing in the failed dialogue process begun in 1989 between the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee and the hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). However, according to Mr Dhawan, the land was owned by the Sunni Waqf board until 1945. The Hindus could have only moral right over the land if the existence of a temple were proven.

Archaeologists supported by Hindu hardliners dismissed the allegations, saying the report justified their long-held observations. S.P. Gupta, of the Indian Archaeologist Society (IAS), a VHP-backed organization, said: “The ASI report is nearly the same as our reports, because we are also archaeologists. We have seen the digging. It is a science, so our observations based on scientific facts are bound to be similar.”

A colleague of Mr Gupta, K.N. Dixit, added: “Our excavations in Ayodhya in 1978 proved the existence of a temple dating to the 11th century. The ASI report just pushes it back by 50 or 100 years.”

Another archaeologist, R.K. Sharma, said the motifs found “proved the existence of a seventh century Shiva temple”. If true, even by this logic the temple could not have been the birthplace of Lord Ram as claimed by the VHP, since he belonged to the rival sect of Vaishnavite Hindus.

Qasim Rasool Ilyas, a leader of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, says the ASI report has ignored fundamental evidence of Muslims living in Ayodhya in the preceding centuries. “They have hidden evidence of Sultanate coins found in Ayodhya, the glazed tiles, carcasses. Everything. We expect the courts to note this.”

However, by the time the courts do take notice, it could be time for the next elections and for the issue to be reheated for mass consumption. Will the people relish yet another helping? This remains the only question no one seems to have an answer to.