The Government of India had asked both parties to this dispute to present historical evidence concerning the question whether a Hindu temple was demolished to make way for the Babri Masjid.  Evidence means, human or material testimony for the scenario that a flourishing Hindu temple stood there and that it was forcibly replaced by a mosque; or for the alternative scenario, that something else than a Hindu temple was there, such as empty space, and that the mosque was built without interfering with the existing customs of worship.

We have given evidence: solid archaeological and iconographical evidence that a Hindu temple existed there, and a mass of documentary evidence of different types, showing the unanimous tradition, held since at least the early 17th century, that the Babri Masjid was built on a very sacred but forcibly demolished Hindu temple, believed to indicate Rama's birthplace.

But in the long list of documents submitted by the All-India Babri Masjid Action Committee (AIBMAC), we do not find any primary evidence: testimony that the Masjid was built on an empty spot, or that the owner of the plot had willingly sold it to the Muslim rulers for construction of the Babri Masjid.  We also do not find any secondary evidence in the AIBMAC bundle of documents: authentic testimony from local people or from travellers saying explicitly that they had always believed that the Masjid had been built on empty land.

Allow us to make a few general observations concerning the evidence offered by the BMAC.  The very first striking fact about the documents, as already noted, is that none of them contain evidence for the point which the AIBMAC was required to present proof.  In a few cases, they contain scholarly argumentations.  While not strictly evidence, we do agree that they deserve to be in this dossier.  Quite a number of the pieces, however, are pieces written by politically minded people with no scholarly competence in this field at all.  And even among the genuine academics, there are some with a strong ideological bias: history, as well as literature science, cannot be equated with physics, as far as strict neutrality is concerned.  It follows that even the opinion of big names cannot count as proof, unless the actual evidence on which their tall opinion is based, is added.

For instance, S.K. Chatterjee may be a big name as a linguist, but his two statements on the Ramayana are flatly untrue: that nobody believes it has a historical core (many scholars believe, for instance, that it dramatises the conquest of the South by people from the North, which amounts to a historical core), and that it was the purely individual creation of one poet, Valmiki (who in reality drew upon different earlier versions).

Big names have no proof value.  They are a social, not a scientific category.  So, no matter what the merits of a C.  Rajagopalachari, J. Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar may have been, we cannot count them as knowledgeable in the precise historical question with which we are dealing.  Had they come up with any evidence for their off-hand opinions, we could have looked into it.  Unfortunately, we find nothing there but opinion.

A second observation is that all these separate pieces of "evidence" do not yield a coherent scenario at all.  In fact, many of the documents contradict eachother.  Thus, some ancient sources integrate the Rama story into Buddhist tradition, while some modern pamphletteers say the Ramayana symbolises the victory of Brahmanism over Buddhism.  Some say there is no historical core at all, others say the Ramayana dramatises the "Aryan" conquest of South India.  Some say the Janmabhoomi site was empty, others that it contained a Buddhist stupa.  Some say that the Masjid was built by Babar, others say it was built one or two centuries earlier.  There can be only one history, one scenario that took place in reality.  The AIBMAC people have not made clear for which scenario this evidence musters proof.

A third observation is that the AIBMAC evidence is quantitively very copious, yet very meagre as far as the central issue is concerned: proving or disproving that the Babri Masjid forcibly replaced a flourishing Hindu place of worship.

There is much about the legal story, which proves little more than the obvious fact that after the Muslim take-over the place was considered Muslim property both under Nawabi and colonial rule.  So, that part of the "evidence" simply restates the judicial problem, but does not clinch the issue of its historical rights and wrongs.  But then again, it also proves that Hindus kept on claiming the place, both in court and on the ground.  The point is precisely that it was unjustly in Muslim possession, and that Hindus kept on fighting for what was theirs but was denied them by the Muslim and British rulers.

But there is in these documents only little about the events in Ayodhya in the Moghul and Nawabi periods.  And what is conspicuously missing, is any kind of testimony that Babar or another Muslim commander saw this empty piece of land and, out of an abhorrence of emptiness, ordered a Masjid to be built.  That would have been evidence for an alternative to the Mandir scenario.

In the AIBMAC documents pertaining to ancient history, especially to the period when Ram supposedly lived, we see the same failure.  There is not one contemporary or near-contemporary testimony of Valmiki inventing the character Ram out of nothing.  There is not one line from any of the many Ramayana versions, that declares the Rama character was merely invented to build a good story around.  That would be something of a proof that Ram was purely fiction.  Failing that, it becomes quite hard to prove that someone did not exist.  We have offered proof that Ram was at least considered and treated as a historical character by ancient Hindu writers, including Purana writers whose dynastic histories have been at least partly confirmed by modern historical research, even while this was not the question for which evidence was requested.  But our AIBMAC friends, even while trying to smuggle Rama's historicity into the debate, do not come up with any evidence, merely some latter-day opinions.

We reiterate that for us, the historical details of the events that became the subject matter of the Ramayana are not what is at stake in this debate.  The point is whether it is a traditional Hindu sacred place, not why it is one.  Therefore, all documents pertaining to other aspects of the matter than the existence of a temple which was forcibly replaced by the Babri Masjid, are really beside the point.

Nevertheless, we have given our comment on all the AIBMAC categories of historical documents, in the one-by-one rebuttal.  With the judicial documents, we have dealt more briefly, i.e. only in so far as they pertain to the historical debate.