Rumour as archaeology

THE ``CLARIFICATION'' BY the Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Ms. Komal Anand, at long last that there were no findings by its team to suggest the existence of any structure underneath the Fatehpur Sikri palace must put an end to machinations by forces determined to generate yet another Ayodhya-type controversy. Her matter-of-fact statement that the ASI excavations at the sites around Fatehpur Sikri did not reveal any evidence of Akbar having destroyed a temple there to build the mighty palace in the 17th Century must dispel rumours. The ASI Director-General has also pointed out that the discovery of idols which could belong to the 11th Century was made at sites ``far away from Fatehpur Sikri'' and this, according to her, was evidence that Akbar did not destroy any temple while building the palace.

Indeed, it is a welcome relief that the ASI top brass considered it necessary to ``clarify'' the matter and present the truth about the excavations. The ASI was forced to do this by a set of MPs who, as members of a Parliamentary Consultative Committee under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, took it to task for its silence on the rumours that the excavations revealed ``evidence'' that there was a temple beneath Fatehpur Sikri. Even leading archaeologists heading the ASI, by maintaining a stoic silence, rather than dispelling such rumours, lent their names and authority, adding legitimacy to campaigns by sectarian forces in the recent past. Recall, for instance, the ASI's project in the 1970s to establish the historicity of the Ramayana sites undertaken by its then Director, Prof. B.B. Lal; while the conclusions he himself presented in academic journals were categorical that the excavations did not establish the historicity of the Ramayana sites, Prof. Lal and some others associated with the project did nothing to counter the campaign by the Hindutva brigade. Moreover, when it went about citing the excavations by Prof. Lal and others from the ASI as ``clinching evidence'' of the existence of a temple beneath the site where the Babri Masjid stood, all these professional archaeologists did not speak out; indeed some of them even aided the campaign. It may have been true that Prof. Lal himself refused to vouch for such claims but he did not stand up to deny the accounts. And the ASI as an establishment remained passive throughout that period.

It is in this context that the ``clarification'' by Ms. Anand on behalf of the ASI team involved in digging up sites around Fatehpur Sikri assumed significance. But it is not sufficient for the establishment to stop with this. The imperative for the ASI's top brass at this stage is to ensure that none from its team behaves in a manner which could be seen as helping the sectarian forces in their campaign to vandalise structures and monuments, the way it happened to the Babri Masjid. Fixing a definite timeframe for publishing the findings - not just about the sites around Fatehpur Sikri - rather than allow the ``experts'' to sleep on them, throwing open the field-diaries for scrutiny by fellow historians and archaeologists and enforcement of the convention that findings in the course of an excavation be reported on professional and academic fora alone serve the purpose. All these steps and a sense of history among the professional archaeologists will be necessary if the discipline is to be saved from being abused for narrow and partisan political goals.

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