National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), responsible for widening the horizon of the young mind and making them aware of their responsibilities towards people, has been organizing textbooks since its inception by renowned authors committed to the cause of our constitutional principles. It functions as an advisory body to the Union government and suggests study material that help evolve scientific temper among the young and are used by more than four crore students annually.

However, in NCERT’s Class XII political science textbook the theme on the Ayodhya dispute in a particular chapter that faces change is being revised to give primacy to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the Supreme Court verdict of November, 2019 that mandated the construction of temple.

The old textbook (page 139), for example, reads: “…A number of events culminated in the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya (known as Babri Masjid) in December 1992. This event symbolised and triggered various changes in the politics of the country and intensified debates about the nature of Indian nationalism and secularism. These developments are associated with the rise of the BJP and the politics of ‘Hindutva’.”

This paragraph is sought to be replaced by the following: “… the centuries old legal and political dispute over the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya started influencing the politics of India which gave birth to various political changes. The Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Movement, becoming the central issue, transformed the direction of the discourse on secularism and democracy. These changes culminated in the construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya following the decision of the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court (which was announced on November 9, 2019).”

The revised text in this chapter gives a new and inauthentic past and replaces the historical facts.Old court documents show that the legal dispute over Babri Masjid is not “centuries old” as claimed by the revised text, but has a very short history. It started only 74 years back, after the surreptitious planting of the idol in the Babri Masjid on December 22, 1949.

In fact, all previous legal disputes, till the idol was planted inside the Babri Masjid in 1949, centered not at the site of the mosque but at Ram Chabutara, a raised platform situated outside the inner courtyard of Babri Masjid and was considered to be the birth place of Ram.

The Ram Chabutara itself came up during the turbulent years of late 1850s when some of the sadhus of Ayodhya took over a part of the outer compound of the Babri Masjid and constructed a raised platform there.

On November 30, 1858, the caretaker of Babri Masjid had filed a petition complaining that a group of sadhus had built a Chabutara close to the mosque. This was the first legal document recognizing the origin of the place which was later elevated to the position of Ram’s birth place– a position it held for almost a century. Similar legal complaints were made by local Muslims in 1860, 1877, 1883 and 1884, but Ram Chabutara survived and continued to be worshipped as the Janam Asthan.

Similarly, a court order of 1903 talked about ‘Janam Asthan’ (the birth place of Lord Ram) existing away from Babri Masjid at the place of Ramchabutara. The order of the district magistrate of Faizabad was given in response to a petition seeking injunction on attempts to put a sign board at ‘Janam Asthan’. The magistrate, rejecting the petition, said there was nothing wrong in the move since such place did exist outside the Babri Masjid.

The place at which the name slab was being put was Ramchabutara which existed about 100 paces away from the mosque and was worshipped until the idol was planted inside the Babri Masjid in 1949 as the birth place of Ram. Iron railings separated the elevated platform from the inner courtyard.

In the new NCERT textbook, two more deletions are sought to be effected with regard to the Babri Masjid: in the summary at the beginning of the chapter and in an exercise at the end. In the summary, the sentence in the old book, “What is the legacy of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the Ayodhya demolition for the nature of political mobilisation?” is being replaced with “What is the legacy of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement?” Also, in the old book’s exercise section “the demolition of Babri Masjid” is one of six political events that have to be arranged in chronological order. In the new book, however, this bit is sought to be quietly removed.

Deletion of the Babri Masjid demolition episode is another assault on history. No education of contemporary India or even the Ayodhya dispute can be complete without referring to the demolition that shook the nation. Even the Supreme Court Judgment of November 2019 that mandated the construction of Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid could not but refer to the demolition of the mosque in 1992 as an illegal act.

The construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya should not lead us to forget the basic fact. And that is despite the Supreme Court’s mandate, the upcoming temple at the site of the mosque has no historical foundation – neither was it a part of the Hindu consciousness nor legal dispute till 1949. (IPA Service)