50 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Congress Committee. On 24 December 1992 a meeting of the Allahabad District Congress Committee was held an4 the provincial delegates adopted a resolution that asked the Congress to exploit the issue concerned with Rama. It said that it would not allow the BJP alone to exploit the issue for its political advantage. The GOI Paper does exactly what the resolution says and tries to compete with the BJP in distorting the history of Ayodhya. The paper justifies the actions of the state in 1949, 1986, 1989 and again in 1992. The government has gone beyond the BJP in order to snatch the Rama card for its own advantage and in the process it has started questioning the very basis of the secular ideals of India. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. See Sushil Srivastava, The Disputed Mosque: A Historical Enquiry, Vistar/Sage, New Delhi, 1991, for a detailed discussion. 2. See Bhatta Lakshmidhara, Krtyakalpa-taru, (ed.) K.V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, Baroda, 1942. 3. Ibid, for details also see Srivastava, op.cit, pp. 39-41. 4. See Srivastava, op.cit., pp. 39-42. 5. Mitra Misra: Viramitrodaya, (ed.) Pandita Vishnu Prasad, Benareas, 1917. 6. Bhatta Lakshmidhara: Brahmacarinda, Vol. I of Krtyakalpa-taru, Op.cit. 7. Motgomery Martin: The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India (1838), Vol. II, (Second edition republished by Cosmo Publication, New Delhi, 1976), pp. 325-405. 8. The myth that the Mughal emperor Babar destroyed the temple in Ayodhya apparently came into circulation in the early part of the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century several people did not believe the myth to be true. 9. See for details Sushil Srivastava, op.cit., and also Sushil Srivastava, 'Karsevak Archaeology' in Frontline, March 25,1993, p. 103. 10. H.R. Nevill (1905): Fyzauad: A District Gazetteer, Vol. XLIII of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Allahabad, 1905, p. 179. 11. See Srivastava, Frontline, op.dt. Also see Sukumar Muralidharan: 'Scientific Fraud: The Karsevak Archaeology', Frontline, Jan 15, 1993 and D. Mandal: Ayodhya: Archaeology after Demolition, Delhi, 1993. 12. See Srivastava, The Disputed Mosque, op.dt. Also see Catherine B. Asher: Architecture of Mughal India, The New Cambridge History of India, OUP, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 29-30. Asher argues that the carvings on the pillars suggest that they were parts of a Shaiva temple. She writes that the pillars could never have been the part of a Vaishnava or a Rama temple. 13. Ibid. 14. See Nevill, op.dt. And see W.C. Benet: Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, 1977, Calcutta. 15. Montgomery Martin, op.dt./ pp. 334-337. 16. W.W.Honey (trans.), Tarikh-Farahoaksh by Mohammad Faiz Baksh, Allahabad, 1899. 17. H.R. Nevill, op.dt. 18. See Manual of Government Orders, 1873, Allahabad, 1873. 19. H.R. Nevill, op.dt., p. 138. 20. See Manual of Government Orders, 1873.