12 SOCIAL SCIENTIST is considered to be a holy place by both Hindus and Muslims. It is the birthplace of Ram for the Hindus, and Muslims believe that it is in the cemetery by the Saryu river in Ayodhya where Shea, the grandson of Adam, is buried.2 The Ayodhya of Ram is believed to have existed in the Treta yuga3 of the Hindu calendar, i.e. some 900,000 years ago. According to traditional history, Ayodhya was the capital of the Kingdom of Kosala, and with the rise of Buddhism in sixth and fifth centuries BCE, Ayodhya was displaced as the capital city. Scholars agree that Ayodhya was identical with Saketa, where Buddha is said to have resided for some time.4 Ayodhya is said to be 'rediscovered' by 'Vikramaditya,' who is identified by many scholars as Skandagupta of mid-5th century CE, when Buddhism began to decline as a result of a Brahmanical resurgence.5 While Romila Thapar maintains "Chandra Gupta II took the title of Vikramaditya or Sun of Prowess,"6 Sher Singh ascertains that the claim that Skandagupta shifted his capital to Saketa (Ayodhya) is baseless.7 No matter how contentious the historicity of Ayodhya is, it is nonetheless one of the seven holy places of 'Hindus' because of its association with Ram. Of the 6,000 Hindu shrines in Ayodhya, more than 4,000 are connected with Ram.8 This religious importance coupled with contemporary political significance leads the Hindu communalists to conclude: "Ayodhya is the centre of our Hindu nationhood, and Lord Rama our national leader. Without Ayodhya, this nation cannot be a nation in the fullest sense of the word, just as there can be no Christendom, which is what Europe is, without the Vatican."9 The exact location of Ayodhya is yet another controversy. Archaeological excavations at Ayodhya which is on the right bank of the Saryu river in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh reveal that "the earliest settlement at Ayodhya did not go back prior to the early stage of the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) Culture" which could be assigned to circa 700 BCE. Thus if Ramayana episode was historical, it could not have taken place earlier.10 Based on Valmiki's Ramayana and a few other sources, Sher Singh contends that if Valmiki's description of Ayodhya is correct, it must be some 13 to 14 miles south of the river Saryu in Nepal.11 The traditional lack of interest in cartography in India is not helpful to solve this riddle in any way. The 'Muslim conquest' sets the next and most important stage in the controversy. Emperor Babar's general, Mir Baqi, is believed to have destroyed a Ram temple and built the Babri Masjid on the same spot around 1528 CE. If there really existed a temple before the mosque was built is the core of the controversy now. B. B. Lal who initiated and headed an archaeological survey of Ayodhya since 1975 and never once mentioned any evidence of a temple at the disputed site made a surprising claim in the RSS magazine Manthan in October 1990 to having found the pillar-bases of what may have been a temple at the site.12 As historical and archaeological 'evidences' fail to tell us anything concrete or something even remotely convincing, so do the voices of faith. As Rajeev Saxena asks, if there was an actual demolition of a Ram temple, how come the famous poet Tulsidas, who sang the glory of his beloved Ram during the early part of the 17th century, kept silent on this issue. After all, the poet wrote about secular subjects such as